live on the ground about the beach. Men who left the cover of the bank for an instant were killed and five men of the R.M. Fusiliers who had been sent forward to cut the wire had all been killed within ten yards after leaving cover. The concentrated fire from the beach on to the one point of landing from the vessel, and also on to the gangways and exits was so heavy and accurate our losses had already been very severe. More than half of those who had left the vessel were either killed or wounded.19
There were also fatalities on board the ship. The Munster’s Second in Command, Major Monck-Mason was wounded there, as was the battalion’s adjutant while the CO of the Hampshires was killed on the ship’s bridge.
Various efforts were made to reinforce the survivors who reached the shore. Some of the Dublins who were fortunate enough not to have been allocated seats in the lighters that had turned into death traps were despatched down the makeshift pontoon bridge to the beach. Men from W Company of the 1st RDF, among them Sgt C. McCann (later promoted to Lieutenant), were met with the same Turkish fusilade which greeted everything that moved off the River Clyde.
[We] reached the two barges that formed the landing stage when we came under heavy rifle and machine-gun fire again. We threw ourselves flat on the barges and lay still for some time; I was between two men of the Munster Fusiliers who were dead, but I did not realise this until I asked one of them to make more room, and as he did not move I pushed him with my hand, and then found that his head was blown away.20
On shore Geddes, who estimated that he had lost about 70 per cent of his Company, was trying to extricate what was left of the Munsters and the leaderless Dublins from their exposed position. Breaking for shelter near the old fort, along with half a dozen others, he too was wounded. ‘However we got across and later picked up 14 stragglers from the [Dublins]. This little party attempted to get a lodgement inside the Fort but we couldn’t do it so we dug in as well as we could with our entrenching tools.’21 Geddes continued in command until he was evacuated from the beach after dark. Gradually he had worked the vestiges of the two Irish regiments into a more defensible position and into place for a possible counter-attack against the well-protected Turks.
The River Clyde was now a distinctly uncomfortable place to be, well within range of the Turkish artillery and machine-guns; filling up with wounded who had been evacuated from the beach or from among the heaps of bodies in the barges. At about 9.00 a.m. the Turkish firing abated and Tizard decided to try and get some more men ashore. Major Jarret and some of Y Company were despatched.
A ship’s cutter had been put into position and with the two barges and a gang plank formed a way from the vessel towards a spit of rock that jutted out from the beach on the right of where the ‘Clyde’ was beached. This spit of rock was thickly covered with dead, and the enemy had got the range of this spot to a nicety making it a veritable death trap.22
Elsewhere, in accordance with the lottery of war, the landings had been more successful. In some cases they were virtually unopposed. At W Beach, where the 29th’s Divisional commander had concentrated his own attentions to the exclusion of all other landings, there had been stiff opposition but it had been overcome. A flanking movement from that beach could have caught the Turks at V Beach in the rear. During the afternoon Tizard spotted, from the River Clyde a party of men on the cliffs to the left of the bay but a message he sent to the 29th Division HQ asking that they be used to outflank the Turks was ignored. Also at W Beach the 86th Brigade’s CO, Brig.-Gen. Hare had been wounded so Tizard was obliged to take command of the Brigade. The CO of the 88th Brigade, General Napier, then came aboard the River Clyde along with a platoon from the Worcester Regiment. Instructions came from 29th Division HQ that the landings must continue so, reluctantly, Tizard sent out another company of the Hampshires. Once again the barge closest to the shore had broken away and, unable to move forward, the Hampshires began to crowd back into the boat. Seeing this General Napier and his Brigade Major went to investigate. Both were killed by Turkish shellfire. Lt Guy Nightingale watched Napier die.
He was hit in the stomach on the barge between our ship and the beach. He lay for half an hour on the barge and then tried to get some water to drink but the moment he moved the Turks began firing at him again and whether he was hit again or not I do not know, but he died very soon afterwards, and when I went ashore for the second time, I turned him over and he was quite dead.23
Nightingale, who had served with the Munsters in India, was sent to join the remains of Major Jarret’s company trapped behind a bank on the beach. ‘We jumped into the sea and got ashore somehow with a rain of bullets all round us. I found Jarret and a lot of men but very few not hit.’24 Nightingale was sent back to the River Clyde by Jarret to advise Tizard not to attempt to send any more men ashore in daylight. Wisely Tizard heeded this advice and chose to ignore orders from Division to press ahead. These, he rationalised, had been despatched in ignorance of the true situation at V Beach. Nightingale returned to the beach.
[I] lay all day in the blazing sun and the groans and cries of the wounded and dying were awful. The swines of Turks were picking off the wounded as they tried to crawl up the sand to us. At dusk Jarret, and I got together about 40 men who had not been hit and we pushed up a little and formed what we could of an outpost line with sentries so that we would have some sort of warning if we were rushed. Geddes was too bad to do much and finally had to be taken away. Just as it was dusk Jarret came up to me to have a look at the sentries I had put out and, as he was talking to me, he was hit in the throat. He died in a few minutes. That left me the only officer.25
Nightingale, who despite his youth and relative inexperience, was now the effective commander of the force on shore – later temporarily combined, because of the huge losses, into one unit, the ‘Dubsters’ – passed an anxious and miserable night, soaked to the skin like the rest of his men who had waded ashore; lashed by a heavy shower of rain; and expecting the Turks to counter-attack and try and push his small force off the beach. Captain Lane, lying helpless and wounded behind a bank, was almost resigned to the inevitable. ‘That night the Turks came so close that on one occasion we could hear them talking and I feared it was all up.’26 Lane became one of the long-term victims of the war. He was finally evacuated and taken to Malta where surgeons were forced to amputate his leg.
Capt Geddes was also evacuated. Some years later he reflected on the ghastly experience he had been through.
Hell it has been, with a vengeance, and the men who were at Mons and La Bassée say it was sheer child’s play to what we’ve gone through here … As I write we have only six officers and just over 300 men left, out of 28 officers and 900 men. The Dublins have one officer and just over 200 men, the two regiments are now amalgamated into one. The Turks are killing, torturing and burning the wounded – this is reported on every side. They outsavage the worst savages. Flanders is a picnic to this and its the most inhuman show that has ever been known – its simply downright murder!27
His allegations concerning the Turkish treatment of the wounded are, if they have any substance at all, greatly exagerrated.
Overnight the remaining troops from the River Clyde came ashore. Groups of them worked their way across to the fortress on the right hand side of the bay. That night the Turks set fire to some of the houses in Seddel-Bahr, probably to create more open sight-lines or ‘fields of fire’ for their snipers than were afforded by the narrow streets of the village. Tizard, as he surveyed the bay from the River Clyde, described his situation on the morning of 26 April in the following terms.
The enemy were still holding their position. On my left Lieut Nightingale with about ten men had dug themselves in under the cliff on the left. A small party of men were a little way up the nulla from the shore and there was a connecting party at the shore end. They were apparently held up. On the right under the fort and amongst the ruins on the shore were the greater part of the force.28
A staff officer, Capt Stoney of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers,
