– which came in for subsequent criticism – had prompted the Navy to put them ashore south of Nibrunesi Point. To labour Hanna’s analogy, if the Division had been due to land near Howth Head, it was put ashore closer to Wicklow. The 5th Inniskillings, along with the 6th and 7th Munsters were landed nearer to their original objective. But not, as Ivone Kirkpatrick recorded, until the late afternoon. ‘We ran nicely ashore, the drawbridge worked perfectly and we landed. It was just after four o’clock. I assembled my platoon. At the water’s edge were several British dead, struck down almost before they had set foot on land.’17
As they surveyed the landscape of the furnace into which they had been plunged the eyes of the men of the 10th Division would have been drawn towards the heights around the crescent shaped bay in which they had landed. Close by the southern perimeter of Suvla Bay (Nibrunesi Point) was a low, rolling hillock, one hundred and fifty feet high at most, called Lala Baba. It had been taken in darkness before the 10th had landed. It afforded some protection from the sightline of Turkish troops who were well entrenched on a more distant hill, which, because of the colouration of the soil on its slopes (or the colouring of the burnt scrub, depending on which version you accept) became known as Chocolate Hill. This hill, about two hundred feet in height, was visible on the far side of what the few maps carried by officers characterised as a ‘Salt Lake’. In moister seasons a salt lake it may well have been but on the morning of the 7 August 1915, it was little more than a salty marsh of white sticky mud measuring about a mile across. Nonetheless it constituted an obstacle which had to be circumvented. A direct approach to Chocolate Hill from Lala Baba was not possible, the option was to tour the lake by a northern or southern route, thus leaving oneself wide open to shrapnel and shells. Beyond Chocolate Hill was Green, or Burnt Hill, similar in shape and size to its neighbour. Beyond that again, less than a mile to the north-east was Scimitar Hill. Overlooking a distant plain, dotted with cornfields and olive trees, as well as useless scrub land, was the 900 foot-high Tekke Tepe ridge, the ultimate short-term objective of the troops involved in the Suvla campaign. To the south-east the land rose to join the Sari Bair ridge which overlooked Anzac Cove.
Physically more imposing, however, and looming far more ominously, was a long humpback ridge to the north which dominated the skyline from east to west and whose craggy, water-scraped slopes ended in the sea at the northernmost limit of the bay, Suvla Point. The ridge, Kiretch Tepe Sirt, rose to over 600 feet in places and featured a peculiar erratic cairn in the centre, which was to become known as the ‘Pimple’.
Dry, dusty and fly-infested though it was at the time, the area was not without a stark physical beauty. This has been well captured in the paintings of an artist who accompanied the invading force, Lt Drummond Fish. They depict the area in a rather more sumptuous light than do modern colour photographs but Fish, with the discerning and sceptical eye of the artist, was genuinely impressed with the physical beauty of the place.
The colours were the most wonderful thing about Gallipoli. There were mornings when the hills were as rose peaches – times when the sea looked like the tail of some gigantic peacock, and the sands looked like great carpets of glittering cloth of gold – the place was an inspiration in itself, and if beauty could have stopped a war, that scenery would have done it.18
The Irishmen would have been conscious of a number of other things within minutes of landing. The smell of thyme pervaded the foreshore. It had not yet been obliterated from their nostrils by the stench of putrefying bodies which would be another lasting sensory memory of those who survived Gallipoli. John Hargrave, with the Royal Army Medical Corps, was quick to identify another characteristic odour, that of ‘human blood soaking its way into the sand’.19 A constant irritant would have been the large and persistent flies. These initially, however, merely issued their calling cards, a brief prelude to more unwelcome return visits. Loaded down with packs weighing upwards of sixty pounds the men would also have been conscious of the extreme heat, especially as the morning wore on. A heavy shower in the early afternoon offered some welcome relief.
But the overweening impressions borne in on the first of ‘Kitchener’s 100,000’ to go into action were that soldiering was thirsty, dangerous and rather chaotic work. John Hargrave had made an astute choice, as it turned out, while still on board his transport vessel. He had been offered some sweet, reviving tea but would have had to hand up a pint from his own water issue for boiled water for that tea. ‘I decided that a pint of cold water later on might be a better asset than a pint of hot tea now. I was right – a shade too Boy-Scoutishly prudent in spirit perhaps, but eminently practical.’20 When they boarded the lighters which took them ashore each man carried one and a half pints of water with him. They were told not to drink it unless it was absolutely necessary and then only to take a sip or two at a time. It was one of the many ironies of the Suvla debacle that the lighters themselves actually carried extra water rations but
So far as the lightermen were concerned, speed! speed! was the essence of the operation. Therefore, as soon as each lighter was empty of troops it put about and went back for the next load and that reserve of water was never distributed.21
Frank Laird noted that the killing had started before his battalion arrived.
On our right were pitiable groups of wounded and dead men, stretched under shelter of the head of the beach. Overhead the shrapnel burst continually. A long continuous procession of stretcher bearers passed us, carrying inanimate forms to the beach, with pith helmets placed over their faces to save them from the blazing sun.22
Edgar Poulter was a comrade of Laird’s in the ‘Pals’ Company. ‘They said “Look out for land mines” and we saw the odd fellow coming back, leg blown off or wounded with stick bombs or land mines. For the first time we all began to be a little funny in the pit of the stomach.’ The 7th Dublin’s corpulent CO Lieutenant Colonel Downing seemed unconcerned by the Turkish shrapnel. He promenaded along the shore with a long staff in his hand muttering. ‘Oh don’t mind anything you hear lads it’s not near you it’s over your head, carry on.’23
James Cahill, another Dublin Fusilier, spoke to the author a fortnight before his death in 1990 at the age of 96 and still remembered his apprehension on reaching the beach. ‘It was a muddle up to get there, because you’re under shellfire and men were lying around dying and roaring and the order was “Form up in three lines.”’24
Most of these fresh untried troops would have been too inexperienced and too preoccupied with their own thoughts and fears to have paid much attention to the confusion and disorder which had seized those in command of the Suvla operation. In part the claustrophobic chaos on the beaches can be ascribed to the obsession with secrecy and the pusillanimous and unimaginative approach of those in charge of the operation. In retrospect it is clear that, even before the Irish landed, the entire Gallipoli campaign had been seriously compromised by egregious mismanagement. By the time they had been ashore for twenty-four hours it had been well and truly lost beyond redemption.
Contemporary photos showing hundreds of troops packed into small areas, waiting to be told what to do next, tell the story adequately. Nobody seemed to know who exactly was in control of events. They knew who was in command: there was a military chain which led to the Corps commander General Stopford, who spent 7 August off-shore in a yacht, the Jonquil. While Stopford may have been in command he certainly never exercised control. That chain, theoretically, extended beyond Stopford to the Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, General Sir Ian Hamilton. But it was equally clear that Hamilton was not in control either. In fact he was completely starved of information as Stopford failed to communicate with him for some hours after the landings went ahead.
Stopford, as Corps commander was privy to Hamilton’s strategy. The Divisional commanders Hammersley (11th) and Mahon (10th) knew what part their troops were expected to play in the execution of that strategy. But Mahon, ludicrously, had failed to inform one of his Brigade commanders, Brigadier General Hill, about the role the 31st Brigade was expected to play. Some time after its dismal failure the conduct of the Gallipoli campaign
