Attack on Scimitar Hill

On 21 August 1915 the British IX Corps made its last attempt to capture the hills surrounding the plain above Suvla Bay on the Gallipoli peninsula. The main objectives were the W Hills and the neighbouring Scimitar Hill, named after its ridge curved like a sabre, as well as Hill 112. The attack, in which about 14,000 soldiers took part, ended in defeat.

Two weeks had passed since the landing at Suvla Bay. The Turks under Mustafa Kemal had occupied all the surrounding hills and looked down on the British trenches and beaches. After General Stopford was recalled, the new corps commander, General Henry de Lisle, received reinforcements: the experienced 29th Division, brought over from Helles, and the 2nd Mounted Division from Egypt, that is, about 5,000 men of the volunteer yeomanry cavalry, who fought on foot. General Ian Hamilton came over from Imbros to watch the battle from a hill above corps headquarters.

The attack was set for the afternoon, so that the sun would be in the Turks’ eyes. That day, however, the sky clouded over and a mist hung over the plain, hiding the Turkish positions. A half-hour bombardment by artillery and warships, begun at 2.30 p.m., achieved little. At 3 p.m. the 11th Division advanced on the W Hills. It took only a stretch of trench above the Azmak Dere stream, while in the centre its battalions lost their way in the scrub and were decimated by fire from the flank. At 3.30 p.m. the 29th Division went into the attack. Turkish shells set the scrub on fire, and the wounded burned in it. The Irishmen of the 1st Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, broke through to the top of Scimitar Hill, but were swept off it by fire from the higher Anafarta ridge.

Meanwhile the yeomanry moved up from reserve. Its five brigades crossed the open plain south of the dry Salt Lake in formation, as if on parade, under shrapnel fire, and at about 5 p.m. reached Chocolate Hill. There de Lisle’s order awaited them: they were to take what the 29th Division had failed to take. At about 6 p.m. Lord Longford’s brigade broke through to the top of Scimitar Hill for the second time that day, but it too was driven off. Longford was killed, and his body was never found. At the same time, at the neighbouring Anzac beachhead, a composite force of Australian, New Zealand, British and Indian soldiers attacked the low Hill 60, but took only part of the Turkish trenches on its slopes.

Before dawn on 22 August the British withdrew from the slopes of Scimitar Hill to their starting positions, and in the morning the Turks also retook the trench above the Azmak Dere. According to the British official history, IX Corps lost about 5,300 of the 14,300 soldiers who took part in the attack, and according to the Turkish official history the Turks lost about 2,600. It was the last major British offensive at Gallipoli. The front at Suvla never moved again, and the fighting for Hill 60 continued intermittently until 29 August.