Battle of Scimitar Hill

The Battle of Scimitar Hill was the last major British offensive on the Gallipoli peninsula. On 21 August 1915 IX Corps, reinforced by the 29th Division brought over from Helles and by dismounted yeomanry regiments from Egypt, attacked the hills closing off from the east the plain above Suvla Bay. At the same time troops from Anzac struck at nearby Hill 60. The attack, made on a misty afternoon amid burning scrub, collapsed under the fire of Turkish artillery and machine guns. Twice the British took the top of Scimitar Hill and twice they lost it. According to the British official history it was the most costly in proportion to its scale, and the least successful, of all the battles of the campaign.

Name and dates

The British named the hill Scimitar Hill after its curved, crescent-shaped ridge. The Turks call it Yusufçuk Tepe (Dragonfly Hill) and the battle Yusufçuk Tepe Muharebesi. The British Battles Nomenclature Committee dates it to 21 August 1915, and this page follows that. The withdrawal of the troops from the slopes of the hill took place before dawn on 22 August, and that morning the Turks recaptured the only section of trench that had been taken, above the Azmak Dere stream, which is why some works end the battle on 22 August. The fighting for Hill 60, at the junction with the Anzac bridgehead, went on intermittently until 29 August and is described separately as the Battle of Hill 60. It should not be confused with Hill 60 near Ypres.

Background

After the landing at Suvla Bay and the failed Battle of Sari Bair, General Ian Hamilton’s August offensive had stalled. The Turks held all the hills around the Suvla plain and from above could see every British trench and every beach. On 15 August temporary command of IX Corps, in place of the dismissed General Stopford, passed to General Beauvoir de Lisle, commander of the 29th Division at Helles. He found the corps disorganised and depleted, with eight of its eleven brigades having suffered heavy losses.

On 17 August Hamilton admitted for the first time, in a dispatch to Lord Kitchener, that his plan had “for the moment failed”. He reckoned that he had only 95,000 rifles against about 110,000 Turks, and asked for 95,000 men as reinforcements. For a long time there was no reply. At Anzac and Suvla the British held a front some 20,000 yards long (over 18 kilometres), and they could not defend so long a line with the forces available. Hamilton began to reckon with having to shorten the front, or even abandon the Suvla plain. The capture of the W Hills and Scimitar Hill on the south-eastern edge of the plain was meant to shield the beaches from fire and to provide a strong flank in case of such a shortening, while the capture of Hill 60 was meant to link the two bridgeheads with a secure line.

Hamilton sent de Lisle the whole 29th Division from Helles. Its 87th Brigade arrived as early as 17 August, but some of the other battalions came ashore at Suvla only during the night of 20–21 August, and one arrived when the battle was already under way. From Egypt came the 2nd Mounted Division, about 5,000 yeomanry, that is volunteer territorial cavalry, fighting on foot because the horses had been left in Egypt. The plan provided for the 11th Division to take the W Hills and the 29th Division Hill 112 and Scimitar Hill, while the yeomanry remained in reserve, ready to go into the breach. The attack was set for the afternoon, so that the attackers would have the sun behind them and the defenders would be blinded by its glare. On the Turkish side the Anafarta sector was commanded by Mustafa Kemal, who had under him five divisions and 84 guns, placed on the hills above the plain like the auditorium of a theatre above the stage.

Course

Bombardment and the attack of the 11th Division

On the afternoon of 21 August the sky clouded over and a mist rose from the plain, hiding the Turkish positions. The half-hour artillery bombardment, supported by the battleship Swiftsure, cruisers and destroyers, began at 2.30 p.m. and did the Turks little damage. Some of the Turkish batteries were not detected at all. At 3 p.m. the 11th Division moved off. On the right flank two battalions of the 34th Brigade took a section of Turkish trench above the Azmak Dere stream. In the centre the battalions of the 32nd Brigade, which had lost the officers leading them, veered too far left in the scrub and hedges and came under flanking fire from a Turkish trench at Hetman Chair. The 33rd Brigade, coming to their aid, also suffered heavy losses. By about 5 p.m. the attack of the 11th Division had collapsed, and the W Hills remained in Turkish hands.

The attack of the 29th Division

At 3.30 p.m. the 29th Division moved off. The 86th Brigade, attacking Hill 112, came under flanking fire from the direction of Hetman Chair, and Turkish shells set fire to the scrub in front of Green Hill. Fire and smoke broke up its attack, and by 4.30 p.m. none of its units had got closer than a few hundred metres to the Turkish trench. The 87th Brigade advanced on Scimitar Hill, which the British had taken without a fight as early as 8 August and abandoned the following night. The 1st Battalion, Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, burst onto the summit in a few moments, but immediately came under shrapnel and machine-gun fire from the higher Anafarta ridge and from Hill 112. The Irishmen streamed back down. A renewed attack with a battalion of the Border Regiment reached only the southern end of the summit. By about 5 p.m. the slopes of the hill were strewn with dead, and the wounded were burning in the blazing scrub.

The yeomanry charge

As planned, after 3.30 p.m. the 2nd Mounted Division moved out of reserve. Its five brigades, each nearly a thousand strong, came out from behind Lala Baba hill and crossed the open plain south of the dry Salt Lake under Turkish shrapnel fire. The men advanced in even lines, as if on parade. Because the shrapnel burst high, losses were lower than had been feared, but the Warwickshire Yeomanry lost about 60 of its 300 men. At Chocolate Hill, which they reached at about 5 p.m., a new and much harder order from de Lisle awaited them, issued at 4 p.m. on news of the 29th Division’s failure: the yeomanry was to take what the infantry had not. No one in the division knew the ground or the position of the Turks, and in an hour it would be dark.

At about 6 p.m. Lord Longford’s South Midland Brigade (2nd Mounted Brigade), shoulder to shoulder with a battalion of the South Wales Borderers, advanced on Scimitar Hill. The yeomanry took the summit for the second time that day, but flanking fire again drove the attackers back. Longford and his brigade major were killed, and their bodies were never found. The other brigades of the division got no further than Green Hill, and a night attack on the Turkish strongpoint at Hetman Chair, made blindly, brought only more losses. Among the dead was the commanding officer of the Sherwood Rangers, Sir John Milbanke, holder of the Victoria Cross.

At around midnight the commander of the 29th Division, General William Marshall, established that the line on the slopes of Scimitar Hill was worthless, because by day fire from Hill 112 and the W Hills would sweep away anyone holding on there. Before dawn on 22 August the troops were withdrawn to their starting positions, taking the wounded with them. In the morning the Turks also recaptured the only section of trench taken above the Azmak Dere.

Hill 60

On the right flank, at the junction of the Suvla and Anzac bridgeheads, at 3.30 p.m. a composite force under General Herbert Cox moved off, made up of about 3,000 British, Australian, New Zealand and Gurkha soldiers drawn from four brigades exhausted after the Battle of Sari Bair. The objective was a low, scrub-covered knoll called Hill 60. Irishmen of the Connaught Rangers took the Kabak Kuyu wells, and New Zealanders broke into part of the Turkish trench on the slope, but the Australians on the right flank were swept away by fire, and in the burning scrub the wounded again perished. On the morning of 22 August the newly arrived Australian 18th Battalion attacked the summit without grenades, with the bayonet alone, and also suffered heavy losses. Further attacks on 27–29 August, with the participation of the Australian Light Horse, took most of the Turkish trenches, but the summit of the hill itself remained in Turkish hands until the end of the campaign.

Losses

According to the British official history IX Corps lost on 21 August about 5,300 killed, wounded and missing out of the 14,300 men who took part in the attack. Cox’s force at Hill 60 lost more than 1,300 men up to 22 August, and about 1,100 more in the fighting of 27–29 August. The Turkish official history puts the losses of 21 August at about 2,600 men and admits that some of the trenches on Scimitar Hill changed hands twice. German accounts, including Liman von Sanders’s memoirs, describe the battle as very hard, with the defenders having to throw their last reserves into the fight, including cavalry.

Significance

The Battle of Scimitar Hill ended the August offensive. The British official history concluded that the task had been impossible: with numbers barely greater than the defenders’, a frontal attack was made on a naturally strong position held by a determined enemy well supplied with artillery and machine guns. Two Victoria Crosses were awarded for the fighting for Scimitar Hill. Both went to men who rescued the wounded from the burning scrub: Captain Percy Hansen for 9 August, and Private Frederick Potts of the Berkshire Yeomanry, who for 48 hours did not leave a wounded comrade and then dragged him on a shovel to the British lines.

After 21 August the front at Suvla, between Green Hill and Scimitar Hill, did not move again. The British troops, exhausted by fighting and disease, went over to the defensive, and Hamilton waited in vain for reinforcements. In December 1915 the Allies evacuated the bridgeheads at Suvla and Anzac.