Evacuation of Gallipoli

The evacuation of Gallipoli brought to an end the Gallipoli campaign, the Entente’s most ambitious undertaking outside the Western Front. At the end of November 1915 more than 130,000 British, Australian, New Zealand, Indian and French soldiers held three bridgeheads on the Gallipoli peninsula. In many places they were only a dozen or so metres from the Turks, and the beaches from which they were to embark lay within range of the Turkish artillery. The commanders feared that a withdrawal would cost tens of thousands killed, wounded and captured. Instead, in two stages – on the nights of 18/19 and 19/20 December from Suvla and Anzac, and on the night of 8/9 January 1916 from Helles – the Allies took off their last units in such a way that the Turks realised it only after the event. The retreat that was expected to be a catastrophe proved to be the best-executed operation of the whole campaign.

Name and dates

The evacuation lasted several weeks and was divided into stages. The preliminary stage, the removal of surplus stores, the sick and some units, began as early as the end of November, but it was halted on 1 December because the government in London was still hesitating. After the Cabinet’s decision of 7 December, which reached General William Birdwood on 8 December, the intermediate stage began: the gradual reduction of the garrisons of Suvla and Anzac. The British official history of the land campaign counts the troops withdrawn from 8 December, and the official history of naval operations from the night of 10/11 December. The final stage, in which only the trench garrisons remained ashore, fell on the nights of 18/19 and 19/20 December. The British chronology of the war records the start of the evacuation of Suvla and Anzac under 19 December and its completion under 20 December. Cape Helles was to be held for the time being. The order to evacuate it came on 28 December, and the last soldiers left in the early hours of 9 January 1916.

On this page we use the dates 18 December 1915 – 9 January 1916, from the first night of the final stage at Suvla and Anzac to the departure of the last boats from Helles. The earlier weeks of preparation are described in the sections on the background and the plan.

Background

General Charles Monro, who took command at the end of October, recommended to the government as early as 31 October that the peninsula be evacuated. He estimated that the withdrawal might cost 30–40 per cent of the men and equipment. Lord Herbert Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, was opposed, but after his visit to the Dardanelles he himself recommended on 22 November the withdrawal of the troops from Suvla and Anzac, keeping the Helles bridgehead for the time being. Monro became Commander-in-Chief in the Eastern Mediterranean, and Birdwood commander of the Dardanelles Army, which was entrusted with carrying out the evacuation.

On 23 November the War Committee came out in favour of evacuating the whole peninsula, but the Cabinet could not make up its mind. Lord George Curzon argued in a lengthy memorandum that a withdrawal would shake British prestige in the East, while the fleet’s commander in the absence of Admiral John de Robeck, Vice-Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss, together with Commodore Roger Keyes, was still proposing that the fleet make one more attempt to force the Straits. At the beginning of December Kitchener wavered again. After the failure at Ctesiphon he believed the Turks must not be allowed a second victory, and he asked whether four divisions from Salonika could still be used for an attack at Suvla. Monro, as well as Birdwood and General Julian Byng, commander of IX Corps at Suvla, advised against such an attempt at that time of year.

Meanwhile winter made itself felt. From 26 November a downpour raged over the peninsula for three days, followed by a blizzard and frost. At Suvla alone more than 5,000 cases of frostbite were recorded, and more than 200 soldiers drowned in flooded trenches or froze to death. The storms destroyed piers and many of the small craft without which an evacuation was impossible. On 7 December the Cabinet finally decided to evacuate Suvla and Anzac and to keep Helles for the time being. The telegram was enciphered in a new cipher known only to Monro, who had just sailed for Salonika. The War Office had to repeat it in the old cipher, and Birdwood learnt of the decision only the following day.

Plan and preparations

According to the British official history, at the end of November there were almost 135,000 men, almost 15,000 horses and mules and almost 400 guns on the peninsula. Leaving Helles until later turned out to be fortunate. After the losses in small craft, the navy could at best have evacuated all three bridgeheads at once in three nights, with no reserve, while Birdwood and the corps commanders considered that the final stage must not last longer than two nights. The navy could take off at most 10,000 men from each bridgehead in a single night, so no more than 20,000 soldiers each were to be left at Suvla and at Anzac for the final stage.

The most important thing was that the Turks should notice nothing. The plan of the ANZAC Corps, drawn up by its chief of staff, General Cyril Brudenell White, under the direction of General Alexander Godley, assumed that the front-line trenches would be manned to the last moment, because from Russell’s Top the Turks would have had only a few hundred metres to the beaches. As early as 24 November Godley ordered firing to cease for three days. The Turks, alarmed by the silence, approached the trenches and came under fire. In this way they learnt that silence did not mean the trenches had been abandoned. On the bridgeheads every effort was made to keep up a normal appearance. Ships came in only at night and were gone before dawn, campfires burned in the camps, hospital tents stayed in their places, and reinforcements returning to their units landed by day so that the Turks could see troops arriving.

In ideal weather the intermediate stage went ahead without a hitch. The date of the final stage depended on the repair of the breakwater on Imbros, where the landing lighters had to shelter in case of a gale. The nights of 19 and 20 December were fixed at first, but Birdwood did not want to prolong the risk by even an hour, and the final stage was brought forward by a day. A brand-new collier was used for the breakwater, scuttled on the morning of 18 December so skilfully that a few days later she was raised undamaged. That morning about 40,000 soldiers and 50 guns remained on the two bridgeheads.

Many tricks were prepared for the final hours. The simplest device was invented by Lance Corporal William Scurry of the Australian 7th Battalion. A tin was tied to the trigger of a rifle, and above it stood a second tin, filled with water and with a small hole in it. When the lower tin had filled with water, its weight pulled the trigger and the rifle fired, usually after about twenty minutes. Other rifles and grenades were set off by fuses or by candles and string. The floors of the trenches were broken up with picks, boots were wrapped in sacking or socks, piers were laid with sacks, and the way to the beaches was marked with lines of flour or salt and with shaded candles in biscuit tins.

Course: Suvla and Anzac

On the first night, 18/19 December, about 10,000 men were taken off each bridgehead according to plan, without a single casualty. The next day, Sunday 19 December, the units still ashore kept up a show of ordinary activity, and at Helles General Francis Davies carried out two small attacks which diverted the Turks’ attention.

On the last night at Anzac the “A” parties left the line first, then the “B” parties, and finally the volunteers of the “C” parties, about 10,000 men in all. From 1.30 a.m. the trenches were abandoned in turn, from the flanks towards the centre. At 3.14 a.m. the last soldiers left Russell’s Top opposite the Nek, and at 3.30 a.m. the engineers blew mines under the Turkish trenches there. Charles Bean’s Australian official history states that the explosions killed about 70 Turks. The last lighter left Anzac at about four o’clock, and Colonel John Paton, the commander of the rearguard, pushed off from the shore at 4.10 a.m. At Suvla the front line was abandoned at 1.30 a.m. General Frederick Stanley Maude left the southern flank at about four o’clock, and the last soldiers from the northern flank, near Suvla Point, after five, in the glare of the burning dumps.

The Turks went on shelling the empty trenches for a long time. Only after dawn on 20 December, when they saw the burning dumps and heard the silence, did they begin cautiously to approach the shore, while British cruisers shelled the remaining stores. Sixteen hours after the last boat had left, a violent gale blew up. Had it come a day earlier, the evacuation might have ended in disaster.

Course: Helles

After the withdrawal from Suvla and Anzac, General Davies’s British VIII Corps and part of the French forces remained at Cape Helles. Between 12 and 22 December the French Senegalese infantry left, and the exhausted 29th Division returned to take its place. Monro and Birdwood, as well as Wemyss and Keyes, considered that holding Helles alone made no sense, because the Turks would be able to concentrate all their artillery there. On 23 December General William Robertson, a supporter of evacuation, became Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and on 24 December he authorised Monro to make preparations. On Christmas Day Birdwood agreed with Davies and with the French commander, General Brulard, that the French guns would remain under British orders until the end. On 28 December the telegram arrived: the government had agreed to the evacuation of Helles.

This time the Turks were alert. General Otto Liman von Sanders, the German commander of the Ottoman Fifth Army, was determined not to be caught out a second time. Immediately after Suvla was abandoned he moved his best batteries south, and on 7 January, after a bombardment lasting several hours and the firing of two mines, he ordered the 12th Division to attack on Gully Spur. The fire of the defenders and of the warships was so accurate that most of the Turkish soldiers did not leave their trenches, and the few attacks that were made were repulsed. The British lost 164 men, but the Turks became convinced that there was no question of an evacuation.

On the evening of 8 January fewer than 17,000 soldiers remained ashore. Davies at first wanted to spread the final stage over two nights, but beside the sunken collier and the old French warships that served as breakwaters at V Beach the navy had built piers from which the soldiers could step straight on board destroyers. This made it possible to take everyone off in a single night. At about 7 p.m. a wind got up, and by nine it was blowing at more than 50 km/h. Lighters were smashing the improvised pontoon bridge, but the sailors managed to take off both the soldiers and 37 guns. The trenches were abandoned at a quarter to midnight. The last party of General Maude’s 13th Division could not embark at Gully Beach because its lighter had run aground, and 160 soldiers marched three kilometres by night to W Beach. According to the British official history, the last boat pushed off at 3.45 a.m., while the history of naval operations states that the last destroyers left before five. At that moment the main ammunition dump blew up. The Turks fired hundreds of red rockets and began shelling the empty beaches.

Losses and abandoned equipment

From 8 December, 83,048 soldiers, 186 guns, almost 2,000 vehicles and 4,695 horses and mules were taken off from Suvla and Anzac. On the last night two men were wounded at Anzac, and at Suvla there were no casualties at all. The history of naval operations mentions a few wounded in the whole operation. At Anzac nine destroyed, mostly worn-out guns were abandoned, along with 20 mules, 50 donkeys, a burning dump of 200,000 rations, and five million rounds of ammunition, which were sunk in the sea. All guns, vehicles and animals were taken off from Suvla.

From 28 December more than 35,000 men, 127 guns, over 3,600 animals and 328 vehicles were taken off from Helles. It was necessary to shoot 508 mules and to abandon 1,590 vehicles as well as fifteen British and six old French guns, all of them blown up. The British official history states that the evacuation of Helles was carried out without the loss of a single life. The history of naval operations notes, however, that debris from a prematurely exploded ammunition dump killed one sailor. Meanwhile, beds for 30,000 wounded had been prepared in hospitals in the Mediterranean.

Significance

The evacuation ended the campaign, under way since April 1915, that was meant to open the Straits, take Constantinople and link Russia with her Western allies. From the landing of 25 April through the August offensive and the landing at Suvla Bay, the Allies had failed to break the Ottoman defence. The Ottoman Empire won one of the greatest victories of its last war, and it could now send the divisions from Gallipoli to other fronts.

The withdrawal itself, however, was a great tactical success. Liman von Sanders admitted that the Turks had not known of the intention to evacuate “until the last moment”. The military correspondent of the Berlin Vossische Zeitung wrote that, “as long as wars are waged”, the evacuation of Suvla and Anzac “will stand before the eyes of all strategists as a hitherto unequalled masterpiece”. The British official history attributes this success to good planning, cooperation between the army and the navy and the discipline of the soldiers, but above all to extraordinary luck with the weather. The withdrawn units went first to Egypt, and in 1916 many of them, including the Australian and New Zealand divisions, were already fighting in France.