Decisive day of the Battle of Sari Bair

At dawn on 9 August 1915 the Allies tried for the third time to take the Sari Bair ridge above Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli peninsula. The main attack never took place, because the column that was to deliver it had lost its way in the gullies during the night. Only a single battalion of Gurkhas, with a handful of British soldiers, attacked. For a short while they broke onto the crest of the ridge and saw the Dardanelles below, but under fire from heavy guns, which many believed to be their own, they had to come down. The British official history later concluded that by noon that day the offensive from Anzac had already been lost.

Two days of fighting

From the start of the battle on the night of 6–7 August nothing went to plan. The columns that were to stand on the ridge before dawn were many hours late. On the morning of 7 August the charge of the Australian Light Horse at the Nek, meant to support them, ended in a massacre, and the first New Zealand attack on Chunuk Bair collapsed under the fire of the Turks holding the summit. Before dawn on 8 August, however, Lieutenant-Colonel William Malone’s Wellington Battalion occupied Chunuk Bair, which the Turks had abandoned for reasons never explained. All day the New Zealanders, with two New Army battalions, held out on the exposed slope under fire from both flanks. Malone was killed, and of the roughly 760 men of his battalion, according to New Zealand figures, 711 were killed or wounded. On the left flank General John Monash’s Australians failed to reach Hill 971 and lost more than 650 men.

Only Major Cecil Allanson’s 1/6th Gurkha Battalion, with a small detachment of the 6th South Lancashire, climbed on 8 August onto the slope of Hill Q, a neighbouring summit of the ridge, and dug in about 30 metres below the crest. Meanwhile the Turks were bringing up reinforcements from all over the peninsula. On the evening of 8 August General Otto Liman von Sanders gave Colonel Mustafa Kemal command of the Anafarta group, the force that was to counter-attack at Suvla. Soon Kemal commanded the whole front from Battleship Hill, next to Chunuk Bair, to Suvla Bay.

The lost column

General Alexander Godley, commander of the New Zealand and Australian Division, planned a third attack for 9 August. At 4.30 a.m. every ship and gun that could reach the ridge was to bombard it, and at 5.15 a.m. all units were to attack together: in the centre four fresh New Army battalions under General Anthony Baldwin, on their right the New Zealanders from Chunuk Bair, and on their left the Gurkhas and the battalions of the 39th Brigade under General Herbert Cox. The neighbouring units were to wait until Baldwin’s men came into line. Baldwin’s column set off after dark up the Chailak Dere gully, choked with wounded and mules. The guides leading it lost their way; after midnight the column came up against a cliff and had to turn back. At dawn its battalions were still strung out in a long file in the Aghyl Dere valley. When, at about 6 a.m., they reached the smallholding known as the Farm, on a ledge below the summit, the Turks had already manned the ridge. Under machine-gun fire the attack stalled.

Gurkhas on the summit

Allanson had received no order other than to join the general attack at 5.15 a.m. Seeing no sign of Baldwin anywhere, when the bombardment stopped he led the Gurkhas and the South Lancashire men uphill. They reached the ridge without loss, according to the Australian official history at the saddle between Chunuk Bair and Hill Q. The Turks, who were returning to their positions after the bombardment, were driven with the bayonet down the far slope. Allanson later recalled that from there he could see the Narrows and the roads behind the Turkish army. It was the only moment of the campaign when Allied soldiers stood on the summit of Sari Bair and looked down at the strait whose capture was the aim of the whole expedition.

A moment later several heavy shells fell on the summit. The soldiers, convinced that the fire came from their own ships or guns, withdrew, and the Turks running up occupied the ridge again. The origin of those shells remains unclear. According to the British official history, the navy and the land artillery maintained that the Turks had fired them, while the Australian official historian Charles Bean believed they were Allied shells. Allanson was wounded, and the last British officer remaining with the battalion, Lieutenant Le Marchand, was killed. The Gurkhas returned to their trenches below the crest and held on in them all day. Their losses exceeded 200 men.

The end of hope

On the right flank the New Zealanders at Chunuk Bair fought off Turkish bomb attacks all morning. On the left flank, at dawn, the Turkish 7th Division struck at the Damakjelik spur, part of Kemal’s great counter-attack against the British who had landed at Suvla Bay three days earlier. The Australians and the 4th South Wales Borderers threw it back, but the Welsh battalion’s commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Franklin Gillespie, was killed. At Suvla the same counter-attack halted IX Corps’ advance on the Tekke Tepe hills.

At about 9.30 a.m. Godley ordered operations to stop. At noon General Ian Hamilton came by sea from Suvla to confer with General William Birdwood. He found the mood there much more cheerful than at IX Corps headquarters and offered Birdwood his last reserve, the 54th Division. Birdwood refused, because he could not provide water and food even for the men he already had. The New Zealanders at Chunuk Bair had been fighting for three days with almost no sleep, food or water. The Auckland Battalion had lost 12 officers and 308 men, the Otago Battalion 17 officers and 300 men. After dark they were relieved by two New Army battalions, the 6th Loyal North Lancashire and part of the 5th Wiltshire, which manned the captured trenches on the slope. Meanwhile, on the other side of the ridge, Kemal, who had reconnoitred the ground in person, was preparing another counter-attack for dawn.