End of the Second Battle of Krithia

On 8 May 1915 the Second Battle of Krithia ended at Helles on the Gallipoli peninsula. For three days the troops of General Ian Hamilton had attacked in broad daylight towards the village of Krithia and the hill of Achi Baba. On the last day the weight of the fighting fell on two brigades brought over from Anzac Cove, one from New Zealand and one from Australia. Their attacks, paid for with enormous losses, became a lasting part of the memory of Australia and New Zealand.

The day before

On 7 May the attack was renewed according to the same plan and with a similar result. A fifteen-minute bombardment changed nothing. The machine-gun nests above Y Beach survived even the fire of the dreadnought Queen Elizabeth, and the British 88th Brigade was held up no more than 300 yards from its own trenches. The French, reinforced by fresh units, briefly took a Turkish trench on the spur above the Kereves Dere ravine but lost it to a counter-attack. Even so, Hamilton decided to try a third time. He still had three brigades in reserve, and delay gave the Turks time to bring up reinforcements and extend their trenches.

The Daisy Patch

On the morning of 8 May the attack was led by Colonel Francis Johnston’s New Zealand Brigade. The bombardment began at 10.15 a.m., and after it the Wellington, Auckland and Canterbury battalions passed through the British line and advanced along the spur leading towards Krithia. The New Zealanders called the open field in front of them, covered with flowering daisies, the Daisy Patch. They gained 250–300 yards, and men of the Auckland battalion pushed through the pine copse of Fir Tree Wood, but fire from unseen positions stopped the advance, and at about noon it broke down. The French did not leave their trenches that morning. Their commander, General Albert d’Amade, reported that his left wing would not go forward until the British had taken Krithia.

The Australians’ charge

Hamilton, who was watching the battle from the shore that day, would not accept defeat. At 4 p.m. he ordered the whole line to fix bayonets and advance on Krithia at 5.30 p.m. The order took by surprise the commander of the 2nd Australian Brigade, Colonel James McCay, who received it shortly after 5 p.m. His battalions first had to cover several hundred metres under artillery fire to a British trench, which the Australians called Tommies’ Trench, and then, with the cry “Come on, Australians!”, they charged across the bare spur. They gained about 500 yards before fire from both flanks pinned them down. According to the British official history, in half an hour the brigade lost more than 1,000 of the roughly 2,000 men who took part in the attack. McCay too was wounded. The New Zealanders, who went forward again in the evening, lost about 800 men that day according to New Zealand accounts.

At about 6 p.m. the French advanced, with drums and bugles sounding the charge. For a moment it seemed they had taken the spur above Kereves Dere, but the Turkish artillery forced them to retreat. They held on only to a section of the Turkish trenches, later turned into a strongpoint known as the Bouchet Redoubt. At 7 p.m. the troops were ordered to dig in where they stood.

The toll

After three days of fighting the front had moved nowhere by more than about 600 yards, or about 550 metres. According to the British official history the Allies lost about 6,500 killed, wounded and missing, nearly a third of the men who had taken part in the fighting. Turkish losses are put in some works at about 2,000 men. That same night Hamilton telegraphed Lord Kitchener that the operation had failed because the Turkish entrenchments and machine guns had proved too strong to be taken by assault, and that far more ammunition was needed to capture them. Soon afterwards he asked for reinforcements. Trench warfare began at Helles, and the next attempt to take Krithia was not made until early June.