Indian troops leave the Dardanelles

The British chronology of the war records under 31 December 1915 that the last units of Indian Expeditionary Force G left the Dardanelles to join Indian Expeditionary Force E in Egypt. Force G was the name of the Indian troops sent to Gallipoli, whose first units had sailed from Egypt at the beginning of April. The designation “E” had covered all Indian troops in Egypt since the autumn of 1914. After eight months on the peninsula the Indians were thus returning to where they had come from: the Suez Canal.

The core of the force was General Herbert Vaughan Cox’s 29th Indian Brigade, the only Indian infantry brigade to fight at Gallipoli. In December it consisted of the 14th Ferozepore Sikhs and the Gurkha battalions 1/5th, 1/6th and 2/10th, and from October also the 1/4th. From May to July the brigade fought at Cape Helles, among other actions in the Battle of Gully Ravine. In August it moved to Anzac, where in the Battle of Sari Bair Major Cecil Allanson’s 1/6th Gurkhas forced their way onto the ridge from which the Straits could be seen, though they soon had to come down. The brigade then fought for Hill 60 and held the left flank of Anzac, at the junction with the troops from Suvla, until the end. The force also included two batteries of the 7th Indian Mountain Artillery Brigade, which had been on the peninsula from the first day, Indian field hospitals and mule transport columns.

The Indians left Anzac together with the Australians and New Zealanders, in the last nights of the evacuation. Throughout the intermediate stage the mules of the Indian columns and batteries carried ammunition and equipment down to the beaches by night. One officer, whose notes are quoted in the Australian official history, described on 15 December the mules of the 21st Mountain Battery, which went along a communication trench with heavy packs so quietly that from 200 metres it was impossible to tell whether they were loaded, or even whether they were animals or men. The Turks had seen night transports for months, so they suspected nothing. According to the same history, at 1.30 a.m. on the night of 19–20 December the last detachment of the brigade packed up its telephones and left the sector from Susak Kuyu to Hill 60. The 1/4th Gurkhas left together with the neighbouring units of IX Corps, while the 1/5th and 1/6th made for the piers that New Zealand engineers had put up after dark at the mouth of the Asmak Dere stream.

The evacuated troops went first to the islands, Imbros and Lemnos, from where they moved on. The chronology does not say exactly which units of Force G sailed on 31 December, and the available studies give no details of the voyage. It is known that the 1/4th Gurkhas were transferred to another brigade in December, and on 7 January 1916 the 29th Brigade was incorporated into the re-formed 10th Indian Division, which was defending the Suez Canal. In the following months most of its Gallipoli battalions were dispatched to other theatres and back to India.

The record of the Indian part in the campaign long remained in the shadows. The Australian historian Peter Stanley calculated that in all some 16,000 soldiers and followers from India passed through Force G, and that about 1,600 of them were killed. Other estimates, limited to the 29th Brigade alone, speak of nearly 1,400 killed and over 3,400 wounded. The 14th Sikhs alone lost at Gallipoli, according to one study, 264 killed and 840 wounded, about one and a half times the establishment strength of a battalion.