Landing at Suvla Bay

On the evening of 6 August 1915 General Frederick Stopford’s British IX Corps began going ashore at Suvla Bay on the west coast of the Gallipoli peninsula, a few kilometres north of Anzac Cove. It was a new landing, the first since the April landing, and part of the great August offensive with which General Ian Hamilton hoped to decide the campaign. That same evening the Australians stormed the Turkish trenches at Lone Pine, and assault columns from Anzac Cove set off by night for the Sari Bair ridge.

Plan

For the offensive Hamilton received five new divisions, including three New Army divisions made up of volunteers enlisted from August 1914. At Suvla Bay a supply base was to be created for the troops in the north of the peninsula. IX Corps was to seize the hills surrounding the Suvla plain and the dried-up Salt Lake, above all Chocolate Hill and the W Hills, from which Turkish artillery could shell the rear of the troops attacking Sari Bair, and then to help in the attack on that ridge. General Frederick Hammersley’s 11th Division was assigned to the first night, and from the morning it was to be joined by battalions of the Irish 10th Division.

The plan was surrounded by deep secrecy. Stopford learnt of it only on 22 July, and most of the soldiers found out where they were going just before sailing. To mislead the Turks, the troops were issued with maps of the Asian coast. The Turks knew of the concentration of troops on the islands, but not the place of the landing. Strong reserves stood at Bulair at the neck of the peninsula and on the Asian shore of the Dardanelles, while the Suvla area was guarded only by the detachment of the Bavarian Major Wilhelm Willmer, made up of three battalions, about 1,500 men, without machine guns.

The night of the landing

The flotilla left harbour on the island of Imbros after dark. The first wave carried more than 10,000 soldiers on ten destroyers, each towing a new motor landing lighter, which the soldiers called a “beetle”. Just after 9.30 p.m. the destroyers with the 32nd and 33rd Brigades approached in the darkness the beach south of Nibrunesi Point. The lighters grounded on dry sand, and by 10 p.m. four battalions stood on the shore. The beach was undefended, and hardly a shot was fired from the land.

The first fight took place for the small hillock of Lala Baba, from which Turkish outposts watched the beach. Two companies of the 6th Battalion, Yorkshire Regiment, whose men had been on their feet for seventeen hours, went for it with the bayonet. They took the summit, but lost almost all their officers and at least a third of their men. The British official history stresses that this was the first attack by a New Army unit in the war.

In the bay itself the landing of the 34th Brigade quickly turned into chaos. The navy had warned from the start that the waters of the bay were poorly charted. At about 10.30 p.m. the destroyers anchored in the darkness almost a thousand yards (about 900 metres) too far south. Two of the three lighters grounded on a reef, and the soldiers had to wade ashore up to their necks in water, under the fire of Turkish riflemen. Only one battalion, the 11th Battalion, Manchester Regiment, set off as planned along the shore and towards morning climbed the Kiretch Tepe ridge on the north side of the bay. The rest of the brigade spent a long time searching in the darkness for the small Hill 10, which nobody could point out.

Stopford spent the night aboard the sloop Jonquil, anchored in the bay. Only scattered shots could be heard from the shore, so the staff concluded that the landing had been unopposed and went to bed. At his headquarters on Imbros Hamilton received no news for several hours. At about 2 a.m. a telegraphist at Suvla passed on only a private message to a colleague: “Some shelling at A, now stopped. B quiet.”

What came next

At dawn on 7 August 13 battalions stood on the shore, and more were entering the bay. The Turkish commander reported to Liman von Sanders that he had withdrawn his outposts and urgently needed reinforcements. The surprise was complete, and the nearest Turkish reserves were at least a day and a half’s march from Suvla. IX Corps, however, did not make use of this time. For the next two days it hardly moved from the beaches, and when on the morning of 9 August it advanced on the surrounding hills, the Turkish divisions from Bulair were already there.