Start of the fighting for Gully Ravine

At 11 a.m. on 28 June 1915 British infantry went into the attack on the western flank of the Helles front on the Gallipoli peninsula. The objectives were the Turkish trenches on both sides of Gully Ravine, a deep gully running along the Aegean coast: on Gully Spur between the ravine and the sea, and on Fir Tree Spur on the other side of the gully. It was the second of a series of limited attacks with which the commanders at Helles hoped to approach Krithia step by step, after the third attack on the village on 4 June had gained only a few hundred metres of ground.

The lesson of 4 June

On that day the attack across the whole width of the front had collapsed, because the British howitzers and high-explosive shells were sufficient for only a few sectors. This time the British General Aylmer Hunter-Weston and the French commander, General Henri Gouraud, decided to attack in turn on narrow sectors, concentrating the fire of almost all the artillery on each. On 21 June the French had taken the Haricot Redoubt above the Kereves Dere ravine on the right flank in this way. Now it was the turn of the left. The attack was commanded by General Henry de Lisle, commander of the 29th Division. Besides his division he had the 29th Indian Brigade and the Scottish 156th Brigade of the 52nd (Lowland) Division, which had only just arrived on the peninsula and had not yet been in action. It was agreed to use almost a third of the ammunition stock at Helles for this operation, and French heavy howitzers were to support the British.

Success by the sea

On a hot, windless morning the bombardment began at 9 a.m. At 10.45 a.m. a battalion of the Border Regiment took the Boomerang Redoubt on the edge of the ravine in a swift attack, capturing a hundred prisoners. A quarter of an hour later the rest went forward. On Gully Spur the bombardment was so powerful that the first two lines of Turkish trenches were reduced to rubble and their defenders were dead or wounded. The 87th Brigade occupied them without difficulty. Behind it the 2nd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, took two further lines by noon, and the Gurkhas, advancing along the coastal cliffs, seized a headland above the sea, later named Fusilier Bluff. Five lines of Turkish trenches on Gully Spur passed into British hands.

Defeat on Fir Tree Spur

East of the ravine the situation was entirely different. Almost all the artillery had been directed at Gully Spur, and the trenches on Fir Tree Spur were fired on by only a few batteries of field guns, with shrapnel that could not destroy deep trenches. Two battalions of the Royal Scots took a Turkish trench at the cost of almost all their officers. Next to them the 1/8th Battalion, Scottish Rifles, fired on from the front and from an undetected machine-gun nest, lost, according to the British official history, 25 of its 26 officers and more than 400 men in less than five minutes. The brigade commander, General William Scott-Moncrieff, led the last reserves into the attack and was killed. That day the brigade lost nearly half its men.

In the afternoon the Turks counter-attacked the captured trenches on Gully Spur. They had more and better grenades than the British, who were still using home-made bombs, and drove them out of the eastern ends of the two furthest trenches. Gurkhas and Irishmen of the Royal Munster Fusiliers retook them in the evening, but after dark the Turks recovered part of them again. According to first estimates, the British lost about 2,000 men that day, and in reality more. General Otto Liman von Sanders ordered the lost trenches to be recovered and brought reinforcements south. For the following week the Turks counter-attacked, suffering enormous losses.