The Battle of ANZAC Ridge

THE BATTLE OF ANZAC RIDGE: An Anzac Victory 25 April 1915.

Peter Williams

Australian Military History Publications, 2007.  221pp.

Peter Williams presents a re-interpretation of the events on the first ANZAC Day.  In many ways this re-interpretation rings true, but Williams might, perhaps, have paid a little more heed to the quote from Sir Ian Hamilton that he places at the start of Chapter 1:

On the actual day of battle naked truths may be picked up for the asking: by the following morning, they have already begun to put on their uniforms.

At this remove it is probable that the most interesting of the previously naked truths have well and truly got their greatcoats on, and while Williams gives us tantalising glimpses of what might lie beneath, it is difficult to be certain that all of the truths have been exposed (and whether all that has been exposed was once naked on the battlefield).

Turning first to what seems to have been well uncovered, Williams disposes quickly of the issue of the incorrect landing place.  He dismisses the suggestion that an (unrecorded) last minute agreement between Birdwood and Admiral Thursby, commanding the naval force at ANZAC, deliberately changed the intended location, and accepts Tom Frame’s argument that an offshore current was not the cause of the error.  Williams places the blame on an error in navigation aboard HMS Triumph, possibly of as little as 100 metres (less than a ship’s length).  Such a distance might be considered large by today’s standards of satellite navigation, but would have been insignificant by the standards of the day.  Williams reminds readers that the history of amphibious landings during the Second World War is also replete with errors in landing sites, even when the landings took place in daylight.

Williams also clarifies the intent of the landing, showing how grandiose rhetoric about crossing the Peninsula to Mal Tepe was toned down successively in orders at each level of command, to become a plan to draw the Ottoman reserve onto the ANZAC around Sari Bair and Third Ridges.  This was essentially a diversion, to attract the Ottoman reserve against the ANZAC, and so allow the British 29th Division to land at Cape Helles, advance to the Kilid Bahr Plateau, take the Ottoman forts from the rear, and clear the way for the Royal Navy to pass through the Dardanelles. 

Williams thus sees Mustafa Kemal’s decision to commit the Ottoman reserve against the ANZAC as an error, falling into the trap set by the Allies.  If, however, the Ottomans had ignored the ANZAC landing and sent their reserve south against the main landing at Helles, then the ANZAC could have advanced across the Peninsula, to cut the Ottoman force off and obtain the desired effect indirectly.  Although attracting the Ottoman reserve against the ANZAC was the intention behind the Ari Burnu landing, Kemal’s decision ultimately did not have fatal consequences for the Ottoman cause, as the 29th Division failed in its endeavours while the commitment of the Ottoman reserve against the ANZAC prevented an advance across the Peninsula.

Williams shows clearly that while the available intelligence was not perfect, it was adequate to identify the principal forces likely to oppose the ANZAC.  One error, the incorrect identification of a two-regiment sized camp south east of Gaba Tepe, probably contributed to Sinclair-MacLagan’s decisions to divert the 2nd Brigade to the southern flank of the landing, and to halt the advance on the Second Ridge (called ANZAC Ridge by the soldiers of the time, and by Williams) rather than the Third (or Gun) Ridge. 

The halt provided time for the ANZAC to prepare, at least a bit, for the first counter attack in the morning, and particularly for the second, late in the afternoon.  However, diverting the 2nd Brigade weakened the left flank, where the failure to capture Battleship Hill, or to hold positions further inland than the Nek after the loss of Baby 700, caused difficulties during the entire campaign.  To this extent, Sinclair-MacLagan’s decision was, if not fatal, certainly severely damaging to ANZAC hopes and intentions.

The maps used are also shown to be adequate by the standards of the time, although major difficulties were caused when it was found that the Razor Edge was impassable, preventing access from Plugge’s Plateau to Russell’s Top.  The broken country of the Ari Burnu area was considered by Birdwood to give the untrained ANZAC troops better opportunities for defence than the more open terrain of Helles, across which it was hoped that the 29th Division, with its eleven battalions of regular troops and one of Royal Scots Territorials could advance. 

Williams (probably correctly) focuses on the defensive phase of the first day as the critical period, after a successful landing had been made.  Once the Ottoman reserve was committed to a counter attack against the ANZAC, it could not be disentangled in time to intervene at Helles on the first day.  Another important point made by Williams relates to the quality of the opposing sides.  The ANZAC was a recently recruited force, with limited training.  Their Ottoman opponents were regular formations in an army with recent battle experience in the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. 

However, while the Anatolian regiments were reliable, those from other parts of the Ottoman Empire were less so, though Anatolian soldiers were perhaps too quick to criticise Arab regiments, some of which performed well.  Overall, Williams considers that seven of the Ottoman battalions fighting near Ari Burnu were superior to the ANZAC infantry, while six others (in two Arab regiments) were not.  This superiority, combined with the Ottoman advantage in artillery, proved sufficient to deny the ANZAC success, but was not sufficient to drive it back into the sea, although Williams considers that it should have been.

Williams discusses in detail the bombardment of the ANZAC position by the Ottoman artillery.  He confirms that more Ottoman artillery pieces were involved, around 44, not the figure of 24 usually accepted, and that ammunition expenditure, compared to the duration of the bombardment and the length of front, was of similar intensity as during attacks on the Western Front at around the same period.  Williams exposes starkly the partial collapse of morale in the ANZAC under this bombardment, suggesting that as many as 2000 men might have ‘straggled’ from the firing line back to the beach and nearby gullies. 

After allowing for battle casualties and the stragglers, as few as 6000 rifles might have been available to hold a front of some six kilometres against the main Ottoman counter attack by some 8500 men supported by around 40 artillery pieces (four having been put out of action by then).  Of the 6000 available to the ANZAC, only about 1000 were on the Sari Bair Ridge and north to the Fisherman’s Hut, while some 5000 held the southern part of the front, along ANZAC and Bolton’s Ridges.  Williams considers that only about 3000 of the ANZAC engaged the counter attackers.  On the left, the ANZAC forces were driven back across the Nek, while on the right Ottoman forces recaptured part of the eastern side of 400 Plateau (Johnston’s Jolly and Lone Pine).

Williams puts some effort into estimating the ANZAC casualties on 25 April, and concludes that they were at least 5000 (about 1200 dead), substantially above the figure of around 2000 used in the British and Australian Official Histories, and about a third of those landed that day.  This is close to the losses of the 5th Division at Fromelles (also in a single day), but was from a larger force engaged, and not all were Australians.  Despite this level of loss, and the failure of some soldiers during the Ottoman bombardment, the ANZAC remained in action and held a line against the second counter attack.

Williams devotes a chapter to a brief description of operations at Cape Helles on 25 April.  There, the landings took place after dawn, to allow a naval bombardment and clear identification of the landing beaches.  In contrast, naval bombardment was likely to be less effective (for terrain reasons) at Ari Burnu, while Birdwood thought that the cover of darkness was more important for his untrained troops.  A similar intelligence error as at Ari Burnu inflated a camp near Krithia to regimental size.  This might have caused some hesitation about advancing too far inland before this (actually much smaller) reserve was committed.  If so, the results were not as fortunate at Helles as at Ari Burnu.

British opportunities at Helles were increased by an Ottoman error when Halil Sami, commanding the Ottoman 9th Division, committed two battalions against the isolated bridgehead at Y Beach, leaving only three battalions available to oppose the remainder of the 29th Division.  However, the advantage gained was not taken at other Helles beaches, particularly W and X Beaches.  Williams considers that by about 1330 there were only some 1000 Ottoman defenders in front of W and X beaches, opposed by seven British battalions, only one of which had suffered very heavy casualties.  However, no general advance was attempted.

As well, Williams notes that in response to a request from Hamilton for an appreciation of the task before the attack, Hunter-Weston (GOC of the 29th Division) had stated that there was ‘not … a reasonable chance of success’.  This assessment may have weighed on his mind that day, leading him to take a cautious approach.  Hunter-Weston did not land on 25 April, and all three of the brigade commanders in the 29th Division, who did, were wounded, probably causing some command hesitation.

Williams considers that the failure to make a general advance at Helles was the worst decision taken that day, costing the Allies the campaign.  He notes that of 16 Ottoman battalions that fought on 25 April, three quarters fought against the ANZAC and only four against the 29th Division, while 44 artillery pieces were used at Ari Burnu, but only 12 engaged the British.  This may be so, and the picture of gallant Anzacs engaging the enemy while the British waited on the beaches at Helles may be correct.  However, it seems to this reviewer to be too close for comfort to the popular Australian image of the August operations at Suvla Bay.  What really caused the failure at Helles might be one of those truths no longer naked, and now well hidden under a greatcoat.  The best that can probably be said is the Scottish verdict of ‘Not Proven’.

There are a few problems with the presentation.  It is particularly annoying that Kum Tepe, mentioned frequently in the text, does not appear on any map, and its location can only be deduced after careful reading of the text (or, more simply, by referring to Bean’s Volume I).  There are some anomalies in the text.  Harold Elliott, mentioned on page 116, is better known by his nickname Pompey; Henry Bennett, also mentioned on that page, is better known by his middle name, Gordon; while Colonel J. Hobbs, mentioned on page 124, normally used the name Talbot, and is better known as such.

Overall, this is an interesting book, which proposes a thought-provoking thesis, albeit some doubt must remain as to the validity of that thesis.  Well worth reading, but you should read more than this about the first day of the Gallipoli campaign.

JOHN DONOVAN