One of the most famous battles in history, Gallipoli forced Churchill from office, established Turkey's iconic founder Mustafa Kemal ('Ataturk') and marked Australia's emergence as a nation in its own right. This is photograph Q13661 from the collections of the Imperial War Museum. Image: Stores awaiting destruction at Suvla Point during the evacuation. Gary Bain served in the Intelligence Corps as a very junior NCO before leaving the military to achieve great success in civilian life - rising to be Commercial Director of Transport for London. He has produced numerous books on the Great War and Gallipoli in particular. Peter Hart was the oral historian at the IWM for nearly 40 years responsible for interviewing veterans. This then is the story of how the Helles garrison escaped to fight another day. Their lives were dependent on the vagaries of the weather in the Aegean Sea in January.
A spell of bad weather in the final days might have destroyed the flimsy piers, leaving thousands trapped and helpless should the Turkish guns open up and their infantry swarm over No Man’s Land. There is much to admire in the hard work and ingenuity of the staff officers who were eventually charged with arranging the evacuation. With every day that passed the Turks moved up more guns, threatening to blast to pieces the flimsy piers, breakwaters and blockships that acted as makeshift harbours to feed and supply tens of thousands of men. The invaders found themselves caught in a nightmare scenario: they could not advance, but how was it possible to retreat from trenches overlooked by the Turks? Who would take the responsibility for the hard decisions to be taken? The soldiers? Or the vacillating politicians busy ‘passing the buck’ back home in London.
Deeds of extraordinary heroism had counted for nothing in the face of the grim, determined resistance of the Turkish Fifth Army fighting in defence of their homeland. Now in January 1916, thousands of men, were trapped in the Helles bridgehead. The expedition to wrest the Narrows from the Turks had failed, Constantinople remained an impossible dream. The evacuation of Gallipoli was a life or death gamble.
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