Free Made in Myrtle Street (Prequel) by B A Lightfoot Page A

edge, one land side of the Dardanelles Straits – a historic waterway that linked the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea. The Peninsula was only ten miles across at the widest point and about forty five miles long. Cape Helles lay at its southernmost tip. Much of the terrain was rocky scrubland with little water. The hills were steep-sided and were cut into deep gullies and ravines.
    Among the hills that lay along the spine of the peninsula, there were numerous peaks and valleys. The most important heights were the summits of Achi Baba, which stood at 709 feet and overlooked all of Cape Helles, and Sari Bair at 971 feet. From this peak the sea could be seen on both sides.
    At the southern point of Cape Helles, where the Aegean Sea met the Dardanelles Straits, there were, along the Western side, a number of small sandy bays. There were no such beaches on the eastern side where the hills dropped down into the Straits. To the North West there was a large flat area surrounding a salt lake.
    The whole region seemed to have little strategic importance as there were no towns and only a relatively few sleepy, insignificant settlements. Krithia in the South and Bulair in the North were the most important. Churchill’s plan, however, was to assemble a large Allied force here and sweep up the Peninsula and on to Constantinople.
    On 25 April 1915, under the command of General Sir Ian Hamilton, an Allied army of British, Anzac and French forces had started to land on the Gallipoli Peninsula. However, a naval bombardment of the area had been carried out a month before the landings took place and this had given the Turks a good warning that the area was about to become a focus of Allied attention. Under an able German General, Liman von Sanders, they had prepared a comprehensive system of defensive barriers and had land mined the beaches that they thought might be used for landings. Well-defended gun emplacements were situated in the cliffs overlooking the beaches, secure from further naval attacks.
    On the other side of the narrow Dardanelles Straits they had positioned a number of big artillery guns. The welcoming party was in place and ready for the invaders.
    These initial landings had included some Battalions of the Lancashire Fusiliers as part of the 86th Brigade. Having thought that they were going to France they had had their spirits lifted when they had discovered that their new posting was taking them to Turkey. Their boat journey through the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas had seemed idyllic to these men. Their view of the World had been restricted before that to occasional glimpses of the hills around their homes in the drab cotton mill towns of Lancashire.
    These first troops had gone ashore at 6.00am on 'W' Beach on and had fought heroically against unbelievable odds to gain a foothold on Turkish soil. But the operation had been a disaster and they had been cut down mercilessly by the Turkish defences.
    They had disembarked from HMS ‘Euryalus’ into the cutters taking them ashore but, as they touched the beach, they had been pounded by the Turkish shore batteries from the far side of the Straits. When they had jumped from the cutters to wade ashore they had found themselves entangled in thick barbed wire that was laid under the water. As the soldiers had struggled to cut through the barrier a ferocious tirade of gunfire from emplacements on the shore had torn into them.
     Within minutes, the sea had flowed red with the blood of British soldiers, gunned down as they struggled to free themselves from the clawing grip of the submerged wire barrier. Officers, standing in the water waving their men on, had been cut down by snipers.
    In the neighbouring bay, at ‘V’ Beach, the HMS ‘Clyde’, shelled by the Turkish heavy artillery, was blown apart and lay crippled on its side in the water.
    For those on ‘W’ Beach who had managed to reach the shore there had followed a desperate run across the land-mined sands and through the