25th April and 6th June 1915
Cape Helles is on the southwest tip of the Gallipoli peninsular. It was one of two main landing areas, the other being ANZAC Cove further up the peninsula (both shown in pink below). ANZAC was the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps.
A diversionary landing was also made at Kum Kale by the French Foreign Legion (shown in blue below).
The initial landings in all three areas were made on 25th April 1915, including 1st Battalion KOSB troops (regular army) at Y beach, Cape Helles. The 1st/5th KOSB territorials landed at V beach, Cape Helles, on 6th June 1915. Other landing beaches on Cape Helles were designated S, W and X.
Sunday 25th April: 1st KOSB landing at Y beach
The 1st KOSB landing took place at 5.30 am, initially encountering only four Turks. However, Ottoman troops amassed and attacked in the late afternoon and early the next morning, losing half of their soldiers and killing a third of British troops, including 1st KOSB’s commander Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Koe.
William Maxwell of 1st KOSB described the events shortly after the landing:
We got a terrible shelling […] We were in action for 36 hours […] We lost 17 officers and about 400 N.C.O.s and men. We had about 30,000 against 1,200 of ours, but we held the position. I happened to be very lucky. In my own section we were 14 strong, and there was only six of us at the roll call next day (Monday) – three being killed and the remainder wounded. We are now having a rest, and the General [probably Aylmer Hunter-Weston] told us to write home and tell our people that he was proud of his brother Scotsmen for the name we gained on that awful Sunday, the 25th of April, a day I shall never forget as long as we live. The Turkish casualties were about 15,000 in front of our trenches. They came within 30 yards of us, but when we charged them they fled.
E&L, [date]
Although the Ottomans were repelled, the British troops also left the area, failing to consolidate the ground that had been won.
Sunday 6th June 1915: 1st/5th KOSB landing at V Beach
The 1st/5th KOSB territorials sailed from Liverpool on 24th May 1915 on the Cunard Line’s RMS Mauretania, holder of both the eastbound and westbound transatlantic Blue Riband speed records.
The Mauretania (and Lusitania) had featured regularly in adverts in the Langholm paper for passages to North America until it was converted into military use as a troop transport vessel.
On board, the KOSB pipe band played daily. The ship berthed at the Greek island of Lemnos on 28th May and the battalion proceeded a few days later on the destroyer HMS Harpy and the passenger/cargo vessel HMS Immingham. They landed at V beach on 6th June, alongside the deliberately beached collier SS River Clyde, which acted as a quay.
The beach was in range of Turkish artillery (nicknamed ‘Asiatic Annie’) on the other side of the narrow Dardanelles strait and came under regular attack from shrapnel and high explosive shells. The new arrivals dug themselves into new trenches and were fortunate at this point to have only two wounded and one with dysentery.
< Other Western front fatalities … Trench tours, Gallipoli >