Gallipoli

Sharpshooters on Chocolate Hill, Gallipoli August 1915

Suvla Bay

The Sharpshooters’ Gallipoli campaign took place at Suvla Bay, to the north of the ANZAC positions on the western coast of Gallipoli. The attack on Suvla Bay was intended to break the stalemate at the Cape Helles end of the peninsula, and the Sharpshooters landed on 16 August 2015 two weeks after the first attack. Five days later they took part in the unsuccessful attack on Scimitar Hill, the last major assault by the British at Gallipoli.

Despite being in the third line of the assault, the regiment still suffered over 40 killed, wounded and missing. Colonel Weston Jarvis, the 3CLY Commanding Officer, leading from the front as always, records in his diary “luckily only got one through the toe of my boot without touching my foot and got a smack on the ankle from a spent bullet.”

Although the Suvla bay landscape was flat in the area of the beaches, the Ottomans controlled the heights further inland,  and the Allied invaders were unable to break through.