Largs and Millport’s Great War

The landing of a large force of British, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, Gurkha and French soldiers on the Gallipoli Peninsula was a massive and groundbreaking effort to defeat Turkish and German forces and open the Dardanelles Straits to Allied shipping.

It was planned with the hope that it would end the participation of the Turks as allies of the Germans, expose the southern front of the Central Powers, open up the water route through Constantinople to Russia, still an active ally in the war, and bring about the end to the war. Men of the Bute Mountain Battery were there.

William Tyre recollected arriving at Mudros Harbour as battle was getting ready to commence. He recalled: “This natural harbour was crowded with shipping for a week before the Landings of Gallipoli on April 25 1915,. Of the 75,000 men, more or less packed in those vessels, were a few who were to go on to be famous - a captain of 32 was Clement Atlee who was to become Prime Minister.

“While it lasted, the Gallipoli campaign was probably the whole war to the folks at home in Largs and Millport - the apprentices who eight months earlier were daily to be seen in their streets, lads who built yachts and houses, baked their daily bread, sweated in the reek of smithies, dug gardens and drove horses, and who had so hurriedly disappeared with their panniers and guns, and in a blare of martial music on the old Marchioness of Breadalbane on 5th August for further training.

“They were in Mudros Harbour, around 40-50 members, scattered in various troopships, units of the Argyll Battery and the Ross and Cromarty Battery. They were about to engage in one of the most desperate and sanguine military enterprises in the history of war.” William stated that discipline on the Merican ship was not up to strict enforcement of Army standards, and added: “If tin plates and mugs did not require to be polished daily and if in the Merican we made our first acquaintance with lice, there were compensations; the ship’s baker seemed to be inaccurately informed of the numbers in the masses and extra loaves could be drawn by overstating our requirements.

“The Merican, along with other ships, moved off on the evening of Saturday April 24, Early on the Sunday morning sleep became difficult, then impossible, as we drew near to Cape Helles and the guns of the warships covered the landing there made a deafening cannonade. As we still sailed, the drama of war came close to us.

“The first token was when our ship picked up a few sailors from the obsolescent battleship Ocean, the most recently minded to the attacking naval force.

“Guests of a more startling appeared alongside us - most of the slowly moving troopers took on the passengers from these naval craft - men with ghastly wounds, also dead men who were buried overboard later in the day.” The Merican anchored off Cape Helles close to the battleship Queen Elizabeth with her ‘fabulous 15-inch guns’. One shell fired over the Dardenelles peninsular sunk a Turkish troopship, reported Mr Tyre.

He continued: “The first Sunday night ashore in Gallipoli was a grim experience. The battle was fluid; no defensive positions had yet been established. The Turks, defending their homeland, fought with desperate resistance; the Allies apart from being the cream of the Regular and Territorial army, that had been kept as a fractional reserve from the late 1914 holocaust in France and Belgium knew that they had to fight or be driven back and annihilated on the beaches.

“In the darkness and in the deafening and incessant rifle-fire, friend was indistinguishable from foe. It was no ordinary fighting.

“In that terrible week, the infantry were frequently down to their last round of ammunition, Undoubtedly, they would have been swept back to the beaches through lack of cartridges but for the lines of Mountain Battery ponies voluntarily (for it was no task of theirs) making the perilous and unprotected journey to various points in the front line.” William stated that Achi Baba remained defiant until the end of the campaign: “To the people at home it must have seemed like a veritable Mount Everest. About the height of Knock Hill and probably six miles from the beach, it dominated the battlefield.” Within a fortnight, trenches were dug across the peninsular and behind the trenches, according to their respective ranges. Between 4 and 12 July, the British and French staged four attacks and penetrated appropriately a mile towards Achi Baba with a total loss of 16,800 casualties. The Turkish losses were heavier.

There was a scarcity of artillery ammunition at the peninsular, and the ‘ration’ amounted to two rounds a day sometimes, but there was no dearth of shells for the mountain guns.

As the 4th Highland Brigade had a reputation for accuracy, of which the Bute Mountain Battery was part of, the mountain guns were much used in otherwise quiet spells for knocking out machine guns belonging to the enemy. In this form of ‘sport’. no one excelled better than Largs officer, Lieut A.H. Hill.

William said: “There were always sufficient shells made available for the major battles, which usually lasted from 9am till the captured ground was partially consolidated in the late afternoon. The manning of these guns were usually murderously heavy.” “It might be asked were we afraid? Not as much in a general battle. In the indescribable noise of every weapon on Cape Helles; rifles, machine-guns, mountain guns, 15 and 18 pounder field guns, 60 pounder and siege guns, supplemented by the faithful Royal Navy, you could only hope that your little gun wouldn’t be noticed. Possibly everyone felt a bit more secure in his niche.

“These useless battles for a few hundred yards’ of territory! The 400 yard advance on 12-13 July was the last major battle most of us took part in, although we soldiered next in Sulva Bay from August till the evacuation in December.” The batteries came off Cape Helles in the last week of July, and while there had been some unforgettable moments, William said that it had latterly been an ‘ordeal of terrific endurance, of forcing wracked bodies to run-up, replay and fire the obsolete weapons hour after hour in the tropical heat”.

Two Largs men were decorated for unloading a blazing ammunition wagon: Corporal Robert Rodger and Signaller Ian McLaughlan, being awarded the D.C.M and Military Medal respectively. Two left behind with gunner George Cuthbertson, killed by a sniper in the first weeks, and Gunner George McGowan, a member of a gun team which received a direct hit. It was in Salonika that another Largs gunner, Jimmy Riddell, was killed in serving his gun.

As it was realised that the major battle of 12 July that a condition of stalemate had been reached, it should have been a glorious victory with the Turks cut off, and the Turkish Army’s line of communication cut too.

“Then the incredible happened,” said William, “Supplies failed to come up, especially of water; and the men began to drift back to the beach in search of a drink, It was, of course, no job for troops without battle experience, and was unfair to then, If they had bee used to holding the line while the battle hardened veterans stormed ashore with a new landing at Sulva Bay, the story might have been different and the war shortened by two years.” Other recollections included the roles that local soldiers performed at The Gully area - a mile and a half away from Gully Beach to the firing line.

Up the Gully on the days before the great battles toiled the heavily-laden infantry, down the gully on the days after the great battles, the long line of Turkish prisoners marched.

But while Ghurkhas, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, Turkish prisoners and others might use the Gully on occasion, the Largs and Millport members of the 4th Highland seemed to have a ‘propreitory interest’ and were regularly encountered on some part of it.

“From a few yards behind the firing line, this was where Hugh McIntyre was almost constantly on telephone duty signalling back to the gun ranges and corrections, and down via the main battery position to the horse-lines where Jack Shearer arranged the ponies in proximity to the enemy’s shrapnel, the more valuable specimens being shielded behind the rocks.” Writing in 1963, William asked: “Almost half a century has passed since those tremendous months. What of the survivors? Most remain in Largs and Millport, and are on half pay although two or three of the Largs veterans still work full-time.

“As in 1914, when the Largs contingent must have numbered roughly double their Millport friends, so the proportion today is two to one of survivors - A total of 13 in Largs and seven in Millport.” Here were the survivors: Millport: Robert Frame, John Little, Donald Morrison, Ike Morrison, J,McDonald, Malcolm McInnes, and Jack Shearer. Largs: Adam Allan, John Anderson, James Cochrane, George Cruickshank, Archibald McIntyre, Hugh McIntyre, James Mackay, Hill Marshall, William Marshall, John Ramage, Robert Richmond, John C.Stewart, and William R.Tyre.