The Landing
The Australians and New Zealanders landed by small boats at dawn on the Gallipoli Peninsula on 25 April 1915 at Ari Burnu, which was soon renamed Anzac Cove after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. The landing was part of a plan for an allied occupation of the Turkish capital Constantinople, Turkey having sided with Germany at the outset of war. The British commander Lt General Sir William Birdwood, who led the Anzacs throughout most of the First World War, directed the Anzac landing. A failure to understand the currents meant the troops disembarked 1.5 km north of the intended landing point at Gaba Tepe and on a more rugged part of the coast than was intended. The troops were faced with precipitous cliffs rising from a narrow strip of beach. Turkish forces were strategically placed to fire down on the disembarking men.
Anzac forces made some progress up the steep and difficult terrain, but their position was hopelessly compromised. Their initial attempts to take the high country were successfully repelled as the Turkish commander Mustafa Kemal Bey sent more troops into the battle and pushed the Anzacs back towards the sea. Lt General Sir William Birdwood, commander of the Anzacs, recommended evacuation on the first night. Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, rejected the recommendation. The Anzac troops remained precariously stationed on the narrow exposed beach and lower reaches of the steep coastline. Writing subsequently of Anzac beach, Bean said in his book Anzac to Amiens (Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1946, p. 135, NLA N 940.394 BEA), 'that strongly marked and definite entity, the Anzac tradition, had, from the first morning, been partly created here'.




![Beach scene [at Anzac Beach following the arrival of the 8th and 9th Light Horse regiments in barges and pinnaces, May 21, 1915]](images/pic-an23217957-t.jpg)
