25 April 1915, afternoon and evening
Anzac Cove: the counterattack
Around midday Mustafa Kemal learns that the 9th Division is fully engaged against the British at Cape Helles. At 12.30 he brings two battalions of the 77th Regiment forward between the 57th and the 27th, and moves his reserve, the 72nd Regiment, further west. At 13.00 he meets his corps commander, Esat Pasha, and persuades him to commit the 27th and 72nd Regiments in strength.
Baby 700 changes hands five times. At 16.30 the 72nd Regiment attacks from the north, and the Australians and New Zealanders fall back to a line from Walker's Ridge to Pope's Hill. In the south the 27th and 77th Regiments drive the Australians off most of the 400 Plateau.
Australian soldiers in their first trench above Anzac Cove, 25 April 1915Wikimedia Commons, unknown author, Public domain (Australian trench Anzac Cove 25 April 1915.JPG)
By nightfall about 16,000 men are ashore, in a beachhead under 3 km long and about 700 m deep. The 57th Regiment has been destroyed. The 27th and 57th together have lost about 2,000 men, half their strength.
Sources
- C. E. W. Bean, The Story of Anzac, volume 1 (1921).
- Andrew Mango, Atatürk (1999).
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