Qualla: Battle of Hill 60 (Gallipoli)

Battle of Hill 60 (Gallipoli): Introduction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Jll, CC BY-SA 3.0. Sixty metres is barely a hill. From the air it is a wrinkle of dirt at the northern end of the Sari Bair range, north of Anzac Cove and just inland of Suvla Bay. The Ottomans called it Kaiajik Aghala. To the staff officers who marked it on their maps, it was Hill 60, and on 21 August 1915 men were ordered to take it, partly because doing so would link the Anzac line to the Suvla beachhead, partly because by then there was nothing else left to try. It was the last major Allied offensive at Anzac before the entire peninsula was given up.

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Battle of Hill 60 (Gallipoli): A crossroads of empires

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Jll, CC BY-SA 3.0. The attacking force was a small map of the British Empire's reach. The Canterbury and Otago Mounted Rifles came from New Zealand. The 13th and 14th Battalions came from Australia, joined later by the green 18th Battalion and detachments of the 9th and 10th Light Horse. Two Gurkha...

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Battle of Hill 60 (Gallipoli): The artillery that never came

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Jll, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the morning of 21 August, the New Zealand artillery support that should have softened up the hill was diverted to the larger attack going in at Scimitar Hill, three miles north on the Suvla front. The start time was pushed back by half an hour to wait for guns that never came....

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Battle of Hill 60 (Gallipoli): The 18th Battalion

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Jll, CC BY-SA 3.0. The next morning, 22 August, the brand-new Australian 18th Battalion was thrown in for a dawn attack with the bayonet only — they had landed days before and not yet been issued bombs. Of the 750 men who advanced, 383 became casualties before lunch. They had fought the war for les...

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Battle of Hill 60 (Gallipoli): Throssell's night

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On 29–30 August, in trenches on Hill 60 that the Australians did hold, Second Lieutenant Hugo Throssell of the 10th Light Horse fought through repeated bomb attacks for hours, was wounded several times, and refused to leave until the position was secure. He received the Victoria ...

Image: Public domain

Battle of Hill 60 (Gallipoli): The cemetery on the slope

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit en:User:Jll, CC BY-SA 3.0. Through November, New Zealand sappers tunnelled under the summit and blew a crater there that the Allies never bothered to occupy. By 19 December the trenches at Anzac were being quietly evacuated, candles left burning on parapets, rifles rigged to fire by themselves with cans of...

Image: en:User:Jll | CC BY-SA 3.0