A group of war memorials commemorating the men who died a century ago in the Gallipoli campaign have been listed or upgraded to mark the anniversary. The campaign, a fruitless attempt to dislodge Turkish forces from the heights overlooking the Dardanelles straits, left at least 200,000 casualties among the Allies and Ottomans.
The memorials have been listed or upgraded by Historic England in time for 25 April, the centenary of the landing on the Gallipoli beaches under raking fire from the Turks, commemorated in Australia and New Zealand as Anzac Day in memory of the high number of their troops who died in the campaign.
One of the memorials, an obelisk at a crossroads in Stretton-on-Dunsmore, in Warwickshire, marks the spot “in the centre of England where Telford’s coaching road from London to Holyhead is crossed by the Roman Fosse Way”, as the inscription reads, where the 29th Division – known as “the Immortal” – was reviewed by George V before it embarked for Gallipoli.
Within weeks, many of those who marched past the king were dead. The division lost 34,000 men at Gallipoli, and won 12 Victoria crosses. The memorial has been given the second highest listed status, Grade II*.
Another Gallipoli VC was awarded to Arthur Tisdall, a Cambridge graduate commemorated on a cross erected by his his father at St George’s church in Deal, Kent, to which the names of the other men from the parish were added as the war continues, which is also being Grade II*-listed.
Tisdall heard cries for help from wounded men on the beach, and made five trips to rescue them, wading from his ship to the shore, pushing a dinghy in front of him as cover from heavy machine-gun fire. He died at Gallipoli a fortnight later, and is buried in an unknown grave.
The Lancashire Fusiliers memorial in the Gallipoli Gardens at Bury, in Greater Manchester, is also being upgraded to Grade II*. It was designed by Edwin Lutyens, the architect of the most famous of all British war memorials, the Cenotaph on Whitehall.
The Fusiliers lost more than 1,800 men over the 10 months of the Dardanelles campaign, including 600 of the 1,000 who came ashore on W beach in the first hours of the landing. The honours awarded to the regiment on that day became known as “the six VCs before breakfast”.