ON SUNDAY, April 25, 1915, with darkness still cloaking the shore, a great armada moved silently from the Turkish sea towards the Gallipoli beaches.

On vessels such as the former collier River Clyde and Aquitania, the Cunard liner turned hospital/troopship, thousands of Hampshire troops were ready to fight for their country, and, in short, change the tide of the First World War.

They were men of the 2nd Battalion, The Hampshire Regiment and the 1/8th Hampshire Battalion, including The Princess Beatrice Isle of Wight Rifles.

River Clyde, manned by the Royal Navy, grounded without a tremor 40 yards from the beach, a beach the men on board knew only as “V”.

Smaller craft loaded with troops were lowered into the still waters and headed for the silent and apparently deserted beach.

Within seconds the sea erupted into a foaming mass, as if lashed by whips, as the hidden Turkish machine guns opened fire on the helpless troops packed shoulder to shoulder in the boats.

Back-up troops using a bridging gap to meet the shore fell in heaps as they ran for cover. The living continually took the place of the dead, only to die within a few steps themselves, never to reach the shore.

After a time the waves lapping the shore were red, tinged with the blood of these young soldiers who’d been so eager to do their bit for the campaign.

Amazingly there were those who reached the shore. Stumbling over the still warm bodies of their fellow men, weighed down by 200 rounds of ammunition, full packs, haversacks and three days of iron rations totalling more than 84lbs, they waded through the blood-soaked waters, dodging artillery fire to reach the tenuous safety of the sand dunes.

They gained a strip of beach – just a few yards of bullet-whipped sand – but they held it until darkness came again and with it reinforcements.

It was this same unit that fought until the bitter end though reduced time after time to less than a skeleton of a full battalion.

For weeks on end they were called upon to launch attack after attack.

Short of artillery support, depleted in numbers, weakened by illness, tired from night after night without sleep, lice-ridden and unwashed, shot at constantly by machine guns.

That was the life of every British, Australian and New Zealand soldier who managed to survive for eight long months.

Four chapters of the official history of the Royal Hampshire Regiment are devoted to Gallipoli, illustrating how the county men never once lost their nerve or will to fight on.

In fact, it says that so high was their morale and standard of discipline in the face of the most horrific casualties and all the horror of the battle spread out before them that when the evacuation was ordered they picked to be the last regiment to leave Suvla Bay.

So skilfully did they do it that in the final stages only 40 men – one to every 30 yards of the front line – were left.

When they crept out to make for the shore and the boats, their rifles still fired towards the Turks.

The enemy were completely hoodwinked and the evacuation of Suvla was completed with minimum casualties.

After this mission the Hampshires were ordered to re-embark from Imbros on December 22 and land again at Cape Helles to take over the trenches in order to secretly evacuate them.

Other Hampshire regiments were also heavily engaged in the fighting.

They were thrown into the fight when their chances of success had all but vanished.

Daily Echo:

Had it succeeded the attack on Gallipoli would have been a masterstroke which would have had a significant influence on the length of the First World War.

However, it did not succeed and in fighting as severe as anything experienced in France and Flanders during the whole of the war, the Allies suffered some 250,000 casualties, of which the Hampshires accounted for a great number.