Essential Information
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13 Apr 2015
Jesse Garton kept a diary that provides an account of the allied landings at Gallipoli.
Jesse Garton was born in Billingshurst, Sussex in 1894. April 1915 saw him a 21-year-old Engineer on HM Australian Troop Transport A45, heading for the beaches of Gallipoli. Jesse kept a diary that provides an account of the allied landings at Gallipoli. The landings were part of an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to capture Constantinople and knock Turkey (an ally of Germany) out of the war.
The diary
The beauty of Jesse Garton’s diary is in its immediacy. Most memoirs or eyewitness accounts are written up at a point in time far removed from the events they describe. Jesse’s diary contains very little reflection and was almost certainly penned at the time or very shortly afterwards. Crammed with details, it reads as a rapid series of statements, as though anxious to record bare facts in a hurry and worry about what it all meant later.
Australian Troop Transport A45 left Alexandria on 5 April. The following day Jesse Garton dryly noted with a seaman’s distain for the landlubber ‘Most of the troops seasick, laying all around the deck.’ On 8 April they arrived off Limnos, an island in the Aegean sea. The next few days were spent practising landing troops, horses, guns and mules. On 17 April they left for the Dardanelles and on arrival he notes ‘Taking mens’ names for volunteer service minesweepers in Dardanelles’. Significantly, Jesse did not volunteer! Reminding us just how novel powered flight was in 1915, on 24 April he also notes ‘Aeroplane flying around’. His last entry on 24 April notes ‘Saw Queen Elizabeth and 5 large men of war steaming NW in direction of Dardanelles’.
The following day was a busy one as the allied landings began in earnest and landing craft A45 took Australian soldiers, horses and mules inshore. The diary reads:
- 5am First landing party got safely ashore and attacked Turks with the bayonet…battleships blazing away … Australians are under heavy shrapnel fire…two shrapnel shells burst in water about a ships length away…destroyers rushing troops in from all directions… under heavy fire.
- 6am Turkish fort ceased firing, smashed up by battleship fire…concealed batteries very troublesome.
- 9am Indian troops landed safely & immediately went into action …first ridge taken by Australians.
- 9.30am Came under fire from Turkish 10.2 inch guns…narrowly misses [until] our ships found their range, 4 puffs of white smoke on the mountain side and no more Turkish gun.
- 2pm Moved out of range to Imbros island
- 26 April Heavy bombardment along the whole length of the Gallipoli Peninsula... HMS Queen Elizabeth bombarding Turkish position with 15 inch guns. We are laying 12 miles off, out of range and, yet firing makes the whole ship tremble.
- 28 April Australians progressing favourably
- 5pm under fire from German Goeban manowar firing across Gallipoli peninsula
- 29 April Goeben missed Prince of Wales by inches. Seaplanes flying. Bombarding continuing but Turkish guns still throwing shrapnel
- 30 April Shrapnel over British trenches. 16 shells fell into the sea about 400 yards away from us. We are expecting every minute for one to hit us. [This was the concentrated fire of the Goeben.]
- 2nd May moved to safer anchorage. [At the same time the firing became more distant as the fighting moved inland.] During the night the British made a general attack
- 7.20pm 7 battleships commenced firing on mountain side on our left flank as fast as they could…the whole ship trembled with the vibration & the mountainside could not be seen for bursting shells.
- 8 May taking off wounded mules and horses
- 9 May Quietest day so far…nothing could be heard from onshore
- 9pm Reported by wireless that the RMS Lusitanina had been torpedoed by a German submarine.
- 11 May gunfire like thunder coming from Cape Helles direction 10 miles away
- 15 May ran aground trying to avoid collision with a French destroyer
- 18 May orders to Alexandria
- 10 June left Egypt
- 3 July Anchored Nore 7pm
The postcard
The postcode is addressed to Jesse’s mother. Featuring a photograph of the Sphynx, it was sent from Egypt on 10 March 1915, dutifully letting his mother know where he was going.
He cheerily wrote ‘Just going up the Dardanelles with the troops…’.
The wonder was that the postcard actually arrived in Sydenham, London, where his mother lived. Disclosing information like troop movements was just the sort of thing soldiers and sailors were warned time and time again never to do, in case the enemy found out. Military censors seized upon this sort of slip up but in the event the censors seem to have slipped up too! Ultimately the only person to know was Jesse Garton’s mother…
Jesse Garton later served with the Merchant Navy, and was awarded the Mercantile Marine Ribbon and the British Medal Ribbon in 1922. Perhaps with fond recollections of landing the Australian troops in 1915, he later emigrated to Australia. The diary stayed in his family until donated to the National Maritime Museum in 2013.