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Prologue – A Family’s Sacrifice

Late in the afternoon, we finally found his grave. It was located in the Hill 10 cemetery at Gallipoli. Maj. Hugh Price Travers, the author’s great uncle, was reported missing on 9 August 1915 at Suvla, and we had been searching for his grave for the better part of a day among all the beautifully kept cemeteries of Gallipoli. But how had he died? The war diary of his unit, the 8th Battalion, Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment, provided the only information. The battalion suffered ‘heavy losses’ on 9 August 1915 at Suvla, and a much stained war diary, written by Capt. V. Kidd, who by the time of writing on 17 August commanded the battalion in the absence of any more senior officers, offered the scanty details. At dusk on 8 August, the battalion moved up on the left of the West Yorkshire Regiment. At 4.00 a.m. on 9 August the Regiment advanced to attack the hills of Tekke Tepe, following along behind the East Yorkshire Pioneers. This was an attack that had been ordered late on 8 August by Sir Ian Hamilton, Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, who was desperate to attain the Tekke Tepe heights before the Turks arrived. At about 800 yards from the objective, the leading line of the East Yorkshire Pioneers appeared to retire, and ‘so the order was given at once to advance to a small donga [a steep gully] and hold on there’ Then the operation began to go badly awry:

By this time a lot of men from the leading Regt had rushed past saying that the Turks were advancing in force. The fire now became very hot and heavy casualties were rapidly being sustained. Lt-Col. Johnston had already been wounded before we advanced and at this moment Maj. Travers was seen to fall, the command then devolved upon me. The Turks were now beginning to turn my flanks and as I had only about 350 men left and practically no officers and ammunition was running short, I decided to withdraw to a more suitable position