Little Gully Publishing

28 March 1915, Cairo. Hamilton inspects the East Lancashire Division – including the Divisional Signal Company, where Alec Riley was serving. Within weeks, these territorials would be bound for Gallipoli. Read more: littlegully.com/books/egypt-di…

First look at the cover of our next release – English translations of two French nurses’ accounts from Mudros during the Gallipoli campaign, 1915. Never before available in English. littlegully.com/books/mudros-1…

Captain Orlo Williams arrived at Tenedos on this day, four days after leaving London. The naval assault on the Narrows would begin the next morning.

‘Have just been on deck, to see in the distance the Turkish searchlights and to hear guns from time to time. Almost impossible to believe this is only Wednesday, and I was in London on Saturday.’

17 March 1915 – ‘We rounded the southern corner of Tenedos and then with extraordinary suddenness, instead of sailing on a lonely sea, we came into a world full of life.’👉Orlo Williams, Inside GHQ (ed. Crawley, Chambers, Brown) littlegully.com/books/inside-g… #WW1 #Gallipoli

Incoming. Our next newsletter is about to drop – French commemoration at Gallipoli, a new book preview, and a few things worth reading. Free, occasional, no shrapnel. Subscribe: littlegully.com/newsletter/

13 March 1915: Hamilton leaves Charing Cross for the Dardanelles. His cipher officer, Orlo Williams, had 48 hours’ notice – bought his kit at Harrods, dined with his wife at the Carlton, and left for Dover that evening. By Wednesday he was in the Aegean. littlegully.com/books/inside-g…

New research now online: how France honoured her 10,000 fallen at Gallipoli. Includes a searchable register of 2,253 burials at Seddul-Bahr, 50+ memorials with historic photographs, and the story of French commemoration from 1918 to 1930. 🔗 french-gallipoli.littlegully.com

Why did British & Empire troops storm the Gallipoli Peninsula in April 1915? Few histories lay out the context like Jim Grundy's first volume of ‘Hell & Confusion.’ littlegully.com/books/hell-con…

‘To the Dead of the Dardanelles’ – General Gouraud’s address to the 500-strong pilgrimage of veterans and families, delivered on 9 June 1930 at the French military cemetery at Gallipoli 👉 littlegully.com/blog/to-the-de…

Thumbs up for Floatplanes Over The Desert: our #ww1 Middle East naval aviation history. Review in ‘Over The Front’, spring 2026 edition. More: littlegully.com/books/floatpla…

Coming in 2026 from LGP – a French bluejacket’s account of the opening bombardment of the Dardanelles forts, 19 February 1915. Recorded by a nurse on Mudros as the sailor relived the day Suffren earned her nickname: ‘the fire-eater’. Be notified🔗 littlegully.com/newsletter/

This section of Williamson’s unpublished memoir was transcribed and annotated in the ‘14–‘18 Journal of the Australian Society of WW1 Aero Historians. The full account covers this flight and his 3,000-foot crash off Gaba Tepe on 5 March.

Two days later, after another flight, a spent Turkish round was found sitting on the floor of Williamson's open cockpit. Intact, not flattened – it had simply lopped in at the top of its trajectory. Only possible in a slow, open-cockpit machine.

This week in 1915: the first Allied war flight over the Dardanelles. Williamson and Bromet, from HMS Ark Royal, were shot at by a gun on what was probably the tumulus of Achilles – ancient and modern warfare colliding above Troy. #Gallipoli #Dardanelles #RNAS

#OnThisDay 1900 – Henry Clayton Darlington sailed for the South African War with 29 Wigan volunteers; 15 years later he’d command the 5th Manchesters at Gallipoli, fighting in Krithia Nullah – its name an echo of the Boer War. littlegully.com/books/letters-…

Map dated 22 February 1915: fleet chart list, F.064, Dardanelles. Photographed at the archives of the UK Hydrographic Office in 2023.

1914: Lt Col. Rye’s memorable warning to the 10th Manchesters in Egypt. ‘Now then you young fellows… we are in a land which is rife with buggery… be damn careful… or before you know what will happen, you will be buggered.’ littlegully.com/blog/you-will-…