The going was a long time coming.
The evacuation of Gallipoli, the realisation that a campaign had failed, was first talked about at a high level in October but the indecision and vacillation that marked the whole eight months on the peninsula continued through November and dogged it until the end.
The short version is that the overall commander, Sir Ian Hamilton, was sacked for not doing what he was there to do and his replacement, Sir Charles Monro, had to clean up the mess and get the troops out of it.
But there was much more to it than that and even until the last few days, there was politicking and lobbying behind the scenes for the campaign to continue.
In the Australian version, the catalyst for calling it off was a letter written by a Melbourne journalist who was on the peninsula fleetingly, Keith Murdoch (Rupert's father).
The letter found its way to the British Prime Minister, Herbert Henry Asquith, and was printed as a state paper.
Murdoch, who called in at Gallipoli on the way to London, castigated Hamilton and the British for bungling the campaign and, in his instant opinion, the whole thing should be stopped.
But a British MP and Turkish speaker who was an intelligence officer with the Anzac Corps, Aubrey Herbert, called the impact of the letter ‘‘just one more sack of coal on the road to Newcastle''.
Lord Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War, went to Gallipoli to see for himself and learnt that while evacuation was in the minds of some of his senior men, it was opposed by others.
One of the senior naval officers, Roger Keyes, had made a rushed trip to London in an effort to persuade the Admiralty to make another attempt at breaching the Turkish shore defences in the Narrows and thus getting through to the Sea of Marmara.
It was the navy's failure to do this earlier that led to the land campaign.
But Keyes thought circumstances had changed: the navy would not be as cautious this time and in any case, he believed the Turks were at the end of their tether.
Kitchener liked the idea and approved a diversionary attack at Bulair, further around the peninsula from Anzac Cove - the place where Bernard Freyberg had made his celebrated flare-laying swim on the eve of the Anzac landings.
Kitchener even suggested another seaborne assault, this time at Alexandretta, on Turkey's Mediterranean coast north of Cyprus.
But at the backs of minds as schemes rose and fell were two key points: one was the Monro doctrine that the war would be won only by killing Germans and Gallipoli was a distraction from that; and the other was Hamilton's dire prediction of an evacuation bringing with it a 45% casualty rate (it seemed to be understood that Hamilton's high prediction was influenced by his implacable opposition to quitting).
Winston Churchill, one of the advocates of the campaign, later sarcastically remarked of Monro: ‘‘He came, he saw, he capitulated.''
But Monro also had charge of the Salonika front, where the Allies were supposed to aid Greece and Serbia against Bulgaria, and he deputed the execution of the Gallipoli evacuation to the Anzac commander, William Birdwood, and Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss. Keyes lamented that the two men most opposed to the evacuation, Birdwood and Wemyss, were thus given the ‘‘unpleasant'' task of organising it.
Birdwood, earlier described by Hamilton as ‘‘the soul of Anzac'', was criticised by both Hamilton and Keyes for abandoning his opposition to the evacuation.
Hamilton wrote to Keyes after the war: ‘‘Not only does he know you and I think he threw away the chance of a lifetime, but he knows it himself.'' [The italics were Hamilton's].
As always, the soldiers had no idea what was going on in the minds of senior officers they rarely saw.
Kitchener's visit to Anzac took the troops by surprise and, naturally, gave rise to rumours.
Fred Waite was an Otago Daily Times compositor before the war, an engineer officer during it and writer of the authorised New Zealand history of Gallipoli after it.
‘‘We did not get many callers,'' he wrote, ‘‘so the visit of ‘Kitchener' started us speculating afresh and making wild conjectures. Needless to say, there were wonderful rumours as to what he did and said, but it was generally understood that the decision to evacuate the peninsula was confirmed there and then.''
During the planning and as more men were told what they needed to know, some were in no hurry to leave a place they had come to loathe.
As a staff officer, Major Charles Andrews, attached to the Otago Battalion, later wrote: ‘‘Men argued that as they had been right through the place they had a right to take part in the closing scene.''
One told Andrews he wanted to be given the chance to ensure a decent burial for his mate, who was lying behind the Turkish lines.
Dunedin-born war correspondent Malcolm Ross reported the words of one soldier to his commanding officer: ‘‘I hope, Sir, that those fellows who lie buried along the dere [valley] will be soundly sleeping and not hear us as we march away.''
The men, in carefully orchestrated groups, slipped away in the night and made their way down to the beach in muffled boots.
Some left behind notes for the Turks.
One asked that they look after those who would forever remain on the peninsula.
Some of the dugouts on the slopes carried ‘‘to let'' signs. One group left a stencilled sign, ‘‘A.N.Z.A.C.'', and helpfully explained for the Turks what the letters stood for: ‘‘All New Zealanders Are Coming''.
The predictions of casualties came to nothing.
The troops at Anzac and next-door Suvla got away with barely a scratch.
So, too, the British and French from their positions further down the peninsula a few weeks later.
The evacuation was a masterstroke of military planning and execution; in fact, it had all the qualities that the landing on April 25 lacked.
Inevitably, there were people later who were cynical of success, arguing that the Turks and their German commanders knew of the evacuation and just let them go.
The Turks and the Germans did not subscribe to that view.
A German comment published the following month read: ‘‘As long as wars exist, their evacuation of the Ari Burnu [Anzac] and Anafarta [Suvla] fronts will stand before the eyes of all strategists of retreat as hitherto unattained masterpiece.''
Just as questions were raised about who was first to land in April, so there were many contenders for the title of last to leave.
One claim was put forward for Otago machine gunners to have brought up the rearguard in the moonlight flit. No-one really knows.
Arthur Plugge, an Auckland schoolteacher who was an officer in the Auckland battalion, contrived to ensure he was the last to go.
A story was published about how some of the last men slowed down and jostled in an effort to be last.
Plugge stood on the pier and ushered his men into a boat. No-one else was in sight.
When the pier was clear, he told the navy lieutenant in charge to shove off.
Plugge then shouted to his men: ‘‘Well boys, first ashore on April 25, last away.''
-by Ron Palenski
He then jumped into the boat. A true story?
Like much of the whole eight months, there was myth among the reality so that 100 years later, there's hardly a difference.
