Dominic Sandbrook

Now, if you think that's bad, V Beach is the real shocker.

So V Beach, the Turks had really put a lot of effort into reinforcing this beach.

They had put two lines of barbed wire and then behind them various lines of trenches.

So one of the British naval commanders, who's called Edward Unwin, comes up with a clever plan that you and indeed Rupert Brooke would admire.

He says, look...

We're just across the straits from Troy.

And, you know, if you've done classics at public school, as I have, then you will know how to cope with Trojans.

We need a Trojan horse.

Not a literal horse.

Not a literal horse, but a ship.

I wouldn't put it past them.

And you're not wrong.

It couldn't go worse than what they actually did.

So they said, instead of using a horse, a wooden horse, we'll use a bloody big ship, like a huge old collier, a coal ship, called the SS River Clyde.

We will put 2,000 men.

We'll put loads of ammo and we'll put loads of supplies in this big old ship.

And then we will deliberately run it aground.

We'll run the ship aground as close to the beach as possible.

We'll have another little ship coming up called a steam hopper.

And this will go in between the ship and the actual sand.