A wonderful copy of this remarkable map of Gallipoli belonging to Lt. Eric Arundel Wilton dso, Signalling Officer of the 16th Battalion. Wilton went ashore on the first day of the landings and was invalided off the peninsula with a serious gunshot wound a week later.
The map was originally produced by the British War Office in October 1908 (as is noted on the map itself) but this is the first wartime issue, specifically produced in Cairo for the use of the forces ashore at Gallipoli in 1915 by the map-making group headed by T.E. Lawrence. There was later a second issue, easily identified by the addition “corrected to July 1915,” just before the major series of secondary landings in August.
This is a medium-format map on a 1:250,000 scale, perhaps less well-known than the series of 1:20,000 maps of specific sites. The scale allows the map to take in the entire peninsula, from the landing sites on the western coast right across the peninsula to the dreamt-of destination at Gallipoli itself. In addition to topographical information it denotes vegetation, water features, natural landmarks, populated places, and transport routes.
The map has the ownership inscription of Wilton (1892—1932), a Victorian who enlisted into the AIF straight from the new Royal Military College at Duntroon, where he had been part of the first intake of June 1911. He was immediately appointed as a Lieutenant and Signalling Officer in the 16th Battalion, landing at Gallipoli on the first day. He was reported badly wounded on 1 May, although some sources, notably the account of the battle by the artist Ellis Silas (also a signaller in the 16th), suggest he had actually been carrying the wound for days.
Given that Wilton was wounded and evacuated from Gallipoli within a week of the landing, never to return, the inference must be that this is the map issued to him as Signalling Officer for the landing: this would accord with the physical evidence on the verso, his name and “copy no. 27” being added in ink – clearly the map was only given out under very strict controls. Below these notes has been added a stamp for the “4th Infantry Brigade” dated May 29, 1915 (perhaps it was in some sense checked off by the Brigade after his evacuation given the strategic information it contains?). That he retained the map can be seen from the fact that Wilton has added his rank of “Major” to the inscription, a rank he did not attain until he was in France.
After his evacuation, Wilton received treatment in Egypt, Malta and – most unusually – Florence before rejoining his battalion on the Western Front. Promoted to Major and transferred to one of the new Australian Machine Gun Companies, he saw action at Pozières in June 1916. Wounded a second time, he recuperated in England before being sent back to France in January 1917, initially with the 4th Machine Gun Company. He was promoted Brigade Major of the 4th Battalion in July, transferring to the 12th in the same role in October. His actions during Third Ypres, at Zonnebeke, in January 1918 led to him being awarded the Distinguished Service Order for his “tenacious” work in organising the battalion’s defensive line in appalling weather while under heavy artillery fire. Twice Mentioned in Dispatches, Wilton was in a training position by the end of the war.
After his return to Australia in March 1919 he was taken on the permanent staff of Duntroon as an instructor in tactics with a particular remit to study the use of mechanised vehicles. He died in a motorcycle accident in Kew in 1932. An obituary in the Melbourne papers hailed him as a “mechanical genius.” He was buried with full military honours at Boroondara Cemetery.
