ONE hundred years ago, the Lancashire Fusiliers landed close to the southern tip of the narrow Gallipoli peninsula.

They started that April day with more than 1,000 officers and men. The following morning, after a day of hell, a head count came up with barely 300.

It was a day in which the Fusiliers made their mark in the history of the British Army, a day in which they famously won “six VCs before breakfast”.

Now, for the first time ever, those six Victoria Crosses with their deep crimson ribbons are all together, on display in small glass cases in a corner of the Fusiliers’ Museum in Bury.

If you don’t want to miss the opportunity of seeing them all, they will be there until May 17.

The museum team, headed by chairman Col. Brian Gorski, already had two of the VCs on display. Three more were loaned by Lord Ashcroft and the Imperial War Museum, but the sixth proved difficult to trace.

A national appeal for news of the VC won by Major Cuthbert Bromley finally paid off. It was on display at the home of one of his descendants, Nick Bromley, who was more than pleased to offer it up for the museum’s exhibition.

Bromley was a giant of a man and had an engaging coolness to match his stature.

He wrote home to “my dearest mother” about his regiment suffering “rather heavy fighting” adding “I quite enjoyed it.”

Later he wrote: “Lovely climate here and sea bathing.” Later he mentioned that “an occasional box of good Egyptian cigarettes would be most acceptable.”

In fact Bromley had been wounded three times and was finally invalided to hospital in Egypt. He hitched a lift back to Gallipoli on the Prince Edward only for it to be sunk in the Aegean.

The other five Lancashire Fusiliers who received the VC were: Capt Richard Raymond Willis, sergeants Alfred Richards and Frank Edward Stubbs, and corporals William Kenealy and John Elisha Grimshaw, who served with the 1st Battalion, Lancashire Fusiliers.

Three of them survived the war – Willis, who died at 89; Richards who had a leg amputated following wounds he received in action, but still served as a Home Guard in WWII and Grimshaw, who lived to 87.

The battalion landed on “W” beach at around 6am, meeting deadly fire from hidden machine guns.

The survivors, however, rushed up to and cut the wire entanglements, and after overcoming supreme difficulties, the cliffs were gained.

General Ian Hamilton, who commanded the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force during the Gallipoli campaign, later ordered the beach to be re-named Lancashire Landing.

Bygones has also heard from Eileen Holt, nee Hargreaves, whose grandfather Robert was killed at Gallipoli on June 4, 1915, aged 31.

Born in Clitheroe, he and his wife Susannah lived at 17, Salford and had four children, Tom, Richard, Beatrice and Eileen’s father Edgar.

Later, when Turkish General Mustafa Kemal Bey became the leader of modern Turkey as Kemal Ataturk, he spoke to the mothers of our soldiers who died at Gallipoli: “Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are at peace. Having lost their lives in this land they are now our sons as well.”

Gallipoli was a battle that failed – after eight months of fighting, it was abandoned in the New Year of 1916.

By then, the Allies, mainly the British 29th Division, a Royal Navy Division and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, had suffered more than a quarter of a million casualties.