A painting by English artist Charles Dixon (1872-1934), showing troops from the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) on April 15th, 1915, loping up the beach to the cliffs at Sari Baira. They were a little east of their intended position at Gaba Tepe, up close to the Turkish line on the northern side of the slim Gallipoli Peninsula. That was just as well, as Gaba Tepe was easier to climb but dangerously exposed. The area became known as Anzac Cove in tribute to the 8,500 Australians and 2,721 New Zealanders who died in the Gallipoli campaign. On the Commonwealth nations’ contribution to the Great War, see The Avengers.
Part 1 of 2
EARLY in 1915, lack of progress on the Western Front prompted British commanders to seek a ‘back door’ into the German Empire. They devised a plan to sail their Aegean fleet up the narrow Dardanelles strait to Constantinople, thereby knocking the Ottoman Empire out of the War. Neutral Bulgaria might turn against Berlin, and Russia, relieved of pressure,* could exchange her wheat for our munitions unmolested.
That February, a Royal Navy fleet probed the strait only to awaken concealed Turkish gun batteries overlooking the entrance.* Clearing guns from the strait was essential, so just before dawn on Sunday April 25th, 1915, two British divisions and two Anzac* divisions landed quietly on the tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula that forms the northern shore, while a French brigade landed at Kumkale on the Turkish mainland to the south.
Turkish resistance was unexpectedly fierce; the opening days saw some fifteen Victoria Crosses won, ‘six before breakfast’ for the Lancashire Fusiliers alone. But Indian troops strengthened the Anzac divisions,* and by Tuesday morning the bold landing was pronounced complete.
John Masefield assures us that the expedition originally envisaged a two-pronged attack, with Tsar Nicholas II’s Russian Empire coming over the Black Sea. “But as the Polish campaign developed adversely to Russia, it became clear that it would be impossible for her to give the assistance she had hoped.”
Exploratory moves began on February 17th, but guns and mines were an insurmountable obstacle and the ships were recalled on April 25th. Land forces immediately moved in.
The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, or Anzac for short, had been formed in Egypt in 1914 as part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. Anzac Day is observed on April 25th each year, the anniversary of the Gallipoli landings.
Sir Ian Hamilton, leading the campaign, had a high personal regard for Indian soldiers and made sure to get a brigade of Gurkhas as well as Sikhs and Punjabis. Some 1,300 Indians died in the Gallipoli campaign. John Buchan reminded us that Berlin “had a grandiose design of extending her influence eastward through Constantinople to the Persian Gulf, with Turkey as her ally or her tool, and planting a German outpost on the flank of our Indian Empire.”
Part Two
A British soldier takes a moment to remember beside the grave of a comrade on Cape Helles, the western tip of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Some 44,000 Allied soldiers died in the eight-month-long campaign. The Turkish side lost almost twice the number, but when Bulgaria pledged herself to the Central Powers, the Allies had to withdraw and do what they could to help Serbia and Greece.
AS Spring turned to Summer, however, little progress was made. Reinforcements arrived, but the Turkish barrier across the neck of the peninsula proved stubborn. By December, more than 44,000 Allied soldiers had died and the plan was evidently failing.* Moreover, Bulgaria had declared for Germany, meaning that Allied troops were needed to bolster Serbia and Greece’s Macedonian Front. From December 8th, a phased evacuation began, always by night; during daylight hours, the illusion of ordinary military operation was maintained so thoroughly that the watching Turks noticed nothing unusual, and in a matter of days tens of thousands of soldiers simply melted away.
The Dardanelles Campaign had been a miracle of courage, logistics and illusion, yet the plan had misfired;* amid the recriminations, Herbert Asquith was ousted by David Lloyd George as Prime Minister, and Winston Churchill was dismissed as First Lord of the Admiralty. No changes in command, however, would reopen the ‘back door’ that Turkey had shut, and after the Bolsheviks took Russia out of the War in 1917, European liberty depended on victory at the Western Front.
Statistics available from ‘Gallipoli casualties by country’, provided by the New Zealand History website.
Two of those close to the events, John Buchan and John Masefield, regarded the campaign as something of a triumph. For Buchan, it was an astonishing feat of military organisation and sleight-of-hand. Masefield believed that it had delayed Bulgaria’s entry into the War, weakened Turkish troops and tied them down well away from the Russian border, and helped to bring Italy in on the Allied side. The British and Commonwealth soldiers who died at Gallipoli saved lives and liberties and changed the course of the War — just not in the way the Admiralty planned.
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