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Introduction
In the Great War of 1914-1918, the German Empire’s bid for European domination was backed by the Ottoman Empire, now controlled by the infamous Ismail Enver and his ‘Young Turks’. The Allies desperately wanted to take the Turks out of the war, and open up a third front to release pressure on France and the Russian Empire.
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.”
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