Monday, November 6, 2006

The Battle of Gallipoli, February 1915 - January 1916
This is the first of six entries I am writing as we come closer to November 11th, known as Remembrance Day, Veteran's Day or Armistice Day depending on where you live. Today we look at a stretch of land practically revered by two countries while essentially ignored in the textbooks of others. Many countries tend to have a sort of sentimental connection with particular battles, historical and legendary, that "made their countries," so to speak. Britons have Badon Hill, Americans have Bunker Hill (among many others), Canadians have Vimy Ridge, and Russians have Stalingrad. Way down under, on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean, Australians and New Zealanders have Gallipoli.

Also called "The First D-Day", The British-French invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey was an operation aimed at capturing the Ottoman capital of Istanbul and effectively knocking out one of the big powers in the Central Powers. As would again be the case in the Second World War, Russia was in trouble and was demanding help sooner than later; they were having supply troubles and the Allies wanted to form another battlefront (the west had already bogged into trench stalemate by this point).

Now being a full year of fighting, I'm gonna try to break it down in the simplest, briefest way I can. In February, the Anglo-French naval fleet tried to take the strait between the Aegean Sea and Black Sea; after a month of trying, they simply got bottled up, hit a ton of mines in the water, and well . . . they weren't going to be taking the strait that way.

While this was going on, Australian and New Zealand volunteer soldiers were training in Egypt and were about to be shipped off to the Western Front in France. Well, with this new "closer" battle to fight, they were instead sent to Turkey as they Australian and New Zealand Army Corps: ANZAC.

The attack on the peninsula was two-pronged: The British would make the main assault on the southern tip of the peninsula while ANZAC would land on a western coast of it further north. They landed with varying degrees of difficulty . . . and immediately they got to start fighting.

The terrain of Gallipoli was not good for attacking by sea. Essentially, you had the water, then a beach, then a large hill or cliff in front of you that's covered with machine guns and artillery guns raining down on you. Like a lot of battles in WW1, the original plan for a swift advance ground into stalemate, where neither side could really take ground against the other. In a lot of cases for the Allies, there was confusion all around: misplaced landings, inability to define objectives, complicated attack plans with not enough planning, there was plenty of trouble all around.

For half a year, the Ottomans and the Allies fought each other to a total standstill. Any advance in either direction tended to fail: British or ANZAC forces could never capture the high ground from the Turks for long, and the Turks could never drive their enemies back into the sea. All of this occured with major loss of life in hot, unhealthy terrain conditions. On May 19th, a force of 42,000 Turks attacked 10,000 Australians and New Zealanders, hoping to surprise them; they didn't, and retreated with about 10,000 casualties compared to the 600 or so suffered by ANZAC.

The Ottomans gave just as well as they received, though. In particular, they gave it very well at the Battles of Chunuk Bair and The Nek in August. Soldiers from New Zealand were supposed to sweep the height of Chunuk Bair one day, and then from that position support the Australians in their own assault on The Nek (another peak). The New Zealanders were unable to take the peak until the next day, and by then were unable to help the Australians in the other battle . . .


The Battle of The Nek, an 80 meter wide natural bottleneck in the hills, is perhaps the signature fight for how Australians tend to remember Gallipoli. The trench lines between the Australians and the Turks were 27 meters apart. The plan was for naval bombardment to clear out the Turkish lines, followed by four waves of charges, 150 men in each, until the Turks were pushed back.

Gravely unfortunate, the ground forces and sea forces failed to synchronise their watches. By the time the naval bombardment had ended, there was a seven minute delay before the first infantry wave went over the top - seven minutes that gave the Turks plenty of time to return to their machine guns . . . . . despite the obvious futility of the situation, the whistle blew, 150 young Australians went over the top, and all were essentially cut down. Two minutes later, another 150 were torn apart my machine guns. An official order to stop the attack did not occur until after the third wave also went over the top and to their demise.

By the end of the year, the Allied forces pulled out of Gallipoli. 131,000 men died on both sides during the battle, with a further 260,000 wounded. The Ottomans gained a newfound sense of strength, while the Australians and New Zealanders felt their first real sense of dissatisfaction with the British Empire. After three more years of fighting on the Western Front, those two nations would really begin to forge their own ways forward.

As already mentioned, this battle has taken on almost mythic proportions down under in Australia and New Zealand. Over here in North America, the best we'll ever learn about Gallipoli is through the 1981 movie with the same name starring Mel Gibson. It's not a horrible movie in any respect, and it does play up the horror at the Battle of the Nek . . . . . but y'know, movies'll only get you so far. And this is the kind of story that really needs to get out further . . .


(Anzac, The Landing 1915 by George Lambert)
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