title: Gog and Magog

text: The conflation of Gog and Magog with the legend of Alexander and the Iron Gates was disseminated throughout the Near East in the early centuries of the Christian and Islamic era. They appear in the Quran in chapter Al-Kahf as Yajuj and Majuj (Arabic: ; "Yaʾjūj wa-Maʾjūj"), primitive and immoral tribes that were separated and barriered off by Dhul-Qarnayn ("He of the Two Horns") who is mentioned in the Quran as a great righteous ruler and conqueror. Some contemporary Muslim historians and geographers regarded the Vikings as the emergence of Gog and Magog.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The names are mentioned together in Ezekiel chapter 38, where Gog is an individual and Magog is his land. The meaning of the name Gog remains uncertain, and in any case, the author of the Ezekiel prophecy seems to attach no particular importance to it. Efforts have been made to identify him with various individuals, notably Gyges, a king of Lydia in the early 7th century BC, but many scholars do not believe he is related to any historical person.


title: Gog and Magog

text: In Genesis 10 Magog is described as a son of Japheth, grandson of Noah, although there is no mention there of a person named Gog. The name Magog itself is of obscure origin. It is often associated with Assyrian "mat-Gugu", "Land of Gyges", i.e., Lydia. Alternatively, Gog may be derived from Magog rather than the other way round, and "Magog" may be code for Babylon.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The form "Gog and Magog" may have emerged as shorthand for "Gog and/of the land of Magog", based on their usage in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. An example of this combined form in Hebrew ("Gog u-Magog") has been found, but its context is unclear, being preserved only in a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls. In Revelation, Gog and Magog together are the hostile nations of the world. Gog or Goug the Reubenite occurs in 1 Chronicles , but he appears to have no connection with the Gog of Ezekiel or Magog of Genesis.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The Biblical "Gog and Magog" possibly gave derivation of the name Gogmagog, a legendary British giant. A later corrupted folk rendition in print altered the tradition around Gogmagog and Corineus with two giants Gog and Magog, with whom the Guildhall statues came to be identified.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The Book of Ezekiel records a series of visions received by the prophet Ezekiel, a priest of Solomon's Temple, who was among the captives


title: Gog and Magog

text: during the Babylonian exile. The exile, he tells his fellow captives, is God's punishment on Israel for turning away, but God will restore his people to Jerusalem when they return to him. After this message of reassurance, chapters , the Gog oracle, tell how Gog of Magog and his hordes will threaten the restored Israel but will be destroyed, after which God will establish a new Temple and dwell with his people for a period of lasting peace (chapters 40–48).


title: Gog and Magog

text: "Son of man, direct your face against Gog, of the land of Magog, the prince, leader of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy concerning him. Say: Thus said the Lord: Behold, I am against you, Gog, the prince, leader of Meshech and Tubal ... Persia, Cush and Put will be with you ... also Gomer with all its troops, and Beth Togarmah from the far north with all its troops—the many nations with you."


title: Gog and Magog

text: Internal evidence indicates that the Gog oracle was composed substantially later than the chapters around it. Of Gog's allies, Meshech and Tubal were 7th-century BC kingdoms in central Anatolia north of Israel, Persia towards the east, Cush (Ethiopia) and Put (Libya) to the south; Gomer is the Cimmerians, a nomadic people north of the Black Sea, and Beth Togarmah was on the border of Tubal. The confederation thus represents a multinational alliance surrounding Israel. "Why the prophet's gaze should have focused on these particular nations is unclear," comments Biblical scholar Daniel I. Block, but their remoteness and reputation for violence and mystery possibly "made Gog and his confederates perfect symbols of the archetypal enemy, rising against God and his people". One explanation is that the Gog alliance, a blend of the "Table of Nations" in Genesis 10 and Tyre's trading partners in Ezekiel 27, with Persia added, was cast in the role of end-time enemies of Israel by means of Isaiah 66:19, which is another text of eschatological foretelling.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Although the prophecy refers to Gog as an enemy in some future, it is not clear if the confrontation is meant to occur in a final "end of days" since the Hebrew term "aḥarit ha-yamim" () may merely mean "latter days", and is open to interpretation. Twentieth-century scholars have used the term to denote the eschaton in a malleable sense, not necessarily meaning final days, or tied to the Apocalypse. Still, the Utopia of chapters 40–48 can be spoken of in the parlance of "true eschatological character, given that it is a product of "cosmic conflict" described in the immediately preceding Gog chapters.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Over the next few centuries Jewish tradition changed Ezekiel's Gog "from" Magog into Gog "and" Magog. The process, and the shifting geography of Gog and Magog, can be traced through the literature of the period. The 3rd book of the Sibylline Oracles, for example, which originated in Egyptian Judaism in the middle of the 2nd century BC, changes Ezekiel's "Gog from Magog" to "Gog and Magog", links their fate with up to eleven other nations, and places them "in the midst of Aethiopian rivers"; this seems a strange location, but ancient geography did sometimes place Ethiopia next to Persia or even India. The passage has a highly uncertain text, with manuscripts varying in their groupings of the letters of the Greek text into words, leading to different readings; one group of manuscripts ("group Y") links them with the "Marsians and Dacians", in eastern Europe, amongst others.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The Book of Jubilees, from about the same time, makes three references to either Gog or Magog: in the first, Magog is a descendant of Noah, as in Genesis 10; in the second, Gog is a region next to Japheth's borders; and in the third, a portion of Japheth's land is assigned to Magog. The 1st-century "Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum", which retells Biblical history from Adam to Saul, is notable for listing and naming seven of Magog's sons, and mentions his "thousands" of descendants. The Samaritan Torah and the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible made during the last few centuries of the pre-Christian era) occasionally introduce the name of Gog where the Hebrew original has something else, or use Magog where the Hebrew has Gog, indicating that the names were interchangeable.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The anti-Roman Bar Kokhba revolt in the 2nd century AD looked to a human leader as the promised messiah, but after its failure Jews began to conceive of the messianic age in supernatural terms: first would come a forerunner, the Messiah ben Joseph, who would defeat Israel's enemies, identified as Gog and Magog, to prepare the way for the Messiah ben David; then the dead would rise, divine judgement would be handed out, and the righteous would be rewarded.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The aggadah, homiletic and non-legalistic exegetical texts in the classical rabbinic literature of Judaism, treat Gog and Magog as two names for the same nation who will come against Israel in the final war. The rabbis associated no specific nation or territory with them beyond a location to the north of Israel, but the great Jewish scholar Rashi identified the Christians as their allies and said God would thwart their plan to kill all Israel.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Chapters 19:11–21:8 of the Book of Revelation, dating from the end of the 1st century AD, tells how Satan is to be imprisoned for a thousand years, and how, on his release, he will rally "the nations in the four corners of the Earth, Gog and Magog", to a final battle with Christ and his saints:


title: Gog and Magog

text: When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the Earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle. In number they are like the sand on the seashore.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Two chapters of the Quran, "Al Kahf" and "Al-Anbiya", discuss Gog and Magog. In the Quran Yajuj and Majuj (Gog and Magog) are suppressed by Dhul-Qarnayn "the two-horned one." Dhul-Qarnayn, having journeyed to the ends of the world, meets "a people who scarcely understood a word" who seek his help in building a barrier that will separate them from the people of Yajuj and Majuj who "do great mischief on earth". He agrees to build it for them, but warns that when the time comes (Last Age), Allah will remove the barrier.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The early Muslim traditions were summarised by Zakariya al-Qazwini (d. 1283) in two popular works called the Cosmography and the Geography. Gog and Magog, he says, live near to the sea that encircles the Earth and can be counted only by God; this sea is claimed to be the Caspian sea, Black sea or the Sea of Azov. They are human, but only half the height of a normal man, with small eyes almost like the mongols, with claws instead of nails, and a hairy tail and huge hairy ears which they use as mattress and cover for sleeping. They dig into their wall each day until they almost break through. They break for the night saying, "Tomorrow we will finish", but each night God restores it. Then one day, as they stop digging for the night, one will say, "Tomorrow we will finish, God Willing", and in the morning, it is not restored as with every night. When they do break through, they will be so numerous that, "Their vanguard is in Syria and their rear in Khorasan".


title: Gog and Magog

text: Various nations and peoples in history were identified as Ya'juj and Ma'juj. At one point, it was the Turks, who threatened Baghdad and northern Iran; later, when the Mongols destroyed Baghdad in 1258, it was they who were Gog and Magog. The wall dividing them from civilized peoples was normally placed towards today's Armenia and Azerbaijan, but in the year 842 the Caliph Al-Wathiq had a dream in which he saw that it had been breached, and sent an official named Sallam to investigate (this may be related to Ergenekon). Sallam returned a little over two years later and reported that he had seen the wall and also the tower where Dhul Qarnayn had left his building equipment, and all was still intact. It is not entirely clear what Sallam saw, but he may have reached Derbent in the Caucuses or the Jade Gate and the westernmost customs point on the border of China. Somewhat later the 14th-century traveller Ibn Battuta reported that the wall was sixty days' travel from the city of Zeitun, which is on the coast of China; the translator notes that Ibn Battuta has confused the Great Wall of China with that built by Dhul-Qarnayn.


title: Gog and Magog

text: According to Shia sources, Yajooj and Majooj are not from the Children of Adam (the human race). However, in other sources, they're described as small-eyed humans. Al-Kafi, one of their primary collections of ahadith, states that it has been narrated from Ibn Abbas that when he asked Ali about the "creatures", he responded by saying God has created "1,200 species on the land, 1,200 species in the sea, 70 species from the Children of Adam and the people are the Children of Adam except for the Yajooj and Majooj".


title: Gog and Magog

text: This is in contradiction with many reports in Sunni sources, including those in Sahih Al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, which indicate they will indeed be from the Children of Adam, and this is the belief of the overwhelming majority of Islamic scholars. The "Abbasid orthodoxy" believed the Ilkhanate Mongol invaders who laid siege to and then sacked Baghdad, were Gog and Magog.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Various modern scholars of history and geography regarded the Vikings and their descendants as Gog and Magog, since the unknown group from Scandinavia had made their sudden and considerable entry into the history of Europe. Viking travelers and colonists were seen at many points in history as violent raiders. Many historical documents suggest that their conquests of other territories was retaliation in response to the encroachment upon tribal lands by Christian missionaries, and perhaps by the Saxon Wars prosecuted by Charlemagne and his kin to the south. Researches of professors and philosophers such as Allama Muhammad Iqbal, Syeed Abul Ala Mawdudi, who played important roles in British and South Asian politics, and American academic Abu Ammaar Yasir Qadhi and Caribbean eschatologist Imran N. Hosein, compare the languages, behaviors and sexual activities of the tribes of Gog and Magog with those of Vikings.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Some scholars further attempt to relate the last portion of the interpretation of Yajuj and Majuj to the Lake of Tiberias, currently known as the Sea of Galilee, the Earth's lowest freshwater lake, and the Dead Sea.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Historian and exegete Ibn Kathir mentioned similar theories in his book "Al-Bidaya wa'l-Nihaya" and mentions “Gog and Magog are two groups of Turks, descended from Yafith (Japheth), the father of the Turks, one of the sons of Noah.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (d.1908), the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement, identified Gog and Magog with the European powers that had emerged from the Slavic and Germanic peoples respectively, with particular reference to their political duplicity and shattering of world peace. Ahmadiyya exegeses draw upon the etymological connection of the Arabic cognate "Yaʾjūj wa-Maʾjūj" with the underlying themes of "blazing fire", "hastiness" and "boiling water" to what is viewed as the superlative industrial use of fire and steam by these peoples and to their restless political character. According to these teachings, the conflict between Russia and the United States as two superpowers, or the militant rivalry between the communist and capitalist systems and their impact over the nations of the world, is thus seen as having occurred in accordance with prophecies concerning Gog and Magog. These powers cannot be defeated through military force and are to be overcome through prayer and divine intervention. Islam is then seen as that which alone would succeed in bringing people of different nations together as per the Quran ().


title: Gog and Magog

text: The 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus equated Magog with the Scythians in "Antiquities of the Jews", but he never mentioned Gog. In another work, Josephus recounts that the Alans (whom he calls a Scythian tribe) were given passage by the Hyrcanian king, a warder of an iron gate built by Alexander. By the time of Josephus, Alexander was already a Jewish folk hero. However, the earliest fusion of Alexander's gate and the apocalyptic nations of Gog and Magog is a product of late antiquity, in what is known as the "Syriac Legend of Alexander".


title: Gog and Magog

text: In the Syriac "Alexander Legend" dating to 629–630, Gog (, gwg) and Magog (ܵ, mgwg) appear as kings of Hunnish nations. Written by a Christian based in Mesopotamia, the "Legend" is considered the first work to connect the Gates with the idea that Gog and Magog are destined to play a role in the apocalypse. The legend claims that Alexander carved prophecies on the face of the Gate, marking a date for when these Huns, consisting of 24 nations, will breach the Gate and subjugate the greater part of the world.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The "Pseudo-Methodius", written originally in Syriac, is considered the source of the Gog and Magog tale incorporated into Western versions of the Alexander Romance. The earlier-dated Syriac "Alexander Legend" contains a somewhat different treatment of the Gog and Magog material, which passed into the lost Arabic version, or the Ethiopic and later Oriental versions of the Alexander romance.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The "Pseudo-Methodius" (7th century) is the first source in the Christian tradition for a new element: two mountains moving together to narrow the corridor, which was then sealed with a gate against Gog and Magog. This idea is also in the Quran and found its way in the Western Alexander Romance.


title: Gog and Magog

text: This Gog and Magog legend is not found in earlier versions of the Alexander romance of Pseudo-Callisthenes, whose oldest manuscript dates to the 3rd century, but an interpolation into recensions around the 8th century. In the latest and longest Greek version are described the Unclean Nations, which include the Goth and Magoth as their kings, and whose people engage in the habit of eating worms, dogs, human cadavers and fetuses. They were allied to Belsyrians (Bebrykes, of Bithynia in modern-day North Turkey), and sealed beyond the "Breasts of the North", a pair of mountains fifty days' march away towards the north.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Gog and Magog appear in somewhat later Old French versions of the romance. In the verse "Roman d'Alexandre", Branch III, of (c. 1170), Gog and Magog ("Gos et Margos", "Got et Margot") were vassals to Porus, king of India, providing an auxiliary force of 400,000 men. Routed by Alexander, they escaped through a defile in the mountains of Tus (or Turs), and were sealed by the wall erected there, to last until the advent of the Antichrist. Branch IV of the poetic cycle tells that the task of guarding Gog and Magog, as well as the rule of Syria and Persia was assigned to Antigonus, one of Alexander's successors.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Gog and Magog also appear in Thomas de Kent's "Roman de toute chevalerie" (c. 1180), where they are portrayed as cave-dwellers who consume human flesh. A condensed account occurs in a derivative work, the Middle English "King Alisaunder" (vv. 5938–6287). In the 13th-century French "Roman d'Alexandre en prose", Alexander has an encounter with cannibals who have taken over the role of Gog and Magog. This is a case of imperfect transmission, since the "prose Alexander"'s source, the Latin work by Archpriest Leo of Naples known as "Historia de Preliis", does mention "Gogh et Macgogh", at least in some manuscripts.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The Gog and Magog are not only human flesh-eaters, but illustrated as men "a notably beaked nose" in examples such as the "Sawley map", an important example of "mappa mundi". Gog and Magog caricaturised as figures with hooked noses on a miniature depicting their attack of the Holy City, found in a manuscript of the "Apocalypse" in Anglo-Norman.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Early Christian writers (e.g. Eusebius) frequently identified Gog and Magog with the Romans and their emperor. After the Empire became Christian, Ambrose (d. 397) identified Gog with the Goths, Jerome (d. 420) with the Scythians, and Jordanes (died c. 555) said that Goths, Scythians and Amazons were all the same; he also cited Alexander's gates in the Caucasus. The Byzantine writer Procopius said it was the Huns Alexander had locked out, and a Western monk named Fredegar seems to have Gog and Magog in mind in his description of savage hordes from beyond Alexander's gates who had assisted the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (610–641) against the Muslim Saracens.


title: Gog and Magog

text: As one nomadic people followed another on the Eurasian steppes, so the identification of Gog and Magog shifted. In the 9th and 10th centuries these kingdoms were identified by some with the lands of the Khazars, a Turkic people whose leaders had converted to Judaism and whose empire dominated Central Asia–the 9th-century monk Christian of Stavelot referred to Gazari, said of the Khazars that they were "living in the lands of Gog and Magog" and noted that they were "circumcised and observing all [the laws of] Judaism". Arab traveler ibn Fadlan also reported of this belief, writing around 921 he recorded that "Some hold the opinion that Gog and Magog are the Khazars".


title: Gog and Magog

text: After the Khazars came the Mongols, seen as a mysterious and invincible horde from the east who destroyed Muslim empires and kingdoms in the early 13th century; kings and popes took them for the legendary Prester John, marching to save Christians from the Muslim Saracens, but when they entered Poland and Hungary and annihilated Christian armies a terrified Europe concluded that they were "Magogoli", the offspring of Gog and Magog, released from the prison Alexander had constructed for them and heralding Armageddon.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Europeans in Medieval China reported findings from their travels to the Mongol Empire. Some accounts and maps began to place the "Caspian Mountains", and Gog and Magog, just outside the Great Wall of China. The "Tartar Relation", an obscure account of Friar Carpini's 1240s journey to Mongolia, is unique in alleging that these Caspian Mountains in Mongolia, "where the Jews called Gog and Magog by their fellow countrymen are said to have been shut in by Alexander", were moreover purported by the Tartars to be magnetic, causing all iron equipment and weapons to fly off toward the mountains on approach. In 1251, the French friar André de Longjumeau informed his king that the Mongols originated from a desert further east, and an apocalyptic Gog and Magog ("Got and Margoth") people dwelled further beyond, confined by the mountains. In the map of Sharif Idrisi, the land of Gog and Magog is drawn in the northeast corner (beyond Northeast Asia) and enclosed. Some medieval European world maps also show the location of the lands of Gog and Magog in the far northeast of Asia (and the northeast corner of the world).


title: Gog and Magog

text: In fact, Gog and Magog were held by the Mongol to be their ancestors, at least by some segment of the population. As traveler and Friar Riccoldo da Monte di Croce put it in c. 1291, "They say themselves that they are descended from Gog and Magog: and on this account they are called "Mogoli", as if from a corruption of "Magogoli"". Marco Polo, traveling when the initial terror had subsided, places Gog and Magog among the Tartars in Tenduc, but then claims that the names Gog and Magog are translations of the place-names Ung and Mungul, inhabited by the Ung and Mongols respectively.


title: Gog and Magog

text: An explanation offered by Orientalist Henry Yule was that Marco Polo was only referring to the "Rampart of Gog and Magog", a name for the Great Wall of China. Friar André's placement of Gog and Magog far east of Mongolia has been similarly explained.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Some time around the 12th century, the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel came to be identified with Gog and Magog; possibly the first to do so was Petrus Comestor in "Historica Scholastica" (c. 1169–1173), and he was indeed a far greater influence than others before him, although the idea had been anticipated by the aforementioned Christian of Stavelot, who noted that the Khazhars, to be identified with Gog and Magog, was one of seven tribes of the Hungarians and had converted to Judaism.


title: Gog and Magog

text: While the confounding Gog and Magog as confined Jews was becoming commonplace, some, like Riccoldo or Vincent de Beauvais remained skeptics, and distinguished the Lost Tribes from Gog and Magog. As noted, Riccoldo had reported a Mongol folk-tradition that they were descended from Gog and Magog. He also addressed many minds (Westerners or otherwise) being credulous of the notion that Mongols might be Captive Jews, but after weighing the pros and cons, he concluded this was an open question.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The Flemish Franciscan friar William of Rubruck, who was first-hand witness to Alexander's supposed wall in Derbent on the shores of the Caspian Sea in 1254, identified the people the walls were meant to fend off only vaguely as "wild tribes" or "desert nomads", but one researcher made the inference Rubruck must have meant Jews, and that he was speaking in the context of "Gog and Magog". Confined Jews were later to be referred to as "Red Jews" ("die roten Juden") in German-speaking areas; a term first used in a Holy Grail epic dating to the 1270s, in which Gog and Magog were two mountains enclosing these people.


title: Gog and Magog

text: The author of the "Travels of Sir John Mandeville", a 14th-century best-seller, said he had found these Jews in Central Asia where as Gog and Magog they had been imprisoned by Alexander, plotting to escape and join with the Jews of Europe to destroy Christians.


title: Gog and Magog

text: In the Borgia map, a copper-engraved world map probably produced in Southern Germany , the most eastern part contains two fortified regions depicting Gog and Magog, with the following Latin inscriptions:


title: Gog and Magog

text: The Persian king Artaxerxes (either Artaxerxes I or Artaxerxes II, appearing in the Book of Ezra 7) was commonly confused in Medieval Europe with the Neo-Assyrian ruler Shalmaneser V, who according to 2 Kings 17 drove the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel into exile.


title: Gog and Magog

text: In the early 19th century, some Hasidic rabbis identified the French invasion of Russia under Napoleon as "The War of Gog and Magog". But as the century progressed, apocalyptic expectations receded as the populace in Europe began to adopt an increasingly secular worldview. This has not been the case in the United States, where a 2002 poll indicated that 59% of Americans believed the events predicted in the Book of Revelation would come to pass. During the Cold War the idea that Soviet Russia had the role of Gog gained popularity, since Ezekiel's words describing him as "prince of Meshek" – "rosh meshek" in Hebrew – sounded suspiciously like Russia and Moscow. Even some Russians took up the idea, apparently unconcerned by the implications ("Ancestors were found in the Bible, and that was enough"), as did Ronald Reagan.


title: Gog and Magog

text: Some post-Cold War millenarians still identify Gog with Russia, but they now tend to stress its allies among Islamic nations, especially Iran. For the most fervent, the countdown to Armageddon began with the return of the Jews to Israel, followed quickly by further signs pointing to the nearness of the final battle – nuclear weapons, European integration, Israel's reunification of Jerusalem in the Six Day War in 1967, and America's wars in Afghanistan and the Persian Gulf. According to an unconfirmed report, US President George W. Bush, in the prelude to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, told French President Jacques Chirac, "Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East." Bush is said to have continued, "This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase His people's enemies before a new age begins." Officials from the Bush Administration claim there is no record of this conversation and that making such references, "doesn't sound at all like Bush", and French officials on the call have similarly claimed to have not heard any such remarks.


title: Gog and Magog

text: In the Islamic apocalyptic tradition, the end of the world would be preceded by the release of Gog and Magog, whose destruction by God in a single night would usher in the Day of Resurrection. Reinterpretation did not generally continue after Classical times, but the needs of the modern world have produced a new body of apocalyptic literature in which Gog and Magog are identified as Communist Russia and China. One problem these writers have had to confront is the barrier holding Gog and Magog back, which is not to be found in the modern world: the answer varies, some writers saying that Gog and Magog were the Mongols and that the wall is now gone, others that both the wall and Gog and Magog are invisible.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The Gallipoli campaign was a military campaign in the First World War that took place on the Gallipoli peninsula (Gelibolu in modern Turkey), from 17 February 1915 to 9 January 1916. The Entente powers, Britain, France and Russia, sought to weaken the Ottoman Empire, one of the Central Powers, by taking control of the Ottoman straits. This would expose the Ottoman capital at Constantinople to bombardment by Allied battleships and cut it off from the Asian part of the empire. With Turkey defeated, the Suez Canal would be safe and a year-round Allied supply route could be opened through the Black Sea to warm-water ports in Russia.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The attempt by the Allied fleet to force a passage through the Dardanelles in February 1915 failed and was followed by an amphibious landing on the Gallipoli peninsula in April 1915. In January 1916, after eight months' fighting, with approximately 250,000 casualties on each side, the land campaign was abandoned and the invasion force withdrawn. It was a costly campaign for the Entente powers and the Ottoman Empire as well as for the sponsors of the expedition, especially the First Lord of the Admiralty (1911–1915), Winston Churchill. The campaign was considered a great Ottoman victory. In Turkey, it is regarded as a defining moment in the history of the state, a final surge in the defence of the motherland as the Ottoman Empire retreated. The struggle formed the basis for the Turkish War of Independence and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey eight years later, with Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who rose to prominence as a commander at Gallipoli, as founder and president.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The campaign is often considered to be the beginning of Australian and New Zealand national consciousness; 25 April, the anniversary of the landings, is known as Anzac Day, the most significant commemoration of military casualties and veterans in the two countries, surpassing Remembrance Day (Armistice Day).


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: On 29 October 1914, two former German warships, the Ottoman and , still under the command of German officers, conducted the Black Sea Raid, in which they bombarded the Russian port of Odessa and sank several ships. On 31 October, the Ottomans entered the war and began the Caucasus campaign against Russia. The British briefly bombarded forts in Gallipoli, invaded Mesopotamia and studied the possibility of forcing the Dardanelles.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Before the Dardanelles operation was conceived, the British had planned to conduct an amphibious invasion near Alexandretta on the Mediterranean, an idea originally presented by Boghos Nubar in 1914. This plan was made by the Secretary of State for War, Field Marshal Earl Kitchener, to sever the capital from Syria, Palestine and Egypt. Alexandretta was an area with a Christian population and was the strategic centre of the Ottoman railway network—its capture would cut the empire in two. Vice Admiral Sir Richard Peirse, Commander-in-Chief, East Indies, ordered Captain Frank Larkin of to Alexandretta on 13 December 1914. The and the French cruiser were also there. Kitchener was working on the plan in March 1915 and was the beginning of the British attempt to incite an Arab Revolt. The Alexandretta landing was abandoned because militarily it would have required more resources than France could allocate and politically France did not want the British operating in their sphere of influence, a position to which Britain had agreed in 1912.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: By late 1914, on the Western Front, the Franco–British counter-offensive of the First Battle of the Marne had ended and the Belgians, British and French had suffered many casualties in the First Battle of Ypres in Flanders. The war of manoeuvre had ended and been replaced by trench warfare. The German Empire and Austria-Hungary closed the overland trade routes between Britain and France in the west and Russia in the east. The White Sea in the arctic north and the Sea of Okhotsk in the Far East were icebound in winter and distant from the Eastern Front; the Baltic Sea was blockaded by the "Kaiserliche Marine" (Imperial German Navy) and the entrance to the Black Sea through the Dardanelles was controlled by the Ottoman Empire. While the Ottomans remained neutral, supplies could still be sent to Russia through the Dardanelles but prior to the Ottoman entry into the war, the straits had been closed; in November the Ottomans began to mine the waterway.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The French Minister of Justice, Aristide Briand, proposed in November to attack the Ottoman Empire but this was rejected and an attempt by the British to bribe the Ottomans to join the Allied side also failed. Later that month, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed a naval attack on the Dardanelles, based in part on erroneous reports of Ottoman troop strength. Churchill wanted to use a large number of obsolete battleships, which could not operate against the German High Seas Fleet, in a Dardanelles operation, with a small occupation force provided by the army. It was hoped that an attack on the Ottomans would also draw Bulgaria and Greece (formerly Ottoman possessions) into the war on the Allied side. On 2 January 1915, Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia appealed to Britain for assistance against the Ottomans, who were campaigning in Caucasus. Planning began for a naval demonstration in the Dardanelles, to divert Ottoman troops from Caucasia.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: On 17 February 1915, a British seaplane from flew a reconnaissance sortie over the Straits. Two days later, the first attack on the Dardanelles began when a strong Anglo-French task force, including the British dreadnought , began a long-range bombardment of Ottoman coastal artillery batteries. The British had intended to use eight aircraft from "Ark Royal" to spot for the bombardment but harsh conditions rendered all but one of these, a Short Type 136, unserviceable. A period of bad weather slowed the initial phase but by 25 February the outer forts had been reduced and the entrance cleared of mines. After this, Royal Marines were landed to destroy guns at Kum Kale and Seddülbahir, while the naval bombardment shifted to batteries between Kum Kale and Kephez.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Frustrated by the mobility of the Ottoman batteries, which evaded the Allied bombardments and threatened the minesweepers sent to clear the Straits, Churchill began pressuring the naval commander, Admiral Sackville Carden, to increase the fleet's efforts. Carden drew up fresh plans and on 4 March sent a cable to Churchill, stating that the fleet could expect to arrive in Istanbul within 14 days. A sense of impending victory was heightened by the interception of a German wireless message that revealed the Ottoman Dardanelles forts were running out of ammunition. When the message was relayed to Carden, it was agreed the main attack would be launched on or around 17 March. Carden, suffering from stress, was placed on the sick list by the medical officer and command was taken over by Admiral John de Robeck.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: On the morning of 18 March 1915, the Allied fleet, comprising with an array of cruisers and destroyers, began the main attack against the narrowest point of the Dardanelles, where the straits are wide. Despite some damage to the Allied ships engaging the forts by Ottoman return fire, minesweepers were ordered along the straits. In the Ottoman official account, by 2:00 p.m. "all telephone wires were cut, all communications with the forts were interrupted, some of the guns had been knocked out ... in consequence the artillery fire of the defence had slackened considerably". The struck a mine, causing her to capsize in two minutes, with just 75 survivors out of a total crew of 718. Minesweepers, manned by civilians, retreated under Ottoman artillery fire, leaving the minefields largely intact. and struck mines and "Irresistible" was sunk, with most of her surviving crew rescued; "Inflexible" was badly damaged and withdrawn. There was confusion during the battle about the cause of the damage; some participants blamed torpedoes. was sent to rescue "Irresistible" but was disabled from an artillery shell, struck a mine, and was evacuated, eventually sinking.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The French battleships and sailed through a new line of mines placed secretly by the ten days before, and were also damaged. The losses forced de Robeck to sound the "general recall" to protect what remained of his force. During the planning of the campaign, naval losses had been anticipated and mainly obsolete battleships, unfit to face the German fleet, had been sent. Some of the senior naval officers like the commander of "Queen Elizabeth", Commodore Roger Keyes, felt that they had come close to victory, believing that the Ottoman guns had almost run out of ammunition, but the views of de Robeck, the First Sea Lord Jackie Fisher and others prevailed. Allied attempts to force the straits using naval power were terminated, due to the losses and bad weather. Planning to capture the Turkish defences by land, to open the way for the ships, began. Two Allied submarines tried to traverse the Dardanelles but were lost to mines and the strong currents.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: After the failure of the naval attacks, troops were assembled to eliminate the Ottoman mobile artillery, which was preventing the Allied minesweepers from clearing the way for the larger vessels. Kitchener appointed General Sir Ian Hamilton to command the of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF). Soldiers from the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) were encamped in Egypt, undergoing training prior to being sent to France. The Australian and New Zealand troops were formed into the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), commanded by Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood, comprising the volunteer 1st Australian Division and the New Zealand and Australian Division. The ANZAC troops were joined by the regular 29th Division and the Royal Naval Division. The French "Corps expéditionnaire d'Orient" (Orient Expeditionary Corps), initially consisting of two brigades within one division, was subsequently placed under Hamilton's command.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Over the following month, Hamilton prepared his plan and the British and French divisions joined the Australians in Egypt. Hamilton chose to concentrate on the southern part of the Gallipoli peninsula at Cape Helles and Seddülbahir, where an unopposed landing was expected. The Allies initially discounted the fighting ability of the Ottoman soldiers. The "naïveté" of the Allied planners was illustrated by a leaflet that was issued to the British and Australians while they were still in Egypt,


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The underestimation of Ottoman military potential stemmed from a "sense of superiority" among the Allies, because of the decline of the Ottoman Empire and its poor performance in Libya during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912 and the Balkan Wars of 1912 and 1913. Allied intelligence failed to adequately prepare for the campaign, in some cases relying on information gained from Egyptian travel guides. The troops for the assault were loaded on transports in the order they were to disembark, causing a long delay which meant that many troops, including the French at Mudros, were forced to detour to Alexandria to embark on the ships that would take them into battle. A five-week delay until the end of April ensued, during which the Ottomans strengthened their defences on the peninsula; although bad weather during March and April might have delayed the landings anyway, preventing supply and reinforcement. Following preparations in Egypt, Hamilton and his headquarters staff arrived at Mudros on 10 April. The ANZAC Corps departed Egypt in early April and assembled on the island of Lemnos in Greece on 12 April, where a small garrison had been established in early March and practice landings were undertaken. The British 29th Division departed for Mudros on 7 April and the Royal Naval Division rehearsed on the island of Skyros, after arriving there on 17 April. That day, the British submarine tried to run the straits but hit a submarine net, ran aground and was shelled by a Turkish fort, killing its commander, Lieutenant Commander Theodore S. Brodie and six of his crew; the survivors were forced to surrender. The Allied fleet and British and French troops assembled at Mudros, ready for the landings but poor weather from 19 March grounded Allied aircraft for nine days and on 24 days only a partial programme of reconnaissance flights were possible.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The Ottoman force prepared to repel a landing on either side of the Straits was the 5th Army. This force, which initially consisted of five divisions with another en route, was a conscript force, commanded by Otto Liman von Sanders. Many of the senior officers in the 5th Army were also German. Ottoman commanders and senior German officers debated the best means of defending the peninsula. All agreed that the best defence was to hold the high ground on the ridges of the peninsula. There was disagreement as to where the enemy would land and hence where to concentrate forces. Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal was familiar with the Gallipoli peninsula from his operations against Bulgaria in the Balkan Wars and forecast that Cape Helles (the southern tip of the peninsula) and Gaba Tepe were the likely areas for landing.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Mustafa Kemal believed that the British would use their naval power to command the land from every side at the tip of the peninsula; at Gaba Tepe, the short distance to the eastern coast meant that the Allies could easily reach the Narrows (the right-angled bend in the middle of the Dardanelles). Sanders considered Besika Bay on the Asiatic coast to be the most vulnerable to invasion, since the terrain was easier to cross and was convenient to attack the most important Ottoman batteries guarding the straits and a third of the 5th Army was assembled there. Two divisions were concentrated at Bulair at the north end of the Gallipoli peninsula, to protect supply and communication lines to the defences further down the peninsula. The 19th Division (Kemal) and the 9th Division were placed along the Aegean coast and at Cape Helles on the tip of the peninsula. Sanders kept the bulk of the Ottoman forces inland in reserve, leaving a minimum of troops guarding the coast. The 3rd Division and a cavalry brigade arrived from Istanbul in early April, bringing the front line strength of the Ottomans to which Sanders concentrated in three groups. A maximum effort to improve land and sea communications was ordered, to move reinforcements swiftly to danger points; troops moved at night to avoid Allied air reconnaissance. Sanders' strategy was opposed by Ottoman commanders, including Kemal, who believed that the defenders were too widely dispersed to defeat the invasion on the beaches. Kemal thought Sander's classic strategy was suitable when there was strategic depth to the front, but Gallipoli did not offer that. His commander Esat Passa was not forceful enough in making the objection. Sanders was certain that a rigid system of defence would fail and that the only hope of success lay in the mobility of the three groups, particularly the 19th Division near Boghali, in general reserve, ready to move to Bulair, Gaba Tepe or the Asiatic shore.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The time needed by the British to organise the landings meant that Sanders, Colonel Hans Kannengiesser and other German officers, supported by Esat Pasha (III Corps) had more time to prepare their defences. Sanders later noted, "the British allowed us four good weeks of respite for all this work before their great disembarkation ... This respite just sufficed for the most indispensable measures to be taken". Roads were constructed, small boats built to carry troops and equipment across the Narrows, beaches were wired and improvised mines were constructed from torpedo warheads. Trenches and gun emplacements were dug along the beaches and troops went on route marches to avoid lethargy. Kemal, whose 19th Division was vital to the defensive scheme, observed the beaches and awaited signs of an invasion from his post at Boghali, near Maidos. The Ottomans created Ottoman Aviation Squadrons with German assistance and had four aircraft operating around Çanakkale in February, conducting reconnaissance and army co-operation sorties. From 11 April, an Ottoman aircraft made frequent flights over Mudros, keeping watch on the assembly of the British naval force and an airfield was established near Gallipoli.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The Allies planned to land and secure the northern shore, capture the Ottoman forts and artillery batteries for a naval force to advance through the Narrows and the Sea of Marmara towards Istanbul. Scheduled for 23 April but postponed until 25 April due to bad weather, landings were to be made at five beaches on the peninsula. The 29th Division was to land at Helles on the tip of the peninsula and then advance upon the forts at Kilitbahir. The ANZACs, with the 3rd Australian Infantry Brigade spearheading the assault, were to land north of Gaba Tepe on the Aegean coast, from where they could advance across the peninsula, cut off the Ottoman troops in Kilitbahir and stop reinforcements from reaching Cape Helles. This sector of the Gallipoli Peninsula became known as ANZAC; the area held by the British and French became known as the Helles sector or Helles. The French made a diversionary landing at Kum Kale on the Asian shore before re-embarking to hold the eastern area of the Helles sector. The Royal Naval Division simulated landing preparations at Bulair and a New Zealand officer, Bernard Freyberg, swam ashore under fire to light flares to distract the defenders from the real landings; Freyberg was later awarded the Distinguished Service Order.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Arrangements for naval gunfire support to the landings had originally included bombarding the beaches and approaches but was changed to engagement of the ridges during the landings, with the beaches only to be shelled prior to the landings. No decision was ultimately made on the issue of close-support and it was left to the initiative of ships' captains. A reluctance to approach the shore later affected the landings at 'V' and 'W' beach where some of the worst losses among the infantry occurred, while naval gunfire was of some assistance at 'S', 'X' and ANZAC. Even then its effectiveness was limited by the initial confusion ashore, the broken terrain, thick vegetation and the lack of observation. Kitchener had ruled that air requirements must be met by the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) and the Allies employed a small force of seaplanes and other aircraft from 3 Squadron, RNAS (Commander Charles Samson) which arrived at Tenedos at the end of March. The aircraft were unopposed by the small Ottoman air force at first and during the planning, the force had been used to provide aerial reconnaissance, although this ultimately proved inadequate to meet the Allies' intelligence needs and make up for the lack of adequate maps. After the landings, Allied aircraft conducted photographic reconnaissance, observed naval gunfire, reported on Ottoman troop movements and conducted a small number of bombing raids.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Allocated the northern landing, Birdwood's force included the 1st Australian Division (Major General William Bridges) and the New Zealand and Australian Division (Major General Sir Alexander Godley), about The force was to land and advance inland to cut the lines of communication to the Ottoman forces in the south. The 1st Australian Division would land first, with the 3rd Infantry Brigade leading as a covering force moving inland to establish positions on Gun Ridge. The 2nd Infantry Brigade was to follow and to capture the higher ground on Sari Bair. The 1st Infantry Brigade would land last as the divisional reserve. The New Zealand and Australian Division was to come ashore and form up to advance across the peninsula. The force was to assemble at night and land at dawn to surprise the defenders and on the evening of 24 April, the covering force embarked on battleships and destroyers, with the follow on forces in on transports. The troops would disembark from the transports into ships' boats and be towed close to the shore by steamboats and then row ashore.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: At around 2:00 a.m., an Ottoman observer on a hill at Ariburnu saw a multitude of ships far on the horizon. Captain Faik, in charge of a company from the 27th Infantry Regiment verified it with his binoculars and immediately informed his commanding officer, Ismet Bey, at Kabatepe. By 3:00 a.m., the moon was covered and the ships were no longer visible to the Ottomans. The Ottomans were not sure if this was a real landing or a diversion. Once the intense artillery was heard, at around 6:00 a.m. the two remaining battalions of the 27th Infantry Regiment were ordered to make their way to Ariburnu urgently. Sanders had left his HQ and was at Bulair, distracted by the few Allied ships that had appeared; he had been confident that this was where the landings would take place. For two days, he remained at Bulair with the 5th Division waiting for the real landing. His absence created problems in chain of command and delays in decision making which negated his defence scheme that relied on rapid movement of troops.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: At 4:00 a.m. on the morning of 25 April the first wave of troops from the 3rd Brigade began moving towards the shore on lighters and ships' boats. The covering force landed approximately too far north, in a bay just south of Ari Burnu, due to undetected currents or a navigational error. The landing was more difficult, over ground which rose steeply from the beaches, unlike the objective to the south, which was more open. The landing site was garrisoned by only two Ottoman companies but from positions on commanding ground the Ottomans inflicted numerous casualties on the Australians before being overcome. The broken terrain prevented a coordinated drive inland, with the Australians on unfamiliar ground and with inaccurate maps. In the maze of steep ravines, spurs and dense scrub, Australian parties that got forward quickly lost contact and were broken up into small groups. Some Australian troops reached the second ridge but fewer still reached their objectives and having become dispersed, the covering force could provide little support to the follow-up force.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The 1st and 2nd Brigades, then the New Zealand and Australian Division, landed on the beaches around Ari Burnu but became entangled, which took time to sort out. About four hours after the landings began, the bulk of the 1st Australian Division was ashore safely and its leading elements were pushing inland. By mid-morning Kemal had reorganised the defenders for a counter-attack on the commanding heights of Chunuk Bair and Sari Bair. The right flank of the small lodgement taken by the Australians was driven in at with most of being lost. During the afternoon and evening the left flank was pushed back from and the Nek. By evening, Bridges and Godley recommended re-embarkation; Birdwood agreed but after advice from the navy that re-embarkation was impossible, Hamilton ordered the troops dig-in instead. The Ottoman counter-attack was eventually repulsed and the Australians established a perimeter roughly from Walker's Ridge in the north to Shell Green in the south. ANZAC casualties on the first day numbered around killed or wounded. The failure to secure the high ground led to a tactical stalemate, with the landings contained by the defenders in a perimeter less than long.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The Australian submarine (Lieutenant Commander Henry Stoker) penetrated the Straits on the night of 24/25 April. As landings began at Cape Helles and ANZAC Cove at dawn on 25 April, "AE2" reached Chanak by 6:00 a.m. and torpedoed a Turkish gunboat believed to be a Peyk-i Şevket-class cruiser then evaded a destroyer. The submarine ran aground beneath a Turkish fort but the Ottoman gunners could not bring their guns to bear and "AE2" was manoeuvred free. Shortly after refloating, the periscope was sighted by a Turkish battleship firing over the peninsula at Allied landing sites and the ship ceased fire and withdrew. "AE2" advanced toward the Sea of Marmara and at Stoker decided to rest the boat on the seabed until nightfall. At around , "AE2" surfaced to recharge batteries and sent a wireless report to the fleet. The landing at Cape Helles was going well but the landing at Anzac Cove was not as successful and the Anzac commander, Lieutenant General Sir William Birdwood, contemplated the re-embarkation of his troops. The success of "AE2" was a consideration in Birdwood deciding to persist and reports about "AE2" were relayed to the soldiers ashore to improve morale. Stoker was ordered to "generally run amok" and with no enemies in sight, he sailed into the Sea of Marmara, where "AE2" cruised for five days to give the impression of greater numbers and made several attacks against Ottoman ships, which failed because of mechanical problems with the torpedoes.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The Helles landing was made by the 29th Division (Major General Aylmer Hunter-Weston). The division landed on five beaches in an arc about the tip of the peninsula, named 'S', 'V', 'W', 'X' and 'Y' Beaches from east to west. On 1 May, the 29th Indian Brigade (including 1/6th Gurkha Rifles) landed, took and secured Sari Bair above the landing beaches and was joined by 1/5th Gurkha Rifles and 2/10th Gurkha Rifles; the Zion Mule Corps landed at Helles on 27 April. At 'Y' Beach, during the first engagement, the First Battle of Krithia, the Allies landed unopposed and advanced inland. There were only a small number of defenders in the village but lacking orders to exploit the position, the 'Y' Beach commander withdrew his force to the beach. It was as close as the Allies ever came to capturing the village as the Ottomans brought up a battalion of the 25th Regiment, checking any further movement.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The main landings were made at 'V' Beach, beneath the old Seddülbahir fortress and at 'W' Beach, a short distance to the west on the other side of the Helles headland. The covering force of Royal Munster Fusiliers and Hampshires landed from a converted collier, , which was run aground beneath the fortress so that the troops could disembark along ramps. The Royal Dublin Fusiliers landed at 'V' Beach and the Lancashire Fusiliers at 'W' Beach in open boats, on a shore overlooked by dunes and obstructed with barbed wire. On both beaches the Ottoman defenders occupied good defensive positions and inflicted many casualties on the British infantry as they landed. Troops emerging one by one from sally ports on "River Clyde" were shot by machine-gunners at the Seddülbahir fort and of the first to disembark, reached the beach.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The Ottoman defenders were too few to defeat the landing but inflicted many casualties and contained the attack close to the shore. By the morning of 25 April, out of ammunition and with nothing but bayonets to meet the attackers on the slopes leading up from the beach to the heights of Chunuk Bair, the 57th Infantry Regiment received orders from Kemal "I do not order you to fight, I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die, other troops and commanders can come forward and take our places". Every man of the regiment was either killed or wounded.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: At 'W' Beach, thereafter known as Lancashire Landing, the Lancashires were able to overwhelm the defenders despite the loss of from . Six awards of the Victoria Cross were made among the Lancashires at 'W' Beach. A further six Victoria Crosses were awarded among the infantry and sailors at the 'V' Beach landing and three more were awarded the following day as they fought their way inland. Five squads of Ottoman infantry led by Sergeant Yahya distinguished themselves by repulsing several attacks on their hilltop position, the defenders eventually disengaging under cover of darkness. After the landings, so few men remained from the Dublin and Munster Fusiliers that they were amalgamated into The Dubsters. Only one Dubliner officer survived the landing, while of the who landed, just the Gallipoli campaign unscathed. After the landings, little was done by the Allies to exploit the situation, apart from a few limited advances inland by small groups of men. The Allied attack lost momentum and the Ottomans had time to bring up reinforcements and rally the small number of defending troops.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: On the afternoon of 27 April, the 19th Division, reinforced by six battalions from the 5th Division, counter-attacked the six Allied brigades at Anzac. With the support of naval gunfire, the Allies held back the Ottomans throughout the night. The following day the British were joined by French troops transferred from Kum Kale on the Asiatic shore to the right of the line near 'S' Beach at Morto Bay. On 28 April, the Allies fought the First Battle of Krithia to capture the village. Hunter-Weston made a plan which proved overly complex and was poorly communicated to the commanders in the field. The troops of the 29th Division were still exhausted and unnerved by the battles for the beaches and for Seddülbahir village, which was captured after much fighting on 26 April. The Ottoman defenders stopped the Allied advance halfway between the Helles headland and Krithia around having inflicted


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: As Ottoman reinforcements arrived, the possibility of a swift Allied victory on the peninsula disappeared and the fighting at Helles and Anzac became a battle of attrition. On 30 April, the Royal Naval Division (Major General Archibald Paris) landed. The same day, Kemal, believing that the Allies were on the verge of defeat, began moving troops forward through Wire Gulley, near the and Lone Pine. Eight battalions of reinforcements were dispatched from Istanbul a day later and that afternoon, Ottoman troops counter-attacked at Helles and Anzac. The Ottomans briefly broke through in the French sector but the attacks were repulsed by massed Allied machine-gun fire, which inflicted many casualties on the attackers. The following night, Birdwood ordered the New Zealand and Australian Division to attack from Russell's Top and Quinn's Post towards The Australian 4th Infantry Brigade (Colonel John Monash), the New Zealand Infantry Brigade and Royal Marines from the Chatham Battalion took part in the attack. Covered by a naval and artillery barrage, the troops advanced a short distance during the night but got separated in the dark. The attackers came under massed small-arms fire from their exposed left flank and were repulsed, having suffered about


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: On 30 April, the submarine "AE2" began to rise uncontrollably and surfaced near the , then dropped precipitously below the safe diving depth, then broke the surface again at the stern. "Sultanhisar" immediately fired on the submarine, puncturing the pressure hull. Stoker ordered the company to abandon ship, scuttled the submarine and the crew was taken prisoner. "AE2"s achievements showed that it was possible to force the Straits and soon Ottoman communications were badly disrupted by British and French submarine operations. On 27 April, (Lieutenant Commander Edward Boyle), entered the Sea of Marmara on a three-week patrol, which became one of the most successful Allied naval actions of the campaign, in which four ships were sunk, including the transport "Gul Djemal" which was carrying and a field battery to Gallipoli. While the quantity and value of the shipping sunk was minor, the effect on Ottoman communications and morale was significant; Boyle was awarded the Victoria Cross. Following the success of "AE2" and "E14", the French submarine attempted the passage on 1 May but struck a mine and was lost with all hands. (Several weeks earlier another French boat, , had been lost after running aground near Nagara Point.)


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: On 5 May, the 42nd (East Lancashire) Division was dispatched from Egypt. Believing Anzac to be secure, Hamilton moved the Australian 2nd Infantry Brigade and the New Zealand Infantry Brigade, along with field guns, to the Helles front as reserves for the Second Battle of Krithia. Involving a force of , it was the first general attack at Helles and was planned for daylight. French troops were to capture Kereves Dere and the British, Australians and New Zealanders were assigned Krithia and Achi Baba. After of artillery preparation, the assault began at mid-morning on 6 May. The British and French advanced along the Gully, Fir Tree, Krithia and Kereves spurs which were separated by deep gullies, fortified by the Ottomans. As the attackers advanced, they became separated when trying to outflank Ottoman strong points and found themselves in unfamiliar terrain. Under artillery and then machine-gun fire from Ottoman outposts that had not been spotted by British aerial reconnaissance, the attack was stopped; next day, reinforcements resumed the advance.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The attack continued on 7 May and four battalions of New Zealanders attacked up Krithia Spur on 8 May; with the 29th Division the attackers managed to reach a position just south of the village. Late in the afternoon, the Australian 2nd Brigade advanced quickly over open ground to the British front line. Amidst small arms and artillery-fire, the brigade charged towards Krithia and gained , about short of the objective, with Near Fir Tree Spur, the New Zealanders managed to get forward and link up with the Australians, although the British were held up and the French were exhausted, despite having occupied a point overlooking their objective. The attack was suspended and the Allies dug in, having failed to take Krithia or Achi Baba.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: A brief period of consolidation followed; the Allies had almost run out of ammunition, particularly for the artillery and both sides consolidated their defences. The Ottomans relieved troops opposite the Australian line, which was reinforced by the Australian Light Horse operating as infantry. Sporadic fighting continued, with sniping, grenade attacks and raids, the opposing trenches separated in places by only a few metres. The Australians lost a number of officers to sniping, including the commander of the 1st Division, Major General William Bridges, who was wounded while inspecting a 1st Light Horse Regiment position near "Steele's Post" and died of his injuries on the hospital ship on 18 May.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: At the end of April Birdwood told GHQ MEF (General Headquarters Mediterranean Expeditionary Force) that he could not land 6,000 horses at Anzac Cove as there was no water for them. GHQ MEF was unhappy that the ANZAC force would be immobilised on the beachhead, but they would have been no use. Some of the thousands of men and horses remained on board ship for up to a month. Birdwood signalled on 17 May that 17 transports would be returning to Alexandria to offload 5,251 horses accompanied by 3,217 men. GHQ MEF insisted that some of the men remain in Alexandria to look after the horses and guard ANZACs ""many vehicles and mountains of baggage"".


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: On 19 May, troops launched an attack at Anzac to push the and New Zealanders back into the sea. Short of artillery and ammunition, the Ottomans intended to rely on surprise and weight of numbers but on 18 May, the crews of a flight of British aircraft spotted the Ottoman preparations. The Ottomans suffered in the attack, of which were killed; Australian and New Zealand casualties were and . The dead included a stretcher bearer, John Simpson Kirkpatrick, whose efforts to evacuate wounded men on a donkey while under fire became famous amongst the Australians at Anzac; afterwards, his story becoming part of the Australian narrative of the campaign. Ottoman losses were so severe that a truce was organised by Aubrey Herbert and others on 24 May, to bury the dead lying in no man's land, which led to a camaraderie between the armies, much like the Christmas truce of 1914 on the Western Front.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: ] An eyewitness account from Private Victor Laidlaw of the Australian 2nd Field Ambulance described the day:


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The British advantage in naval artillery diminished after the battleship was torpedoed on 13 May by the . A German submarine, , sank on 25 May and on 27 May. More British reconnaissance patrols were flown around Gallipoli and "U-21" was forced to leave the area but ignorant of this, the Allies withdrew most of their warships to Imbros, where they were "protectively tethered" between sorties, which greatly reduced Allied naval firepower, particularly in the Helles sector. The submarine (Lieutenant Commander Martin Nasmith, later awarded a Victoria Cross) passed through the Dardanelles on 18 May and sank or disabled eleven ships, including three on 23 May, before entering Constantinople Harbour, firing on a transport alongside the arsenal, sinking a gunboat and damaging the wharf.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The Ottoman forces lacked artillery ammunition and field batteries were only able to fire between early May and the first week of June. After the defeat of the counter-attack at Anzac in mid-May, the Ottoman forces ceased frontal assaults. Late in the month, the Ottomans began tunneling around Quinn's Post in the Anzac sector and early in the morning of 29 May, despite Australian counter-mining, detonated a mine and attacked with a battalion from the 14th Regiment. The Australian 15th Battalion was forced back but counter-attacked and recaptured the ground later in the day, before being relieved by New Zealand troops. Operations at Anzac in early June returned to consolidation, minor engagements and skirmishing with grenades and sniper-fire.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: In the Helles sector, which had been extensively entrenched by both sides, the Allies attacked Krithia and Achi Baba again, in the Third Battle of Krithia on 4 June, with the 29th Division, Royal Naval Division, 42nd Division and two French divisions. The attack was repulsed and with it, the possibility of a decisive breakthrough ended; trench warfare resumed, with objectives being measured in hundreds of yards. Casualties were approximately on both sides; the British lost from and the French from . Ottoman losses were according to the "Turkish Official History" and to another account.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: In June, the seaplane carrier arrived and the Allied air effort increased from a squadron to No. 3 Wing RNAS. The 52nd (Lowland) Division also landed at Helles in preparation for the Battle of Gully Ravine, which began on 28 June and achieved a local success, which advanced the British line along the left (Aegean) flank of the battlefield. Sanders credited the defence to two Ottoman officers, Faik Pasa and Albay Refet. On 30 June, the French commander, Henri Gouraud who had earlier replaced Albert d'Amade, was wounded and replaced by his divisional commander, Maurice Bailloud. Between 1 and 5 July, the Ottomans counter-attacked the new British line several times but failed to regain the lost ground. Ottoman casualties for the period were estimated at On 12 July, two fresh brigades from the 52nd Division attacked at the centre of the line along Achi Baba Nullah (Bloody Valley), gained very little ground and lost out of the Royal Naval Division had and French losses were Ottoman losses were about and .


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: At sea, the submarine "E14" made two voyages into the Marmara. The third tour began on 21 July, when "E14" passed through the straits despite a new anti-submarine net placed near the Narrows. The next attempt was made by on 27 July, which was caught in the net, forced to the surface and bombarded by shore batteries; "Mariotte" was scuttled. On 8 August, "E11" torpedoed the battleship "Barbaros Hayreddin" with the loss of and sank a gunboat, seven transports and 23 sailing vessels.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The failure of the Allies to capture Krithia or make any progress on the Helles front led Hamilton to form a new plan to secure the Sari Bair Range of hills at the Battle of Sari Bair and capture high ground on in the Battle of Chunuk Bair. Both sides had been reinforced, the original five Allied divisions having been increased to fifteen and first six Ottoman divisions to sixteen. The Allies planned to land two fresh infantry divisions from IX Corps at Suvla, north of Anzac, followed by an advance on Sari Bair from the north-west. At Anzac, an offensive would be made against the Sari Bair range by advancing through rough and thinly defended terrain, north of the Anzac perimeter. This would be achieved by an attack on from the Nek by dismounted Australian light horsemen from the 3rd Light Horse Brigade, in concert with an attack on Chunuk Bair summit by New Zealanders from the New Zealand Infantry Brigade, who would traverse Rhododendron Ridge, the Apex and the Farm. would be attacked by Gurkhas of the 29th Indian Brigade and the Australians of the 4th Infantry Brigade. The Allies had , mainly from 3 Wing RNAS at Imbros, which had replaced its Voisins with Farmans and Nieuport Xs; "Escadrille" MF98T had also been established at Tenedos. The Ottomans had , of which eight were stationed at Çanakkale. Allied aircraft made reconnaissance flights, spotted for naval guns and conducted low-level bombing of Ottoman reserves as they were brought up to the battlefield. Allied aircraft also undertook anti-shipping operations in the Gulf of Saros, where a seaplane from HMS "Ben-my-Chree" sank an Ottoman tug with an air-launched torpedo.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The landing at Suvla Bay took place on the night of 6 August against light opposition; the British commander, Lieutenant General Frederick Stopford, had limited his early objectives and then failed to forcefully push his demands for an advance inland and little more than the beach was seized. The Ottomans were able to occupy the Anafarta Hills, preventing the British from penetrating inland, which contained the landings and reduced the Suvla front to static trench warfare. The offensive was preceded on the evening of 6 August by diversions, at Helles, where the Battle of Krithia Vineyard became another costly stalemate. At Anzac, the diversionary Battle of Lone Pine, led by the Australian 1st Infantry Brigade, captured the main Ottoman trench line and diverted Ottoman forces but the attacks at Chunuk Bair and failed.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The New Zealand Infantry Brigade came within of the near peak of Chunuk Bair by dawn on 7 August but was not able to seize the summit until the following morning. On the morning of 7 August, the Australian 3rd Light Horse Brigade attacked on a narrow front at the Nek, to coincide with the New Zealand attack from Chunuk Bair against the rear of the Ottoman defences. The opening artillery barrage lifted seven minutes too soon, which alerted the Ottomans and the attack was a costly failure. An attack on never took place after the Australian 4th Infantry Brigade and an Indian brigade lost direction during the night. Attempts to resume the attack were easily repulsed by the Ottoman defenders, at great cost to the Allies. The New Zealanders held out on Chunuk Bair for two days before being relieved by two New Army battalions from the Wiltshire and Loyal North Lancashire Regiments but an Ottoman counterattack on 10 August, led by Mustafa Kemal, swept them from the heights. Of in the New Zealand Wellington Battalion who reached the summit, casualties. With the Ottoman recapture of the ground, the Allies' best chance of victory was lost.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The Suvla landing was reinforced by the arrival of the 10th (Irish) Division on 7 August, the 53rd (Welsh) Division, which began landing on 8 August, the 54th (East Anglian) Division arriving late on 10 August and the dismounted yeomanry of the 2nd Mounted Division on 18 August. On 12 August, the 54th Division attacked Kavak Tepe and Tekke Tepe, crossing the Anafarta Plain. The attack failed and Hamilton briefly considered the evacuation of Suvla and Anzac.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Elements of the new Australian 2nd Division began arriving at Anzac from Egypt with the 5th Infantry Brigade landing from and the 6th Brigade and 7th Brigade arriving in early September. The 29th Division was also shifted from Helles to Suvla. The final British attempt to resuscitate the offensive came on 21 August, in the Battle of Scimitar Hill and the Battle of Hill 60. Control of the hills would have united the Anzac and Suvla fronts but the attacks failed. On 17 August, Hamilton had requested another but a day earlier, the French had announced plans to Kitchener for an autumn offensive in France. A meeting of the Dardanelles Committee on 20 August determined that the French offensive would be supported by a maximum effort, which left only about for the Dardanelles. On 23 August, after news of the failure at Scimitar Hill, Hamilton went onto the defensive as Bulgarian entry into the war, which would allow the Germans to rearm the Turkish army, was imminent and left little opportunity for the resumption of offensive operations. On 20 September 1915, the Newfoundland Regiment was deployed at Suvla Bay with the 29th Division. On 25 September, Kitchener proposed detaching two British and one French division for service in Salonika in Greece, which was the beginning of the end of the Allied campaign at Gallipoli. Instead, a counter proposal from Sir Ian Hamilton was agreed to; only the 10th (Irish) Division and the 156th Infantry Division (France) were withdrawn from the peninsula. By the end of September these troops were concentrating at Mudros for conveyance to the new front.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Alan Moorehead wrote that during the stalemate, an old Ottoman batman was regularly permitted to hang his platoon's washing on the barbed wire undisturbed and that there was a "constant traffic" of gifts being thrown across no-man's land, dates and sweets from the Ottoman side and cans of beef and packs of cigarettes from the Allied side. Conditions at Gallipoli grew worse for everyone as summer heat and poor sanitation resulted in an explosion in the fly population. Eating became extremely difficult as unburied corpses became bloated and putrid. The precarious Allied lodgements were poorly situated, which caused supply and shelter problems. A dysentery epidemic spread through the Allied trenches at Anzac and Helles, while the Ottomans also suffered heavily from disease which resulted in many deaths.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: After the failure of the August Offensive, the Gallipoli campaign drifted. Ottoman success began to affect public opinion in Britain, with criticism of Hamilton's performance being smuggled out by Keith Murdoch, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett and other reporters. Stopford and other dissident officers also contributed to the air of gloom and the possibility of evacuation was raised on 11 October 1915. Hamilton resisted the suggestion, fearing the damage to British prestige but was sacked shortly afterwards and replaced by Lieutenant General Sir Charles Monro. Autumn and winter brought relief from the heat but also led to gales, blizzards and flooding, resulting in men drowning and freezing to death, while thousands suffered frostbite. The Serbian defeat in the Serbian campaign in autumn 1915 prompted France and Britain to transfer troops from the Gallipoli campaign to Greek Macedonia; the Macedonian front was established to support the remnants of the Serbian army to conquer Vardar Macedonia.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: On 4 September, the submarine was caught in the Ottoman anti-submarine net as it began another tour. Despite such reverses, by mid-September, Allied nets and mines had closed the eastern entrance to the Dardanelles to German U-boats and "U-21" was thwarted when it tried to pass the straits to Istanbul on 13 September. The first French submarine to enter the Sea of Marmara was but it was forced to turn back; on 30 October, when returning through the straits, it ran aground beneath a fort and was captured intact. The crew of 25 were taken prisoner and documents detailing planned Allied operations were discovered, including a scheduled rendezvous with on 6 November. The rendezvous was kept by the German U-boat instead, which torpedoed and sank "E20", killing all but nine of the crew.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The situation at Gallipoli was complicated by Bulgaria joining the Central Powers. In early October 1915, the British and French opened a second Mediterranean front at Salonika, by moving two divisions from Gallipoli and reducing the flow of reinforcements. A land route between Germany and the Ottoman Empire through Bulgaria was opened and the Germans rearmed the Ottomans with heavy artillery capable of devastating Allied trenches, especially on the confined front at Anzac, modern aircraft and experienced crews. In late November, an Ottoman crew in a German Albatros C.I shot down a French aircraft over Gaba Tepe and the Austro-Hungarian and artillery units arrived, providing a substantial reinforcement of the Ottoman artillery. Monro recommended evacuation to Kitchener, who in early November visited the eastern Mediterranean. After consulting with the commanders of VIII Corps at Helles, IX Corps at Suvla and Anzac, Kitchener agreed with Monro and passed his recommendation to the British Cabinet, who confirmed the decision to evacuate in early December.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Due to the narrowness of no man's land and the winter weather, many casualties were anticipated during the embarkation. The untenable nature of the Allied position was made apparent by a rainstorm on 26 November 1915. The downpour at Suvla lasted for three days and there was a blizzard in early December. Rain flooded trenches, drowned soldiers and washed unburied corpses into the lines; the following snow killed still more men from exposure. Suvla and Anzac were to be evacuated in late December, the last troops leaving before dawn on 20 December. Troop numbers had been slowly reduced since 7 December and ruses, such as William Scurry's self-firing rifle, which had been rigged to fire by water dripped into a pan attached to the trigger, were used to disguise the Allied departure. At Anzac Cove, troops maintained silence for an hour or more, until curious Ottoman troops ventured to inspect the trenches, whereupon the Anzacs opened fire. This incident successfully discouraged the Ottomans from inspecting when the actual evacuation occurred. A mine was detonated at the Nek, which killed soldiers. The Allied force was embarked, with the Australians suffering no casualties on the final night but large quantities of supplies and stores fell into Ottoman hands.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Helles was retained for a period but a decision to evacuate the garrison was made on 28 December. Unlike the evacuation from Anzac Cove, Ottoman forces were looking for signs of withdrawal. Having used the interval to bring up reinforcements and supplies, Sanders mounted an attack on the British at Gully Spur on 7 January 1916 with infantry and artillery but the attack was a costly failure. Mines were laid with time fuzes and that night and on the night of 7/8 January, under the cover of a naval bombardment, the British troops began to fall back from their lines to the beaches, where makeshift piers were used to board boats. The last British troops departed from Lancashire Landing around 04:00 on 8 January 1916. The Newfoundland Regiment was part of the rearguard and withdrew on 9 January 1916. Among the first to land, remnants of The Plymouth Battalion, Royal Marine Light Infantry were the last to leave the Peninsula.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Despite predictions of up to and mules, and of equipment were removed; that could not be embarked were killed so as not to fall into Ottoman hands and were left behind with smashed wheels. As at Anzac, large amounts of supplies (including 15 British and six French unserviceable artillery pieces which were destroyed), gun carriages and ammunition were left behind; hundreds of horses were slaughtered to deny them to the Ottomans. A sailor was killed by debris from a magazine that exploded prematurely and a lighter and a picket boat were lost. Shortly after dawn, the Ottomans retook Helles. In the final days of the campaign, Ottoman air defences had been increased by a German–Ottoman fighter squadron, which began operations over the peninsula and inflicted the first British flying losses a couple of days after the evacuation of Helles, when three shot down two RNAS aircraft.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Historians are divided about how they summarise the campaign's result. Broadbent describes the campaign as "a close-fought affair" that was a defeat for the Allies, while Carlyon views the overall result as a stalemate. Peter Hart disagrees, arguing that the Ottoman forces "held the Allies back from their real objectives with relative ease", while Haythornthwaite calls it a "disaster for the Allies". The campaign did cause "enormous damage to ... [Ottoman] national resources", and at that stage of the war the Allies were in a better position to replace their losses than the Ottomans, but ultimately the Allied attempt at securing a passage through the Dardanelles proved unsuccessful. While it diverted Ottoman forces away from other areas of conflict in the Middle East, the campaign also consumed resources the Allies could have employed on the Western Front, and also resulted in heavy losses on the Allied side.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The Allied campaign was plagued by ill-defined goals, poor planning, insufficient artillery, inexperienced troops, inaccurate maps, poor intelligence, overconfidence, inadequate equipment, and logistical and tactical deficiencies at all levels. Geography also proved a significant factor. While the Allied forces possessed inaccurate maps and intelligence and proved unable to exploit the terrain to their advantage, the Ottoman commanders were able to utilise the high ground around the Allied landing beaches to position well-sited defences that limited the ability of Allied forces to penetrate inland, confining them to narrow beaches. The campaign's necessity remains the subject of debate, and the recriminations that followed were significant, highlighting the schism that had developed between military strategists who felt the Allies should focus on fighting on the Western Front and those who favoured trying to end the war by attacking Germany's "soft underbelly", its allies in the east.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: British and French submarine operations in the Sea of Marmara were the one significant area of success of the Gallipoli campaign, forcing the Ottomans to abandon the sea as a transport route. Between April and December 1915, nine British and four French submarines carried out 15 patrols, sinking one battleship, one destroyer, five gunboats, 11 troop transports, 44 supply ships and 148 sailing vessels at a cost of eight Allied submarines sunk in the strait or in the Sea of Marmara. During the campaign there was always one British submarine in the Sea of Marmara, sometimes two; in October 1915, there were four Allied submarines in the region. "E2" left the Sea of Marmara on 2 January 1916, the last British submarine in the region. Four E-class and five B-class submarines remained in the Mediterranean Sea following the evacuation of Helles. By this time the Ottoman navy had been all but forced to cease operations in the area, while merchant shipping had also been significantly curtailed. The official German naval historian, Admiral Eberhard von Mantey, later concluded that had the sea-lanes of communication been completely severed the Ottoman 5th Army would likely have faced catastrophe. As it was these operations were a source of significant anxiety, posing a constant threat to shipping and causing heavy losses, effectively dislocating Ottoman attempts to reinforce their forces at Gallipoli and shelling troop concentrations and railways.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Gallipoli marked the end for Hamilton and Stopford, but Hunter-Weston went on to lead VIII Corps on the first day of the Battle of the Somme. The competence of Australian brigade commanders, John Monash (4th Infantry Brigade) and Harry Chauvel (1st Light Horse Brigade, New Zealand and Australian Division), was recognised by promotion to divisional and corps command. The influence of Kitchener waned after the coalition government was formed in May 1915, partly because of the growing sense of failure in the Dardanelles and culminated in Kitchener being over-ruled on support for the French at Salonika in early December 1915, when his influence on the Cabinet was at its lowest. The campaign gave confidence to the Ottomans in their ability to defeat the Allies. In Mesopotamia, the Turks surrounded a British expedition at Kut Al Amara, forcing their surrender in April 1916. Ottoman forces in southern Palestine were poised to launch an attack against the Suez Canal and Egypt. Defeat at the Battle of Romani and lack of the materials to complete the military railway necessary for such an operation, marked the end of that ambition. The optimism gained from the victory at Gallipoli was replaced by a gathering sense of despair and the British remained on the offensive in the Middle East for the rest of the war.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The lessons of the campaign were studied by military planners prior to amphibious operations such as the Normandy Landings in 1944 and during the Falklands War in 1982. The lessons of the campaign influenced US Marine Corps amphibious operations during the Pacific War and continue to influence US amphibious doctrine. In 1996, Theodore Gatchel wrote that between the wars, the campaign "became a focal point for the study of amphibious warfare" in Britain and United States. In 2008, Glenn Wahlert wrote that Gallipoli involved "all four types of amphibious operations: the raid, demonstration, assault and withdrawal".


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Russell Weigley wrote that analysis of the campaign before the Second World War led to "a belief among most of the armed forces of the world" that amphibious assaults could not succeed against modern defences and that despite landings in Italy, Tarawa and the Gilberts, arguably this perception continued until Normandy in June 1944. Hart wrote that despite the pessimistic analyses after 1918, the situation after 1940 meant that landings from the sea were unavoidable and it was only after Normandy that the belief that opposed landings were futile was overcome. The memory of Gallipoli weighed upon the Australians during the planning of the Huon Peninsula campaign in late 1943. In September, the Australians made their first opposed amphibious landing since Gallipoli at the Battle of Finschhafen in New Guinea. The landing was hampered by navigational errors and troops came ashore on the wrong beaches but they had been trained according to the lessons of Gallipoli and quickly reorganised to push inland.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Political repercussions in Britain had begun during the battle, Fisher resigned in May after bitter conflict with Churchill. The crisis that followed after the Conservatives learned that Churchill would be staying, forced the Prime Minister H. H. Asquith to end his Liberal Government and form a Coalition Government with the Conservative Party. The Asquith government responded to the disappointment and outrage over Gallipoli and Kut by establishing commissions of inquiry into both episodes, which had done much to "destroy its faltering reputation for competence". The Dardanelles Commission was set up to investigate the failure of the expedition, the first report being issued in 1917, with the final report published in 1919. Following the failure of the Dardanelles expedition, Sir Ian Hamilton, commander of the MEF, was recalled to London in October 1915, ending his military career. Churchill was demoted from First Lord of the Admiralty as a condition of Conservative entry to the coalition but remained in the Cabinet in the sinecure of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Churchill resigned in November 1915 and left London for the Western Front, where he commanded an infantry battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers early in 1916.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Asquith was partly blamed for Gallipoli and other disasters and was overthrown in December 1916, when David Lloyd George proposed a war council under his authority, with the Conservatives in the coalition threatening to resign unless the plan was implemented. After failure to reach agreement, Lloyd George and then Asquith resigned, followed by Lloyd George becoming Prime Minister. Lloyd George formed a new government, from which Churchill, active again in the House of Commons from June 1916, was excluded because of Conservative opposition. In the summer of 1917, Churchill was eventually appointed to the cabinet-level post of Minister of Munitions but not to the War Cabinet. The final report of the Commission was issued in 1919, concluding that with the forces available, success was dependent on the government giving priority to the expedition and leaving the British Expeditionary Force in France to make do. The Commissioners found that Hamilton had been over-optimistic from the beginning and had added to Stopford's difficulties on 8 August 1915. Hamilton emerged from the investigation more favourably than perhaps was justified, partly because he made devious attempts to gain collusion from witnesses and obtain leaks from the deliberations of the Commission; Hamilton was never given another army appointment.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Casualty figures for the campaign vary between sources but in 2001, Edward J. Erickson wrote that in the Gallipoli Campaign over were killed, including and around and French soldiers. Using the Ottoman Archives, Erickson estimated that Ottoman casualties in the Gallipoli Campaign were died from all causes, were wounded or injured and went missing or were captured. In 2001, Carlyon gave figures of killed or missing, including In September 1915 Godley complained that too few of the recovered sick or wounded casualties from Gallipoli were being returned from Egypt, and General John Maxwell replied that ""the appetite of the Dardanelles for men has been phenomenal and wicked"".


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: There were nearly during the campaign, with the British "History of the Great War" listing losses including sick as and troops (with some Turkish (sic) sources referring to Ottoman casualties have been disputed and in 2001, Tim Travers gave casualty figures of and ranks (battle and non-battle); included among this may be Sanders estimated that the Ottomans suffered casualties, including and that returned to duty.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The New Zealand semi-official history (1919, by Fred Waite) estimated that 8,556 New Zealanders served at Gallipoli and contained an estimate of battle casualties including In 2000, McGibbon wrote that had been killed, about a quarter of those who had initially landed on the peninsula; other estimates were 2,701 (Pugsley) or 2,779 (Stowers). A 2019 study by New Zealand historians John Crawford and Matthew Buck arrived at a higher estimate for the numbers of New Zealand soldiers who served at Gallipoli, over 16,000, perhaps 17,000 (rather than earlier revised figures of 13,000 to 14,000 and the 1919 figure of 8,556).


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Many soldiers became sick due to insanitary conditions, especially from typhoid, dysentery and diarrhoea. Cecil Aspinall-Oglander, the British official historian, reported that Empire soldiers were evacuated for illness during the campaign. A total of troops fell sick, not counting Dominion or Indian troops; of these, exclusive of those evacuated. The sick were transported from Gallipoli to hospitals in Egypt and Malta as quickly as possible as bases in the area of operations were insufficient. Approximately of men removed as non-battle casualties died, against in France and Flanders. The proportion of disease casualties to battle casualties was considerably higher in the Gallipoli campaign than it was on the campaigns of the Western Front. Aspinall-Oglander gave the number of Ottoman troops evacuated sick The largest cause of non-battle admissions to hospital for British troops was dysentery, with infected and another having diarrhoea. Other notable conditions were frostbite with gonorrhea and rheumatic fever French casualties during the campaign amounted to around 47,000. Of the French casualties, 27,169 were killed, wounded or missing with an implied 20,000 who fell sick.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Allegations were made that Allied forces had attacked or bombarded Ottoman hospitals and hospital ships on several occasions between the start of the campaign and September 1915. By July 1915, hospitals had been built with and three hospital ships were in the area. The French Government disputed these complaints through the Red Cross and the British responded that if it happened then it was accidental. Russia, in turn, claimed that the Ottomans had attacked two of their hospital ships, and "Vperiod" but the Ottoman Government replied that the vessels had been the victims of mines. No chemical weapons were used at Gallipoli, although the Allies debated their use throughout the campaign and transported to the theatre quantities of gas, which was used against Ottoman troops in the Middle Eastern theatre two years later, during the Second Battle of Gaza and the Third Battle of Gaza in 1917.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) is responsible for permanent cemeteries for all Commonwealth of Nations forces. There are 31 CWGC cemeteries on the Gallipoli peninsula: six at Helles (plus the only solitary grave, that of Lieutenant Colonel Charles Doughty-Wylie VC, Royal Welch Fusiliers), four at Suvla and For many of those killed or died on hospital ships and were buried at sea, there is no known grave; their names are recorded on one of five "memorials to the missing". The Lone Pine Memorial commemorates Australians killed in the Anzac sector, as well as New Zealanders with no known grave or who were buried at sea, while the Lone Pine, Hill 60 and Chunuk Bair memorials commemorate New Zealanders killed at Anzac. The Twelve Tree Copse Memorial commemorates the New Zealanders killed in the Helles sector, while British, Indian and Australian troops who died there are commemorated on the Helles Memorial at Cape Helles. British naval casualties who were lost or buried at sea are listed on memorials in the United Kingdom.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: There are three more CWGC cemeteries on the Greek island of Lemnos, the first one for the 352 Allied soldiers in Portianou, the second one for the 148 Australian and 76 New Zealand soldiers in the town of Moudros and the third one for the Ottoman soldiers (170 Egyptian and 56 Turkish soldiers). Lemnos was the hospital base for the Allied forces and most of the buried were among the men who died of their wounds. Makeshift graves were created during the campaign, often with simple wooden crosses or markers; some graves were decorated more extensively. There is a French cemetery on the Gallipoli Peninsula, located at Seddülbahir. There are no large Ottoman/Turkish military cemeteries on the peninsula but there are numerous memorials, the main ones being the Çanakkale Martyrs' Memorial at Morto Bay, Cape Helles (near 'S' Beach), the Turkish Soldier's Memorial on Chunuk Bair and the memorial and open-air mosque for the 57th Regiment near Quinn's Post (Bomba Sirt). There are a number of memorials and cemeteries on the Asian shore of the Dardanelles, demonstrating the greater emphasis that Turkish historians place on the victory of 18 March over the subsequent fighting on the peninsula.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: Allied troops were withdrawn to Lemnos and then to Egypt. French forces (renamed the in late October) were subsumed into the Army of the Orient and later employed at Salonika. In Egypt, the British Imperial and Dominion troops from the Dardanelles along with fresh divisions from the United Kingdom and those at Salonika, became the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF), commanded by Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Murray. They joined the Force in Egypt to become the strategic reserve for the British Empire, consisting of 13 infantry and mounted divisions with . In March 1916, Murray took command of both these forces, forming them into the new Egyptian Expeditionary Force (EEF) and reorganising the units for service in Europe, Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East. While the ANZAC was disbanded, the AIF was expanded with three new Australian divisions being raised and a New Zealand Division was also formed. These units moved to the Western Front in mid-1916.


title: Gallipoli campaign

text: The British yeomanry units that had fought dismounted at Gallipoli were reinforced and reorganised, forming the 74th (Yeomanry) Division and a portion of the 75th Division. Along with the Australian Light Horsemen and New Zealand Mounted Rifles remounted and reorganised into the Anzac Mounted Division, infantry from the 52nd (Lowland) Division, 42nd (East Lancashire) Division, 53rd (Welsh) Division and 54th (East Anglian) Division, later joined by additional remounted Australian Light Horsemen and British yeomanry from the Australian Mounted Division, participated in the Sinai and Palestine campaign. The Egyptian Sinai was reoccupied in 1916, while Palestine and the northern Levant were captured from the Ottoman Empire during 1917 and 1918, before the Armistice of Mudros ended hostilities in the Middle Eastern theatre on 31 October. The Allies subsequently occupied Gallipoli and Istanbul and partitioned the Ottoman Empire. The occupation ended in 1923 following the Turkish War of Independence, the Armistice of Mudanya and the Treaty of Lausanne.