Gallipoli 1915: Baedeker Maps, Drip Rifles and the Birth of Anzac Day

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By late 1914 the Western Front had frozen and Russia needed a supply route through the Black Sea, which ran through the Ottoman-held Dardanelles. Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed forcing the straits with older pre-dreadnought battleships. On March 18, 1915, an Anglo-French armada of 18 battleships went in and failed. Flat-firing naval guns could not reach mobile howitzers hidden in the hills, minesweepers fled under fire, and a fresh line of mines laid ten days earlier by the minelayer Nusret sank the French Bouvet in two minutes along with the British Irresistible and Ocean. Unwilling to accept defeat, the Allies decided to land an army under General Ian Hamilton.

The April 25 landings at Cape Helles and Anzac Cove met an enemy that had used a five-week delay to dig in. Mustafa Kemal had argued for reserves close to the beaches and rushed his division to the heights above the Anzac landing. Trench stalemate, heat, flies and dysentery followed. The August offensive at Suvla Bay, Lone Pine, the Nek and Chunuk Bair failed, Bulgaria's entry opened a rail link to Constantinople, and the Allies evacuated in December 1915 and January 1916. Each side suffered about 250,000 casualties.

• Allied planners relied on Baedeker travel guides, and ships packed in England had to be unloaded and repacked at Alexandria.
• Kemal told his 57th Regiment he did not order them to attack but to die, and the regiment was wiped out holding the Anzacs back.
• An older Ottoman soldier was allowed to hang laundry on the barbed wire, and the two sides traded dates and sweets for bully beef and cigarettes.
• Drip rifles fired by water slowly filling a tin tied to the trigger hid the evacuation from Ottoman sentries.
• Asquith had to form a coalition government, Churchill was demoted and went to the Western Front, and Kemal became Atatürk, first president of Turkey.