A century ago this week, one of the most important battles in the Great War began. Allied forces landed in what is typically called the Gallipoli or Dardanelles Campaign. The campaign went badly almost from the start, with heavy casualties on both sides. Ultimately London admitted defeat and withdrew its forces eight and a half months later.
The fight offered another horrid highlight to the insane paroxysm of violence eventually known as World War I.
More than 30 cemeteries fill the Gallipoli Peninsula. As many Turkish and allied troops died in this one extended battle–perhaps 120,000(though Turkish figures are incomplete and probably low)–as did Americans in the entire conflict.
For reasons that seem sadly frivolous today, all of Europe’s major powers, including the Ottoman Empire—the tottering “Sick Man of Europe”—went to war in 1914. No conflict is pretty, but World War I was particularly dreadful.
The Entente forces decided to attempt to force the Dardanelles, seize Istanbul, and open the Bosphorus Straits into the Black Sea. The battle commenced in February 1915. The British fleet first tried to push through the Straits but was halted by shore batteries and mines.
The allies then commenced an amphibious operation. Although soldiers from Britain, France, and India (a British colony at the time) were involved, men from Australia and New Zealand, grouped in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, played a leading role.