The Dardanelles: 5 & 6 September, 2014

 

We joined the Dardanelles at Canakkale where we stayed in the "Grand Anzac Hotel". The "we" being 14 modern day ANZAC tourists, our tour guide, Suleyman and our driver, who does not appear in the photograph below (taken at ANZAC Cove).

Canakkale is located on the Asian side of the Dardanelles at its narrowest point; 1250M. This area was known as the Narrows in WW1.

 

The Dardanelles Campaign began as a purely naval operation that proceeded in a number of phases. An overview can be read in Wikipedia.

The event that decided the battle took place on the night of 8 March when the Ottoman minelayer Nusret (replica in pix above, bottom) laid a line of mines in Eren Köy Bay, a wide bay along the Asian shore just inside the entrance to the straits. (See pix above, top left) The Ottomans had noticed the British ships turned to starboard into the bay when withdrawing. The new line of between 20 and 26 mines ran parallel to the shore. The clear water meant that the mines could have been seen through the water by spotter planes. They weren't!

On 18 March 3 British and 1 French warships hit the mines! A naval disaster!

When naval actions failed to overcome Ottoman defences, an invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula was launched in which naval forces were again heavily involved. The success of the Turkish military in the Gallipolli campaign is substantially credited to the leadership of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (picture of a statue at Kanakkale, above top, right) who went on to be a reformist statesman, and the first President of Turkey. He is credited with being the founder of the Republic of Turkey. (Wikipedia )

 

ARI BURNU CEMETERY (253 burials) is named after the promontory at the north end of Anzac Cove and was used for ANZAC burials throughout the campaign. Christian, Jewish and Musulm servicemen are placed next to each other without distinction.

The former battlefield includes a number of statues including this one of a Turkish solder carrying a wounded ANZAC. The statue commerates incidents of compassion that did occur.

 

 

 

We visited Lone Pine Cemetery and Memorial. This cemetery derives its name from the single pine tree observed to be growing here when the Australian soldiers came up here from the landing on 25 April 1915.

Most graves are of men killed during the ‘August offensive’ between 6 and 10 August. Lone Pine Cemetery is the very ground over which the famous attack on the Turkish Lone Pine positions took place on the evening of 6 August 1915. Corporal John Wadeson, 7th Battalion AIF, wrote:

"We had a ‘full hand’ dealt us when we were given the trenches won at Lonesome Pine on August 7 … We held it all that Red Sunday … it cost us something like 400 casualties … The trenches were something awful, as the dead of both Australians and Turks were still in them, and mixed up in all kinds of positions. But when things cooled off a little, burial parties were going solidly getting the awful litter away … Sometimes when the attack was solid, our dead in the bottom of the trenches, all huddled up in heaps, and it was with difficulty that fresh men could pass to take up their posts…the 7th Battalion earned distinction, as four V Cs were won by its members."

Commemorated amongst the missing is one of the youngest known soldiers to have served in the AIF. Private James Charles Martin of Hawthorn, Melbourne, Victoria, enlisted on 12 April 1915 aged 14 years and three months.

A photo of the trenches at 'The Nek' looking north to Sulva Bay. If the ANZAC's had landed a few miles north or south they would have attacked across flat terrain!