Gallipoli Campaign
The Allied landing and subsequent campaign on the peninsula during World War I is usually known in Turkey as the Battle of Çanakkale. In Australia, Britain, New Zealand, South Africa and Newfoundland and Labrador, the terms Gallipoli Campaign or just Gallipoli alone are used to describe the eight-month campaign.
In early 1915, attempting to seize a strategic advantage by capturing Constantinople, the British authorised an attack on the peninsula. The first phase was purely naval on the Allied side, as Lord Kitchener would not authorise troops to be shifted from the Western Front. The lead British admiral had a crisis of nerves, and his second-in-command withdrew after one day, with moderate casualties. Kitchener then authorised a combined naval-army operation, but the element of surprise was long gone. On 25 April 1915, a force of British Empire and French troops landed at multiple places along the peninsula. However, some of the landings went wrong and troops were landed in the wrong positions, causing confusion that lost valuable time. To make matters worse, this was followed up by only tentative advances inland. Most of the arriving armies were left on the beaches, which allowed the Ottomans to pour in reinforcements. The battles over the next eight months saw high casualties on both sides due to the exposed terrain, weather and closeness of the front lines. In addition, many casualties resulted from an epidemic of dysentery, caused by poor sanitary conditions. The New Zealand Wellington Battalion reached, and briefly occupied, the high point of Chunuk Bair before being beaten back by Turkish troops, who were never again dislodged from the summit. The subsequent Allied withdrawal meant an end to the idea of defeating the Ottoman Empire quickly.
The campaign is often referred to for its successful stealthy retreat, which was completed with minimal casualties. The ANZAC forces completed their retreat by 19 December 1915 and the remaining British elements by 9 January 1916.
Total Allied deaths were 43,000 British, 15,000 French, 8,700 Australians, 2,700 New Zealanders and 1,370 Indians. Total Turkish deaths were around 60,000. New Zealanders suffered the highest percentage of Allied deaths when compared with population size, but the percentage of Turkish deaths was almost twice theirs.
This campaign became a turning point in the national consciousness of several of the participants. Both Australia and New Zealand still commemorate Anzac Day and the Turks consider it a point of national pride. Many mementos of the Gallipoli campaign can be seen in the museum at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Australia, and at the Auckland War Memorial Museum in Auckland, New Zealand. This campaign also put a dent in the armour of Winston Churchill, then the First Lord of the Admiralty, who had commissioned the plans to invade the Dardanelles. He talks about this campaign vividly in his memoirs.
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Famous quotes containing the word campaign:
“You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”
—Mario Cuomo (b. 1932)