The Gallipoli Campaign: A War of Fire and Mud
In the early spring of 1915, British and French warships gathered before the Dardanelles with a plan as bold as it was dangerous. They aimed to force a passage through the narrow strait separating Europe from Asia and to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war by threatening its capital, Constantinople.
The plan was to use the navy to bypass the stalemate on the Western Front and relieve Russia by opening a supply route through the Black Sea. Allied warships would batter the Ottoman coastal defenses, clear the minefields, and open the way to Constantinople. The operation was meant to be a quick and decisive strike, but the strait was guarded by minefields, coastal forts, mobile artillery batteries, and a determined defender. The British had underestimated the strength of the Ottoman defenses.
The naval attack began on 19 February 1915 with a long-range bombardment of the Ottoman coastal batteries. The main assault came on 18 March 1915, when a fleet of 18 battleships, with an array of cruisers and destroyers, moved against the narrowest point of the Dardanelles. Despite some damage to the Entente ships from Ottoman return fire, minesweepers were ordered up the straits. But the mobile Ottoman batteries—sited on the instructions of General Otto Liman von Sanders—harried the minesweepers, which were manned by civilians and soon retreated under artillery fire, leaving the minefields largely intact. The French battleship Bouvet struck a mine and capsized in two minutes, with only 75 survivors out of 718 men, and other Allied ships were mined as well. Having suffered heavy losses, the fleet abandoned the naval operation.
With the navy unable to force a passage, the Allies turned to a land campaign to seize the Ottoman shore batteries. At dawn on 25 April 1915, British and French forces landed at five points at the southern end of the Gallipoli Peninsula. The terrain was rugged and unforgiving, and though the invaders managed to establish beachheads at Seddülbahir and Arıburnu, the stubborn Ottoman defense and repeated counter-attacks denied them the peninsula.
In August 1915, the Allies tried to break the deadlock with a third landing, at Suvla Bay north of Arıburnu. On 9 August, Staff Colonel Mustafa Kemal led the counter-attack known as the First Battle of Anafartalar, and the next day he struck again along the Kocaçimentepe–Conk Bayırı line, throwing back the Anzac troops there. The general Allied assault known as the Second Battle of Anafartalar also failed to break the Ottoman defense.
As the months passed, the campaign became a war of attrition. Both sides suffered terribly, and amid heat, mud, and shortages of supplies the fighting became a daily struggle for survival. The Ottoman forces held their ground and repelled the Allied advances, and the defense became a rallying point of national resistance.
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