Military Disasters: The Long Defeat at Gallipoli

In January 1915, Russia appealed to its World War I allies for help in fighting a Turkish invasion. Although Russian troops managed to foil the invasion on their own, Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill convinced the Allies to attack Turkey anyway. This political gesture resulted in a monumental military and political disaster. The Allies planned to strike the Turkish capital of Constantinople by sailing through the Dardanelles--a 38-mile-long strait defended on either side by Turkish troops and guns. The strike was assigned to a fleet of 12 obsolete warships that were too old for maneuvering on the open sea, and would have succeeded if the commander had not turned back after losing three ships. He didn't know the Turks had run out of ammunition. Thus, the Dardanelles would have to be captured by land. On April 25, the largest amphibious invasion in history began when 52,000 British, Australian, and New Zealand troops landed on Turkey's Gallipoli Peninsula. The Turkish defenders, occupying cliff-top fortifications, were able to keep the Allied troops pinned down on the beaches. Even when reinforcements arrived, the Allies could not advance. The battle dragged into December before the Allies admitted defeat. In 259 days of fighting with nothing to show for it, more than half of the 480,000 Allied troops ultimately deployed were dead or wounded. Nowhere was the loss greater than among the ANZAC (Australia/New Zealand Army Corps) troops: New Zealanders sustained a casualty rate above 150 percent, indicating that many wounded men were sent back into battle, only to be wounded again or killed. To this day, Australians and New Zealanders observe April 25 as ANZAC Day in remembrance of the tragedy. In Britain, the battle also caused significant political bloodletting. The head of the Royal Navy, the war secretary, the prime minister, and Churchill all resigned over the misguided operation.