The Gallipoli Campaign took place in Turkey in 1915 to 16 during the First World War (1914 to 18). This major expedition involved British, French, Australian, and New Zealand (ANZAC) troops and was launched to break through the Dardanelles into the Black Sea, thereby providing a new supply route to Russia. The Ottoman defences remained robust, and an eight-month-long trench battle of attrition ultimately ended in an Allied withdrawal. Infamous as a costly failure, the campaign resulted in 250,000 Allied casualties, and its staunchest promoter, Winston Churchill, was sacked from his role in the British Admiralty.

In the First World War, the Entente powers of Britain, France, and Russia (plus their allies) fought against the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire (and their allies). As the main theatre of action on the Western Front in France and Belgium became bogged down in trench warfare, the Allies searched for an alternative weak spot where the interests of the enemy could be damaged. One such spot could be the Gallipoli peninsula (which connects the Aegean Sea to the Black Sea), then controlled by the Ottoman Empire and a vital route for shipping. This route is a narrow passage just 30 miles (48 km) long and less than a mile (1.6 km) wide at its narrowest point. It has attracted many ambitious armies over the centuries, right back to the disaster of the Battle of Adrianople, when the Roman emperor Valens (reign 364 to 378) was killed. Indeed, this part of the eastern Mediterranean was fought over even in legend and is the site of the Trojan War.

It was hoped that the Gallipoli Campaign would ultimately secure Constantinople (modern Istanbul), which would then permit supplies to be freely sent to Russia. Indeed, the Russian Empire had requested its allies to open up a new front in the Dardanelles. Another advantageous outcome would be Germany removing troops from the Western Front to bolster its Ottoman ally. A more vague ambition was that by controlling this region, the Ottoman Empire might even collapse. Even more ambitiously, such a collapse would enable the Allies to open up a new front against Germany, possibly breaking the stalemate on the Western Front.

The plan for an attack in the Dardanelles was promoted by such prominent figures as Winston Churchill (1874 to 1965), then First Lord of the Admiralty, and Lord Herbert Kitchener (1850 to 1916), Secretary of State for War, as a way to both alter the Western Front and better involve the Royal Navy in the war. A joint British-French naval expedition of 20 Allied ships, the Dardanelles Operation (19 February to March 1915), was dispatched to capture the forts in the straits. This expedition failed to force its way through the Dardanelles due to intense fire from the main Turkish fortresses, which included very hard-to-hit mobile artillery guns, and the unexpected density of the mines that had been laid in these waters. Nine battleships were sunk or crippled in the expedition, and a Royal Marines attack on the Kum Kale fort ended in a costly failure.

What was now required, it was thought, was an amphibious landing using a much larger body of troops. This plan was fine on paper, but when it came to putting it into practice, it was let down by several operational deficiencies, the biggest being that not enough men were made available for an operation specifically designed, rather too hopefully, to achieve big results with small means. With the Ottoman guns all still intact and their gunners fully alerted to an incoming invasion by the failed naval assault, the Gallipoli expedition was launched on 25 April 1915.

Command of the Gallipoli expedition was put in the hands of General Ian Hamilton (1853 to 1947), a man with vast experience of colonial wars but not much by way of modern warfare. Hamilton's decision to site his command post away from the action on Imbros Island was a poor one.

Hamilton's chances of success were further hampered by the lack of up-to-date intelligence on the Turkish fortifications his multinational force would have to face. Other factors which would seriously hamper the operation were the overambitious nature of the objectives, the underestimation of the logistical problems involved and the enemy's capabilities, and the almost total absence of secrecy. To make matters worse, the build-up of troops became even more obvious due to the slowness of this part of the operation and their removal from Lemnos to Alexandria and then on to Gallipoli. The consequent delays of these logistical cock-ups meant that the defending Turkish Army had plenty of time to prepare for the coming invasion.

Facing the Allied force of 75,000 men were 84,000 soldiers of the Turkish Fifth Army. They were commanded by General Otto Liman von Sanders (1855 to 1929), a German who had long experience serving in the Ottoman Army. Another key figure in the defence was Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881 to 1938), future president of the Turkish Republic. Atatürk commanded the 19th Division at Gallipoli and did so with aplomb, correctly identifying just where the Allies would land (twice) and then inspiring his men to hold on to the vital Sari Bair ridge.

The Allied force, ferried to several beaches by a fleet of 200 merchant ships, was a mix of British Army, British Empire soldiers, and a division of the French Army and French colonial troops. To the south, the main force, led by Lieutenant-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston, landed at Cape Helles. To the north, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC), commanded by General William Birdwood, landed at Ari Burnu, soon to become known for all the wrong reasons as ANZAC Cove; ANZAC cemetery would have been more appropriate. Meanwhile, the French division, tasked with creating a diversionary attack, landed at Kum Kale opposite Cape Helles. Yet another diversionary move, this time involving British troops, sailed up the Sea of Marmara to make the Turks think a fourth landing was about to take place to the north. The latter plan worked, and Liman von Sanders was not at all sure where the main attack was coming. For the first two days, the main landing faced just one Turkish division. The two main Allied beachheads were secured and gradually expanded. Then things started to go wrong for the attackers.

The Allied forces, with little natural cover to take advantage of around Cape Helles, soon found themselves pinned down by enemy fire, particularly from well-protected machine guns. The Allied commanders then let the situation get out of hand by dithering on the beaches and not overwhelming the enemy by sheer force of numbers. The ANZAC landing at Gaba Tepe, in contrast, went remarkably well, and those troops were already moving well inland. Then Atatürk organised a fightback which secured the vital heights of Chunuk Bair. The ANZACs were obliged to retreat back to the beach; little did they know, but their chance of advancing had gone forever.

The Allied troops were now obliged to build trench systems to protect themselves. It was clear the operation was not going to achieve a quick and easy victory. There were also organisational shortfalls, like not providing sufficient ammunition for the artillery units. The battle settled down to one of attrition, with neither side in a position to advance on the enemy without heavy losses. Over the next two weeks, the Allies lost a third of their number. Reinforcements were continuously brought in.

Conditions in the trenches were as bad as on the Western Front. Hot weather, cold weather, and endless wet weather, which flooded the trenches, inadequate clothing, erratic food supplies, and the necessity to ration water were just some of the daily difficulties. With poor hygiene and sanitary facilities and nowhere to bury the dead, soldiers soon faced a high risk of catching dysentery. One Australian soldier wryly remarked: "The actual fighting was the easiest of all" (Yorke, 50).

British soldier Vere Harmsworth wrote home:

We spent four days in the front-line trench. We had only a few casualties. We were put there just after a big attack which had partially failed and the ground between our trench and the Turks was strewn with bodies. It strikes me that they will be there for a long time. In this heat the body and face turn quite black in less than 24 hours and the smell is terrific. The flies – which are everywhere – also add to the general discomfort.

(Williams, 37)

Australian private Henry Barnes recalls an enemy charge against the ANZAC trenches:

The Turks were throwing bombs as well as rifle fire and it was very difficult to avoid the occasional man that came over. There was one fell right in front of me – he came over bawling out something and he practically – he was shot by me and the fellow next to me, two or three of us shot at the same time, we were rather bunched around the entry to the trench. He came through practically on top of my bayonet and – he was a very big man – and came down right on top of me and none of us could lift him out. He was too heavy to lift three feet while you kept down out of the range of fire, and literally, I sat on that Turk for two days – we ate our lunch sitting on him. We were eating bully beef and biscuits.

(Imperial War Museums)

Two months later, in order to make a push out of the trench stalemate, Hamilton sent in more divisions as reinforcements. Unfortunately, for the Allies, the Turks had by this time also considerably reinforced their positions. On 6 August, a third amphibious landing was made at Sulva but failed to make any headway. At the same time, the ANZAC troops made a new assault on the enemy lines in an attempt to capture Chunuk Bair. This attack, made at night, was again halted by the Turkish machine gunners. Once again, despite repeatedly landing more troops, the bulked-up force could still not move inland and cut off the defenders from behind. Now, too, the late autumn weather began to worsen.

The British government decided enough was enough. Hamilton was relieved of his command in October, and he never got another one during the war. The new commander of the operation was Charles Monro (1860 to 1929), and, immediately after arriving and noting the situation firsthand, he recommended a withdrawal from the peninsula without delay. As Churchill wryly remarked, "He came, he saw, he capitulated" (Bruce, 149). In truth, though, Monro was right, and the fiasco had to end. Kitchener visited in person and agreed.

The Gallipoli Campaign was a failure for several reasons:

…there had been no systematic preparation, there were no specially equipped units, there was no command-and-control system, little intelligence or deception and no central command position.

(Winter, 332)

Men fought bravely enough on both sides, but if proper reconnaissance had been made of the ridiculously small and exposed landing beaches, then it is likely no amphibious operation would have ever been launched.

Withdrawing carried its own risks but was achieved through December and then the first week of January 1916. Remarkably, no lives were lost in the retreat as the Turks remained unaware of what was happening thanks to various ruses. This success was in stark contrast to the operation as a whole. The Allies had landed a total force of around 480,000 men but suffered around 250,000 casualties in the Gallipoli Campaign. The Turkish forces likely suffered similar losses or perhaps as many as 300,000.

The campaign had failed, and Russia was left isolated from its partners in the war. In addition, Bulgaria had joined the war on the side of the Central Powers. Churchill was removed from the Admiralty as a result of the Gallipoli fiasco, although a later official enquiry found he had not disregarded professional advice regarding the expedition. Efforts were now reconcentrated on the Western Front in Europe, but the war would still drag on for another two and a half years. In Australia and New Zealand, when WWI finally ended, the date chosen to commemorate the fallen during the war was 25 April – known as ANZAC Day – the date of the first Gallipoli landing.