Istanbul_ The Collected Traveler_ An Inspired Companion Guide - Barrie Kerper [191]
Turkish machine-gun emplacements pinned the troops down within yards of the beachhead. General Hamilton directed: “There is nothing for it but for you to dig yourselves in and stick it out.” Dig they did, chipping miles of trenches out of the crumbly earth. In them they found what shelter they could for the next eight and a half months, knowing that the defender’s trenches were only yards away.
Glad we had worn boots, we walked up the tangled gullies near Anzac, where we found it hard to see the outlines of the old trenches. But in the surpassing stillness we could imagine the young soldiers, their bare shoulders blackened by sun and grime, carrying ammunition to the firing line. Repeated attempts to break out ended in failure. Throughout the campaign the Allies never managed to penetrate much beyond the foothold they gained in those April days, an area no more than two miles long and three-quarters of a mile deep.
One reason the Anzacs failed to achieve their objectives that first day was the intervention of Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal, who rushed reinforcements to Chunuk Bair, securing the northern end of the Turkish line and gaining control of the heights. The reputation earned at Gallipoli enabled him to go on to win his more familiar title, Atatürk, Father of the Turkish People.
Kemal was also instrumental in thwarting the Allies’ last serious bid to turn the tide, the landing on August 6 and 7 at Suvla Bay, five miles up the coast, when three fresh divisions were put ashore in an attempt to outflank the Turks, which proved a fiasco due to the staggering ineptitude of the corps commander, Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stopford.
Circling inland from Suvla and driving back into the hills, we joined a handful of Turkish and English-speaking tourists visiting the monument to Atatürk and his troops on the heights of Chunuk Bair, one of the best points from which to survey Gallipoli. Close by, the New Zealand Memorial reminded us that valiant New Zealanders held the top of this vital 850-foot hill for a few hours on August 7.
Under a glaring September sky we took in the whole battleground: the Dardanelles to the east, Anzac to the west, and the Helles memorial to the south, as well as the corrugated landscape made more sere by a fire in 1994. It sleeps peacefully under a mantle of scrub and pine, broken by few roads. I scrambled through the elaborately reconstructed trenches nearby to inspect the view of Suvla but found the shelter unconvincingly tidy and curiously unevocative.
To the southwest, marking the left flank of the Anzac salient, the Nek was the scene of the assault dramatized in the movie Gallipoli. Although the film erroneously implies that British nonchalance at Suvla fruitlessly cost Australian lives, it nonetheless offers a powerful picture of battlefield conditions.
For the Australian and New Zealand troops Gallipoli was a national rite of passage. Today Australians make up the majority of visitors, though only 15 percent of the soldiers at Gallipoli were Australian nationals, making the legend forged from their bravery all the more phenomenal.
The road past the cemeteries at Quinn’s Post and Johnston’s Jolly more or less follows the course of the opposing trenches. As little as five yards separated Anzac and Turkish lines—a tenth of the no-man’s-land typical on the Western front.
We completed our two-day visit at the far end of the heights over Anzac Cove. Lone Pine Cemetery and Memorial stand above the trenches taken at appalling sacrifice in early August. The panoramic view confirms the vulnerability of the entire Anzac salient. In hindsight, withdrawal of all Allied troops seems to have been inescapable, as General Hamilton’s replacement, General Sir Charles Monro, persuaded by storms and cold, finally concluded.
In one of the most brilliant logistical exercises in