The Gallipoli Campaign Overview
Where did all the people go?
Most of the people living on the Gallipoli Peninsula until April 1915 were Greek. The Ottoman Fifth Army forcibly removed 22,000 Greek civilians from the area two weeks before the landings, on the pretext that, as Orthodox Christians, they might support the forthcoming Allied invasion. They never returned, ending 2500 years of Greek settlement on the peninsula.
New Zealand’s path to Gallipoli began with the outbreak of war between the United Kingdom and Germany in August 1914. Following New Zealand’s pledge to support the British Empire, an 8454-strong New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) left
Wellington in October 1914 to link up with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), expecting to join British forces fighting on the Western Front.
In early November 1914, the Ottoman Empi reen tered the war on the side of the
Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria) posing a direct threat to the Suez Canal which was an important British shipping lane between Europe and Asia. After training in Egypt, the NZEF was transported to the Greek island of Lemnos in April 1915 to prepare for the invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula which guarded the entrance to the Dardanelles Strait – a strategic waterway leading to the Sea of Marmara and, via the Bosphorus, the Black Sea. The Allied plan was to break through the straits, capture the Ottoman capital, Constantinople (now Istanbul), and knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. New Zealanders and Australians made up nearly half of the Mediterranean
Expeditionary Force ( F’s) 75,000 troops sent to capture the Gallipoli Peninsula. The MEF launched its invasion of the Dardanelles on 25 April 1915, however, a navigational error sent the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (soon to be known as Anzacs) 2km north of their intended landing. Instead of a flat stretch of coastline, they came ashore at Anzac Cove, a narrow beach overlooked by steep hills and ridgelines.
Stalemate
The landings never came close to achieving their goals. Fighting quickly degenerated into trench warfare, the Anzacs holding a tenuous perimeter against strong Ottoman attacks while enduring heat, flies, the stench of unburied bodies, insufficient water and disease.
In August 1915, the Allies launched a major offensive in an attempt to break the deadlock. The plan was to capture the high ground, the Sari Bair Range, while a British force landed further north at Suvla Bay.