United States or Gibraltar ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It is one wing of that horse-shoe formation of rugged mountains which hems in the Anafarta Ova and the Salt Lake. Our searching zone for wounded lay along this ridge, which rises like the vertebrae of some great antediluvian reptile dropping sheer down on the Gulf of Saros side, and, in varying slopes, to the plains and the Salt Lake on the other.
With that began a slow and bloody siege of the defences of the Dardanelles, clambering up to the surprise landing of a fresh British army in Suvla Bay in August, and its failure in the battle of Anafarta, through incompetent commanders and a general sloppiness of leading, to cut off and capture Maidos and the Narrows defences.... Meanwhile the Russian hosts, which had reached their high-water mark in the capture of Przemysl, were being forced back first in the south and then in the north.
Men-o'-war, close inshore, were shrouded in a murky pall from their flashing broadsides, while their shells tore holes in the village of Anafarta, or sent scrub and earth flying as they searched enemy ridges or passed to unseen billets beyond the summits. Hospital ships weighed anchor and passed into distance, and destroyers patrolled unceasingly to guard against submarine attack.
But by the 9th it was already too late, for the Turks had had time to bring up reinforcements, and an attack on the Anafarta ridge on the 10th was repulsed. Five days later General Stopford relinquished the command of the 9th Corps, to which he had been somewhat reluctantly appointed by Lord Kitchener, and the 29th Division was brought up from Cape Helles to renew the attack on 21 August.
For this purpose a number of troopships and warships carrying what was known as the Greek Legion and made up of Cretan volunteers, were to be used. It was hoped that this diversion would attract most of the available reserves in and about the Gallipoli Peninsula and make impossible the reenforcement of the troops stationed near Anafarta Hills and Sari Bair.
Farther out, every detail reflected in the clear blue water, lay a dozen clean, sweet hospital ships. Already round the little mound of Lala Baba were gathered small bodies of men, horses and artillery, and occasionally Turkish shrapnel burst above them. The warships were sending shells up the Anafarta valley and on to the Turkish positions behind the great white patch of the Salt Lake.
The Turks, meanwhile, were strongly fortifying not only the Anafarta Ridge proper but some of the hills commanding its left flank. Here Hill 70 and Hill 112 were the major positions, and on August 21, 1915, the British troops moved out in an effort to capture them. A portion of the British troops succeeded in reaching the top of Hill 70.
So a simple boy-scout trick came in useful on active service. Now came a period of utter stagnation It was a deadlock. We held the bay, the plain of Anafarta, the Salt Lake, the Kislar Dagh and Kapanja Sirt in a horse-shoe. The Turks held the heights of Sari Bair, Anafarta village, and the hills beyond "Jefferson's Post" in a semicircle enclosing us. Nothing happened.
Word Of The Day