mine. Sinking by the stern as she rapidly began to do, she attracted the attention of the Turkish gunners who concentrated upon her a fierce fire. Badly cut to pieces and with the operation of her machinery abruptly stopped, the Bouvet sank while surrounded by torpedo boats and destroyers striving to save her crew. Only a few could be rescued. Shortly thereafter the Irresistible, a British pre-dreadnought and the Ocean of the same class, also went down, but swift action by destroyers saved most of their personnel. The British had thought the Turkish tiger was sleeping, but it had savagely used its teeth and claws. The complete failure of the Allied fleet in the Dardanelles was a bitter disappointment to its champions, particularly to those in England where it had been believed that the British navy was equal to any task that might be set it. But it may be said that this war has demonstrated that a fleet alone can never be effective against land fortifications. Naval authorities of both allied nations insisted that the passage of the straits was not impossible, but coupled their insistence with the conclusion that such a passage would be valueless unless accompanied by a land force to take possession of the defenses which the ships would put out of action. Accordingly while the allied fleets, anchoring out of danger, continued a desultory bombardment of the forts, a great military expedition was organized in Egypt under the command of Sir Ian Hamilton. Fifty thousand men, both French and British, reached the Gallipoli Peninsula late in April. The first landing was made at a point, Gaba Tepe, a bay on the Egean side of the peninsula away from the Dardanelles. The landing was begun about 3 A. M. while it was still dark, the men being placed in small boats which were towed by the battleships and destroyers as near to the shore as the draught of water would permit. About a half a mile from shore the boats cast off and made their way toward the beach. In that darkest hour that precedes the dawn the watchers on the ships could not tell whether their fellows were approaching a deserted coast or whether in that blackness there lurked a powerful force of the enemy ready to greet them with rifle shots and machine guns. Suddenly they saw an alarm Map showing the Turks in Asia, also the opposing forces of British and Russians and the approximate strength of each Australian ("Anzac") troops charge a Turkish trench near Gallipoli light flash on the shore and signal for a moment or two, when there burst out a rapid fire of rifles that told to the men still on the ships that their comrades would have to fight their way to a foothold on the beach. Landing was a desperate business. The Turks had not confined their obstructions to the dry land, but had mined and wired the few beaches at which landings were practicable under the water, so that the boats were blocked many yards from the shore and exposed to the murderous fire of the land batteries. A large tramp steamer, the River Clyde was packed with troops and beached at a strategic point. Several lighters also filled with men were attached to her protected side, the purpose being to swing them around so as to form a bridge between the ship and the shore. This done, great doors which had been cut in the side of the steamer would be thrown open and the troops would rush to the shore. How sadly the effort miscarried John Masefield tells picturesquely: Five picket boats, each towing five boats or launches full of men, steamed alongside the River Clyde and went ahead when she grounded. She took the ground rather to the right of the little beach some four hundred yards from the ruins of Sedd-el-bahr Castle before the Turks had opened fire, but almost as she grounded, when the picket boats with their tows were ahead of her only twenty or thirty yards from the beach, every rifle and machine gun in the castle, the town above it, and in Turkish infantry with fixed bayonets marching through the streets of Constanti nople weight of their equipment; but some reached the shore, and these instant ly doubled out to cut the wire entanglements and were killed, or dashed for the cover of a bank of sand or raised beach which runs along the curve of the bay. Those very few who reached this cover were out of immediate danger, but they were only a handful. The boats were destroyed where they grounded. Meanwhile the men of the River Clyde tried to make their bridge of boats, by sweeping the lighters into position and mooring them between the ship and the shore. They were killed as they worked, but others took their places, the bridge was made, and some of the Munsters dashed along it from the ship and fell in heaps as they ran. As a second company followed, the moorings of the lighters broke or were shot, the men leaped into the water and were drowned or killed, or reached the beach and were killed, or fell wounded there, and lay under fire getting wound after wound till they died; very, very few reached the sand bank. More brave men jumped aboard the lighters to remake the bridge. They were swept away or shot to pieces; the average life on those boats was some three minutes long, but they remade the bridge, and the third company of the Munsters doubled down to death along it under a storm of shrapnel which scarcely a man survived. The big guns in Asia were now shelling the River Clyde and the hell of rapid fire never paused. More men tried to land, headed by Brigadier-General Napier, who was instantly killed with nearly all of his followers. Then for long hours the remainder stayed French soldiers returning from a reconnoitring expedition. They have luckily escaped a shell which is seen bursting just behind them the curved low strongly trenched hill along the bay began a murderous fire upon ship and boats. There was no question of their missing. They had their target on the front and both flanks at ranges between one hundred and three hundred yards in clear daylight, thirty boats bunched together and crammed with men, and a good big ship. The first outbreak of fire made the Bay as white as a rapid, for the Turks fired not less than 10,000 shots a minute for the first few minutes of that attack. Those not killed in the boats at the first discharge jumped overboard to wade or swim ashore, many were killed in the water, many who were wounded were swept away and drowned, others trying to swim in the fierce current were drowned by the A sector of the Allies spring unive on the Macedonian front. Serbian troops holding a temporary trench and breastwork made of field stone Mohammedan volunteers leaving Jerusalem to join the Turkish army against the British on board, down below in the grounded steamer while the shots beat on her plates with a rattling clang which never stopped. Her twelve machine guns fired back, killing any Turk who showed, but nothing could be done to support the few survivors of the landing who now lay under cover of the sand bank on the other side of the beach. The situation was hopeless, but the British thought to reënforce such of their troops as had got ashore and fight on. A new expedition of 50,000 men was sent to the straits and put ashore without serious opposition at a point called Ari Burnu, but which the soldiers promptly named Anzac Bay, that name being derived from the initials of the words by which the troops engaged in the expedition were known "Australia and New Zealand Army Corps." With this foothold it was hoped that the Turkish main force on the peninsula might be attacked simultaneously front and rear and thus overwhelmed. Admirable as the plan seemed it was destined to failure. There followed twelve days of uninterrupted fighting in which the losses were heavier than at any other period of the Dardanelles campaign. And yet nothing came of this at all except the definite check of the British. The offensive was dropped and all military minds in the general staff of the Allies were concentrated on the problem how to get the army, which by this time numbered 200,000 men or more, out of the peninsula. Here for the first time the Turks, notwithstanding their German leadership, showed inefficiency. They had been magnificent in defense. While it was true that they had the advantage of overwhelming numbers, they defended their country successfully against a powerful attacking force on land and a naval force of absolutely unprecedented strength. But now they let slip the game that was fairly within their grasp. For some reason they could not be led into any effective attack upon the British forces which were really at their mercy. Instead they kept up a merely desultory assault upon the British outposts, while with most admirable skill Sir Ian Hamilton gradually withdrew his forces until by the first week of January, 1916, all had left the peninsula. The French, who had held the Asiatic mainland, were withdrawn at about the same moment. No single operation of the great war resulted so disastrously to the Allies as the Dardanelles expedition. The price paid was a loss reported officially up to December 11, 1915, of 112,921 men. Moreover, there were up to that time 96,683 men admitted to the Allies' hospitals. Six battleships, one of them French, were lost in the course of the naval operations. The conditions of fighting were such as to break down the constitutions of the men. The water supply was utterly inadequate. All water had to be brought by ship, landed in water bags, and carried on mule back to the various camps. General Hamilton reported that in the battle of August 10th he dared not order his reserves |