Gallipoli battlefield

During World War I most of the famous battles took place on the western front in France. But one important battle took place far from France - in the old Ottoman Empire at Gallipoli. This battle may not be the most famous of the battles of the war but it may in some way be the most significant of all the battles during the war because of the effect it had on the carrier of two of the most significant European leaders in the 20th century and help shape the new nation of Australia.

The main architect of the battle from the allied side was the British minister of the Navy who during the beginning of World War I were Winston Churchill. He believed the battle could shorten the war and avoid a lot of the bloodshed on the western front. For this reason he pressed hard for the attack to start.

The battle was started by a British landing around Anzac Bay and they used the mark of a lone pine to spot the landing site. The biggest contribution to the assault were not actually people from the British Isles but were a large contingent of troops from the British Dominions New Zealand and Australia. They made the core of the attack in the Australian New Zealand army corps or just Anzac. The assault did not go as planned the allied forced expected to break out from the bridgehead very fast but they did not calculate on the fact they were facing a very capable young colonel from the Ottoman force - Mustafa Kemal - he were able to stop the allied assault and as a consequence of this battle got significant fame and later ended up as the founder of modern day Turkey and received the name Ataturk father of the Turks.

The battle ended up costing both the Ottomans and the allied heavy losses and the allied finally had to retreat from the bridgehead and never again make a frontal assault on the entry to the Bosporus. On the allied side the failure lead to demise in Churchill’s power in the British government which led to him retiring from the government a year later. At the same time the battle help shape the newly founded independent nation of Australia and give it an independent national identity as a united nation and not just some separate states in a loose union. Until the present day the 25 of April is a national holiday in Australia commemorating the landing at Gallipoli.

Every year thousands of Australians will go and visit Gallipoli especially at Anzac day where thousands will come to go for the morning service. Unfortunately a lot of people seem to use the night before the service to celebrate all during the night getting to the service with no sleep but lots of alcohol in the blood.