Gallipoli

By the end of 1914, World War One has stagnated into an industrial age nightmare.  The British and French sat opposite the Germans in trenches running through France from the coast to the Alps.  Things weren’t much different in the East where the early Russian advance had been defeated.  The British looked for options.  What could they do to alter the situation?  They looked at the Dardanelles Straits.  This narrow waterway connects the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea.  The Turks had mined the strait and fortified its coastline but if the British could land troops and their ships could force through the strait, they could threaten the Turkish capital.  So that’s what they tried to do.  The Australian author Les Carlyon tells the story of what happened in “Gallipoli”.