On August 11, 1915, the right wing of the forces landed at Suvla Bay succeeded in working along the coast and linking up with the Australians at Asma Dere. They brought with them to the hard-hitting Colonials the first word of the progress of the Anafarta operation, and it was a bitter disappointment to the latter to learn that their heroic efforts against Sari Bair had been largely made in vain because of the failure of the Suvla Bay force to accomplish its task.
Both sides then busied themselves preparing for the new warfare in this region. The British consolidated their positions, and on August 15, 1915, sent forward the same Irish division that had captured Chocolate Hill in an attempt to rush Dublin Hill. After a hand-to-hand fight with the Turkish troops, who swarmed out of their trenches to meet the charging Irishmen, the hill was won.
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. There, however, they were greeted by a terrible fire from a battery concealed on Hill 112 and forced to fall back, first to the lower slopes of the hill and then, when the fire slackened, to their original intrenched positions.
Even less success was enjoyed by the troops making the assault upon Hill 112. The Turkish artillery poured a curtain of fire among the shrubs at the foot of the hill which effectively prevented the proposed advance. Farther to the south at the same time the Australians were attacking Hill 60 of the Sari Bair group and succeeded in driving the Turkish defenders from its crest.[Back to Contents]
PART VIII—AGGRESSIVE TURKISH CAMPAIGN AT DARDANELLES
CHAPTER XLII
SARI BAIR—PARTIAL WITHDRAWAL OF ALLIES
Thus practically ended the Suvla Bay operation and its supporting movements. Much had been expected of it and, by the barest margin, in the opinion of many competent military men, great results had been missed. Just what ultimate effect its success in this operation would have had on the Gallipoli campaign, on the position of Turkey in the war and, finally, upon the course of the war as a whole, it is obviously impossible to say. There are those who claim that the capture of Constantinople would have brought the struggle to a quick and disastrous end from the viewpoint of the Central Powers. There are others, equally entitled by experience and knowledge to speak, who claim that it would have had no appreciable influence on the final result. And there is a third body of critics of opinion that the capture of Constantinople would have been a disaster for the Allies, inasmuch as it would have opened up vast questions of age-long standing that would have led to wide dissension between England, Russia, and France.
There is another and no less interesting phase of the Suvla Bay operation that will one day be studied with care. In this crucial attack a reliance was placed upon raw troops who had seen little or no actual fighting. It was, in a way, an attempt to prove that patriotic youths, rallying to the colors at their country's need, although without previous training, could in a few months be made more than a match for the obligatory military service troops of the Continental system.