The August Offensive at Anzac, 1915

The August Offensive or ‘Anzac Breakout’ at Gallipoli
saw some of the bloodiest fighting since the landing as
Commonwealth and Turkish troops fought desperate
battles at Lone Pine, German Officers’ Trench, Turkish
Quinn’s, The Chessboard, The Nek, Chunuk Bair, The
Farm, Hill Q and Hill 971. The offensive was designed
to allow the allied forces to ‘break out’ of the Anzac
beachhead below the Sari Bair Range; its end result was
an enlarged prison for which they paid a high price in
men and materials. The appalling nature of the terrain,
the complex plan and the overly ambitious objectives set
for the already fatigued troops, primitive communications,
poor leadership at corps, divisional and brigade level and
an impossible timetable, made the ‘fog of war’ a crucial
factor. Indeed, the August Offensive clearly demonstrates
what happens when an overriding strategic objective does
not take into account the tactical difficulties on the ground.
Whether the capture of the Sari Bair Range was of any
strategic significance to the Dardanelles campaign itself
is questionable. At the tactical level, the objectives were
impossible; at a strategic level it was arguably meaningless.