Episode 18: The First Bloody Day - Gallipoli Part 2

Join us for part two of one of World War I’s most punishing disasters: the Gallipoli Campaign. Kelsey and Sarah recount the plan to overwhelm and occupy the Dardanelles, and then threaten Istanbul (which was Constantinople). The Anzac Cove landing drifts off course in the dark, troops hit the wrong stretch of coast, face brutal cliffs, and fight uphill with bad maps and scattered units. All the while, Ottoman defenders burrow into fresh ambush points and take advantage of British pauses, confusion, and missteps.

Kelsey and Sarah describe the misery of this assault: counterattacks, the catastrophic casualties, a truce to bury the dead, and gruesome underground fights when tunneling soldiers met in the dark. Jump in and hear the harrowing tale of Gallipoli.

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Transcript

The Sticker Pickup Misunderstanding

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Are you ready for my funny story?

SPEAKER_04 0:01

I mean, I was ready for it yesterday, but you're being an asshole, so cool.

SPEAKER_03 0:06

So I did a thing.

SPEAKER_04 0:08

And does this result in me getting something?

unknown 0:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:11

Oh, okay. Yeah, you get a present. So don't you feel like a dick. Okay. So I went to go pick up the thing that I got from this person. And I was like, I'll be there at 9 a.m. on Monday. And they were like, okay, sounds good. And I show up at the place, and it's a house that I had to go pick it up from. But I show up to this person's house and I ring the doorbell at like nine o'clock in the morning. So it's like pretty fucking early if you're not expecting people to come to your house.

SPEAKER_04 0:39

I think if someone rang my doorbell at 9 in the morning, I would stick Ray on them. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 0:44

So this lady comes to the door and I had been talking to a man. And I go, Hi, I hope I'm at the right place. I'm here to pick up an order. And she goes, What's the name? And I said, Kelsey Coyle. She's like, no, the name of the company. And I said, The Silver City Sticker Company. And she goes, No, what's the name of the company that you're ordering for? And I went, That's a Macrony podcast. And she goes, Yeah, okay, I'll be right back. And I was like, I'm just standing on her porch, like, she just stared at you like you were crazy when you said that. Because I just wasn't understanding. She's like, What's the name? I was like, my name. And she's like, the company name. I was like, the company name I'm looking for. She's like, no, the company name they we made you stickers.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

I made you stickers.

SPEAKER_04 1:25

Oh we got our stickers.

unknown 1:28

There's a two.

SPEAKER_04 1:30

Okay, see, I knew making that purple would look better. It does. Yes. Oh! I'm giving these to everybody. That's why I got a lot.

SPEAKER_03 1:40

You should have approximately 200.

SPEAKER_04 1:44

Let me open these for everyone and then I'll run to the camera and show all of you. No.

unknown 1:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 1:51

Okay. Okay. There's one holographic and then there's one non-holographic one. So I'm gonna run to the camera and I'm gonna show everyone. Hold on.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

So yeah, we have stickers. Oh shit!

SPEAKER_03 2:02

So if anyone wants one, shoot us an email or a DM or anything, and we'll send you one. We're on Instagram, that's so Mac underscore podcast on Instagram. That's so Macaronipodcast at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_04 2:18

So if you do message us on Facebook, I'll get it. Sounds good. Yeah. And yeah, we'll send you one. We'll send you two so you can give one to a friend. Was she uh was the lady less weird after?

SPEAKER_03 2:32

Yeah, I was like, I'm so sorry. I just felt like such an idiot. I just kept like shrinking into the ground. She's like, What's the name? I was like, My name's Kelsey. She's like, not your name, the name of the company. I went, I'm looking for Silver City sticker coat. She's like, I know that's our company. What's your company? I was like, sweet Jesus. God, you stupid bitch. I was like, I was like, this is a Mac Money Podcast.

SPEAKER_04 2:55

Jill's never gonna listen to us. She's like, all right, stupid. Don't mind me. I'm just sending a picture to Kristen. Oh, good. Shout out to to my my friend and old roommate Tanae, um, because she is the one that designed these for us. Thank you. Yay! And they look great.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

They sound great too. Uh so I guess let us begin. Lettuce, lettuce continue.

SPEAKER_04 3:21

Don't eat any lettuce right now.

SPEAKER_03 3:23

Dude, I went to fucking sweet tomatoes before I heard that. I had a large salad. Listen, so far, no explosive diarrhea.

How To Get Your Stickers

SPEAKER_01 3:35

Hey my doodle dandies, this is Kelsey, and I'm Sarah. And we're that's so macaroni. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:52

What is a recap? Give me a recap because I vaguely remember part one. What do you remember, adult from part one? Anything? Probably. Is it coming to my brain right now? No.

SPEAKER_03 4:04

It's okay. When you asked me to recap um my gaze in the military for Harvey, I was like, I remember nothing that I just researched for the past three months. What do you want from me?

SPEAKER_04 4:14

I know, I can see it in your face.

SPEAKER_03 4:16

I was like, caught her off guard. I was like, things happened. Some good, some bad, all history. Okay. Good recap. Okay. Um, so Glipoli happened in World War I. It was in the early part of World War One. They, uh, the Brits and the Ottomans were going at it. I guess the Allies and the Ottomans were going at it. Um, I try to call them the Ottomans as much as possible because it was an empire, just like Great Britain or the United Kingdom is an empire.

SPEAKER_04 4:51

I do remember talking about the Ottoman because, like in the subjects that we've talked about in the past, that's where a lot of people go to like to run away. Yeah, to run away. Yeah, I remember that.

SPEAKER_03 5:04

Yeah, they do

Gallipoli Recap And The Goal

SPEAKER_03 5:05

have really lovely beaches, but not the ones that they landed on. Actually, that's not true. Souffle Bay is really pretty, but like also kind of shitty because lots of people died. Um, I don't know if I talked about that yet. Anyways, uh they tried to do a naval bombardment, but there's a whole bunch of mines and there's a whole bunch of howitzer's guns, which they can just like roll around so they could pull away from the navy artillery and then roll them back up and fire at the ships again. So the allies were like, God damn it, now we have to put people there. Like people, people. So they went, okay, sounds good. We're gonna put people, people down.

SPEAKER_04 5:42

Question. Mm-hmm. If you were to have ever joined the military, which branch do you think you would have gone into?

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Ooh, good question. Um I think realistically, like if I were going to like actually like serve anywhere, it would have to be the army, because I don't know if I could be a marine. Fair. Um, I wanted to be in the air force, but for the same reason I couldn't be in the navy, is I get really motion sick.

SPEAKER_04 6:12

Yeah, that's true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

But like I would love to be in the air force. But I could I think that like what would be really fun would to be uh like a paratrooper.

SPEAKER_04 6:21

No, thank you. No, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 6:23

Huck myself out of an airplane.

SPEAKER_04 6:25

That's a nightmare, is what that is.

SPEAKER_03 6:28

I think if I got a running head start, I could do it. I've jumped off of many cliff diving, you know?

SPEAKER_04 6:34

You're gonna have to push my ass off because I'm not going.

unknown 6:38

No.

SPEAKER_04 6:39

That's to be the guy behind you, just uh I will grab onto you so quickly. Well then you can't be a paratrooper. Yeah, I'm aware.

SPEAKER_03 6:49

What about you? Where would you go?

SPEAKER_04 6:51

Probably the navy.

SPEAKER_03 6:52

I also couldn't be on a submarine.

SPEAKER_04 6:54

Oh, I would love to be on a submarine.

SPEAKER_03 6:56

I couldn't be in a tight space like that.

SPEAKER_04 6:58

Oh yeah, that's fair. I don't think it would bother me that much. I think it'd be fun. Have you been on a submarine? I've been in one, but it wasn't moving.

SPEAKER_03 7:08

It doesn't make it easier when I don't move.

unknown 7:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:11

It was stationary at the time.

SPEAKER_03 7:14

Like it sounds like fun, but I think that if I was packed in that tightly with people, I think I'd go insane. And it's like really, really small. Like I fit well, I fit fine, but I also hate confined spaces.

SPEAKER_04 7:30

Yeah. Not fair. See? You take the air all day to see all jump out of an airplane.

SPEAKER_03 7:38

Yeah, that'd be fun. Anyway. Anywho, so there's no one jumping out of airplanes here. Um there were submarines. Yay! Yay, I don't talk about them. Um, but they're there. We go to the land very quickly. Um, let's see, what was the last thing I had said? Oh right, the landings at the beaches. So there's two different places. Do you remember what the um peninsula kind of looks like? I have to pull up those maps. It looks kind of like a foot, I think. So it looks like a pointed foot to me. Cape Hilless is at the tippy toes, and then um Ansac Cove is like up at the ankle area.

SPEAKER_05 8:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 8:20

And when their goal is to get to the heel and take that over, because that's where um a lot of the artillery is firing at the Dardanelles. The whole goal of this entire thing is to get the Dardanelles to get the ships to Constantinople, which is now Istanbul.

SPEAKER_04 8:37

Isn't this okay? I I feel like I remember, isn't this the uh ships that were like already paid for and then someone's not giving them to them?

SPEAKER_03 8:45

Yeah, okay. Yeah, so that's partially why the Ottomans joined, so they were neutral and then they joined on the side of um the Central Powers. They're called in World War I. Germany, Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria. Okay. Um, they joined them because they pay prepaid through, like, I don't know, bonds or something. Like the people of the Ottoman Empire paid for these ships to be built by Great Britain because they build really great ships. They do. And they're like, hey, that's great. And they're like, well, because we think that you're kind of siding with Germany, we can't really give you these ships in Gaganchas. And they're like, excuse me, we have our ambassadors and sailors for the ships halfway there. What are you talking about?

SPEAKER_02 9:33

And they're like, sorry, we can't give it to you. Okay, but we'll keep the money.

SPEAKER_03 9:39

Yeah. And

Navy Versus Army Hypotheticals

SPEAKER_03 9:40

so Germany was like, we'll give you ships and sailors. And Britain was like, you can't do that. That's not fair. And they're like, uh, what's not fair is the fact that you took our fucking ships. So now they're not friends. Oh, and um, Enver Pasha, which is the like minister of war basically for the Ottomans, he's like, I really want to get violent. So he bombards Odessa, a bunch of other Black Sea port cities of Russia. Okay. And then they blockade the Dardanelle so nobody can get in or out.

unknown 10:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 10:16

Then the Brits are like, we're gonna force it open. Oh, also they're really harassing um the British all around like the Middle East, and they're like, we could really use these guys out of the goddamn war. Maybe if you were nicer and didn't like conspire behind their back to like take their empire, they wouldn't be that way. Yeah. But alas, that's what they did. So they tried to get the the straits. Turns out that's hard. They're gonna have to put people there, but it should be really easy over by Christmas. Not a big deal. They will definitely succeed. Okay. Um, so we ended with the imminent landings of where they're gonna land. There is VW There was an S in there, wasn't it? V W XY and S. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:02

Hello? What? A bunch of fucking balloons just like went up on the screen. Invasion day!

SPEAKER_03 11:08

Um that was so weird. And then so that's on K Hill S. And then there is a like I said, uh kind of like at the ankle area is the Anzac Cope. And that's where the Australians and New Zealanders are going to be. Okie dokie. So let's see, boo-boo, boo, boo. So it's really super rugged territory, covered with ridges, ravines, and cliffs. It was decided that this would be the better place to land because they were still only trying to take out the defenses um on the straits to allow the navy through to Constantinople, which is a Stan Bull now. General Sir Ian Hamilton was in charge of the whole shebang. And he made really poor choices. Oh, he sure did. He made really poor choices by referring a lot.

unknown 11:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:58

Oh. Can you imagine like sucking at your job so fucking bad? They make like they write a book about it. Like, what not to fucking do?

SPEAKER_03 12:11

That would suck so bad. I would cry. Yeah, I think I'd just lay face down on the ground until I just wasted away. I became one with a carpet.

SPEAKER_04 12:19

You know what I would do? Um, I would take an expired cyanide pill and lay in a puddle.

SPEAKER_03 12:24

Eventually that will work for you. Unless the angry mob gets to you first. Um okay, so he referred too much to others, is partially his problem. Um he agreed to the pre-dawn landing for the Anzac

Anzac Landing Drifts Off Course

SPEAKER_03 12:40

north of Gabatepe, but a daytime landing for the 29th Division at Cape Lest, because that's what each of them wanted. So today we're gonna talk about the landings, the struggles the soldiers faced, and the evacuation of the peninsula. Hopefully. What page is this? I have a bit to get through.

SPEAKER_04 12:56

So I just saw the finger guns, and I was like, Pew Pew!

SPEAKER_05 13:01

Where are we gonna go here?

SPEAKER_03 13:03

So, early the morning hours of April 25th, 1915, the AnSAC, which is the Australian-New Zealand Army Corps, begin what would be the largest amphibious landing in the face of armed opposition that has ever been attempted, and nothing like it would uh be attempted again until D-Day in World War II. Connor, please show the zoom in Anzac picture. Sarah, I think you should have that one too.

SPEAKER_04 13:31

I might have to pull it up on my phone because I shoot.

SPEAKER_03 13:34

Okay, that's right. Um I will hold.

SPEAKER_04 13:45

We gotta make it interesting sometimes, you know. Like, how else are the people gonna get to know us? Hello, my baby, hello my darling, hello the ragtime gal.

SPEAKER_03 13:54

And Zach. There it is. Ah, okay. So you see how it looks really fun to land on? Um, all those mountains and stuff. Yeah, I was about to say it's very bumpy. It is very bumpy. The goal of this landing group was to secure the mountain of uh Maltepe or Mount Tepe, which um is at the heel. So it's oh according to Google Maps, it's about a six-hour walk if you go to Gabatepe through the reasonable flatter lands and come up the coast of the straits. It does not take into account, though, the traffic that rifle fire and landmines would create. Also, they weren't going that way. They were gonna go right over the top of all those mountains.

SPEAKER_02 14:34

Hate walking.

SPEAKER_03 14:35

Then you would have hated this. The Navy's a great place for you. Yeah. You only have to walk so far in a submarine. Might have to swim. We'll see. Actually, I don't mind swimming, I kind of like it. Um, the first wave of 1,500 men were tasked with taking the third ridge that went from Gabatepe to Battleship Hill. It had to be the third ridge, as it was the highest and any lower than that, the troops landing on the beach would still be in a vulnerable position. This is foreshadowing. This should be easy enough, though, because war is always easy and it's always over by Christmas. Yeah, war is no last time. And just by the way, that's gonna be my new saying, and my next our next sticker is it'll be over by Christmas for and we'll whenever anything feels like endless and difficult, you know, people say if you're going through hell, just keep on going. And then we'll have another one.

SPEAKER_04 15:30

We'll have another one that's wow, that's older than Brandon. Sorry, Brandon. Not really. I was like, no, you're not.

SPEAKER_03 15:40

So they they thought that this would be um that like resistance would be light because they probably weren't well trained. I think I talked about this last time. I did definitely talk about this last time. Um, they were like, the British were like, well, obviously they're not gonna be well trained, and they're probably really shitty soldiers. So there'll be a lot of them, but they're like super suck compared to us, which is silly to think. Also rude. Yes, there's a lot of um colonial ego that goes into that thought process. Um, and as much as I always want to get into it, I can't, because I have a lot to talk about. But yes. Um, but they had just fought war after war after war. They're like kind of used to this now because they lost like all the Balkans, and maybe that's part of why they thought they wouldn't be well trained, but like, come on, dude, like they've been at this for a bit. Yeah. Um, and before we even get to the beach at Ansac, there's a problem. In order to get to shore, troops would be loaded onto rowboats, which would be towed close to shore, cut loose, and then rowed the rest of the way in. But the steamer ships that were towing the rowboats were captained by junior naval officers. And when I say junior, I mean some were still teenagers.

SPEAKER_04 16:58

Yeah, I mean, that sounds about right, doesn't it? Uh, it's the they can work in the mine, they can manage ship. It's the early 1900s of it all. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

Um, they're like, we probably got this. Um, but teenagers at night trying to navigate eel-infested waters um and find a specific point on the coast is Do you hear that?

SPEAKER_02 17:16

Huh? Do you hear that? Those are the shrieking eels.

SPEAKER_03 17:21

Thank you. It's so it's hard. And there's an immense pressure on them to make sure that they didn't drop the men off too close to Gabatepe, where resistance would be the greatest. They kind of knew that Gabatepe would be heavily protected, which was further south. So they were like, I'm going kind of up north. One of the commanders of a steamer describes the challenge like this. I realized that we were heading very close to the north side of Gabatepe, which, because of its height, is very conspicuous. I was confident that we must be heading for the wrong place. There was no one to consult, and I felt the lives of the men I was towing were my responsibility. End quote. So who said that? The captain. The teenage captain, yes, the child captain. Wow, that poor thing.

SPEAKER_04 18:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 18:07

I know. He's like, what do I do? Um, and his frontal robe isn't fully developed yet, so he's just doing the best that he fucking can. Yeah, for real. Um so he decides to alter course further north, which actually overshot their landing site where they should have landed. Do you still have your map?

SPEAKER_05 18:23

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 18:23

Where they should have landed would have put them closer to Gabotepe, actually, just like a little bit north. But they would have only had um really two ridges because they would have landed next to the first ridge that you see there, where like by the little boots. They would have landed next to that and only had to go over the first two ridges. Now they have to go over three ridges because they went too far north and landed in a harder beach. Ah, okay. Uh, I don't know if I tell Connor he can put the map away. Um he'll figure it out. Connor, you got this. Connor, put the map away at some point.

unknown 19:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 19:08

Um, okay, so this causes two additional issues. The obvious one being that they're in a different area than they had prepared for, which means that they are on use to the train. They train, like looking at maps and stuff, and they're like, ah, we know where we're going because we've seen a map of it. This should be, I don't know, something I recognize. Um You've seen a map of it, so

Cliffs, Confusion, And Digging In

SPEAKER_03 19:30

you just know what you're doing. This comes in later too. So the second being that now they have to scale the cliffs of insanity pretty much fucking immediately. They have like a cliff to climb. Um, do I have Ansac?

SPEAKER_04 19:41

Do they have Andre the Giant carrying all of them on his back? No, they don't even have that. With the man in black following at their heels.

SPEAKER_03 19:50

Well, now they're in front, actually, which is kind of the shitty part. Okay, I do have a picture. Um, it's under Anzac Cove. Connor, if you haven't put the map away, you can put it now and you can pull up Anzac Cove. Thanks, Connor. He's like, I hate you guys.

SPEAKER_04 20:04

Which is it? Anzac Cove. Hopefully it's on the hair. I do not have that.

unknown 20:10

Fuck.

SPEAKER_03 20:10

It looks like this. I'll just show you for right now. I'll put it in there later. Ooh, that looks like and they have to go straight up them damn hills.

SPEAKER_04 20:17

Yeah, gross. Mm-hmm. Gross indeed. I would take a hard pass on that.

SPEAKER_03 20:23

So, um, I had talked also last week about the Ottomans having all that prep time because between the naval bombardments and when they actually landed was like a month, and they had time to dig trenches, set up machine guns, have soldiers like ready to like move around. Well, they're at Gabitape. But they're also set up along the ridges to Ari Brnu, which is closer to where the Ansac actually landed. Before the moonset, an Ottoman lookout noticed ships on the horizon and a small force of about 70 men stationed on Ari Brnu tried to hold off the invaders, the initial wave of 1,500 men for as long as possible. But Von Sanders, the uh German who is in control of the army, he thought that this is a ruse. It couldn't be a major landing, because why would it be a major landing? What a stupid place to go. But Mustafa Kemal, we talked about last time too, who is the leader of the military, who I'm not going to talk too much about in his official capacity, because you're talking about him.

SPEAKER_05 21:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:28

Uh, he was in charge of the 19th Turkish Division. Um, but he saw this for what it was, which was a serious threat to the divisions on the peninsula, and he moved his men to face the Ansac. As the men of the 3rd Brigade in the first wave pushed through the brush and up and down the maze of hills carrying their heavy packs and ammunition, drawing near constant fire from the defenders, even as they were retreating. Every step back the Ottomans took, it was to another position to ambush the advancing Australians. So every single time they retreated, it was. To like still a very advantageous position. And so the Australians are just like hoofing it through the slam that they don't fucking get and being shot at the entire time. Like they would like go around a corner and there's an Ottoman troop there, and he's like, taking them down. No, no, I don't like that. Um, although landing at the wrong spot, facing more difficult terrain, and taking a significant amount of fire was enough of a struggle on its own. The third for the third brigade, there's another issue, which is their maps. Are incorrect. Yes. So some of the officers um said that their maps were inaccurate due to multiple transcribings. They suppressed the elevation. So they're like, oh, these are just like little whoopee-woo hills. And it turns out that they're like huge ass fucking mountains to go over. Yeah, like the beach. They're like, oh, it's just like a little dune. And it's not a little dune. It kind of fucking sucks. Um kind of put that picture away. My man. So, which is a big deal if the area that you're in is full of fucking like ravines and mountains and super craggy.

SPEAKER_04 23:04

So when they made the map, did they just like, did they not actually go? They just like saw it from like afar.

SPEAKER_03 23:11

That's a really I have no oh oh yes, I do. Sorry. That's stupid. I do know. Uh they have airplanes, so they yeah. See, you know what?

SPEAKER_04 23:19

For some reason, I feel like we're back like in the fucking punishment.

SPEAKER_03 23:24

We're like running through their lay down to us, and they're like following a river, just dropping. No, there's airplanes. There's airplanes.

SPEAKER_04 23:31

Yeah, okay. Yeah. Duh. We are in the 1900s. They have airplanes and cameras, so it's all I mean, they're not the best, but they do a good enough job.

SPEAKER_03 23:42

Yeah. Apparently not, though. Well, the drawing of it, the continual drawing of it, like made it so that the uh topography kind of flattened. I see. Um, one captain said that he kept his mat and it was written pretty clearly. So the trouble Was it though? Well, the trouble could also be that many officers were not good at orienteering and map reading. That's such a fun word. Isn't it? Yes. I'm really bad at orienteering. Actually, I'm not really bad. I'm okay at it.

SPEAKER_04 24:12

There's a whole episode of Bob's Burgers where Tina goes orienteering.

SPEAKER_03 24:17

That sounds hilarious. It's so good. Okay, sorry. Okay, so either way, the map is wrong, or the people can't read the maps. Okay. So it doesn't really matter. Like, tomato, tomato at this point, you still don't know where the fuck you are. So it's still not helpful. Even with a map, like And you're being shot at.

SPEAKER_04 24:37

Yeah, like what are you gonna do? Just like stand there and be like, okay, so this is normal. Time. Foom! Foom out time out. What? Looking at the map. Oh, yeah. I was like, what? What'd I do? Oh, you're saying time. You're wrong. Hold on, stop shooting for like a second. Okay. I need to figure out where you're coming from. Yeah. Can I can I show you my map? Do you can you help me? Point to where we are. Shoot where we are in the map. It's not like, it's not like, you know, at the mall where it says you are here. Like, I need a little help. I need help.

SPEAKER_03 25:07

Yeah, that's how it went for them. Except for they were like, and it was super shitty. Um, because of all of this, the third brigade begins to dig in on the second ridge, which if you remember, is not high enough. Okay. Ridge three is the ridge we need. Um, while Peter Hart, who wrote a book called Happily Glippoli, um, said, Who the fuck cares if you're gonna take a bunch of heat, like you're taking a bunch of heat, that's your job. You're a soldier. Keep moving so that the next group can come in and take the second ridge. And that's honestly the reaction of most British higher-ups that these men should have kept moving inland to take the ridge that they were supposed to. Oh look, I asked here, Connor, Fosatji Trouble, could you show the Ansat Cove photo? But you already did it. So we can already see how steep it was. Connor, put the photo in where the fuck it works. Essentially, it's a large sidewalk below a very steep hill that they had to run up. The Australians, I um New Zealanders are extremely sporty people. So they're like, Yeah, we got this. They've got like cut calves and like quads of steel in their little shorty hoochie daddy army shorts, and they're just like, and they take off. Um but it's a lot of hills, and they're carrying a lot of shit. Hard pass. Yeah. That just reminds me, and this is like it's on topic, but off topic. So the whole reason I know anything about Clipoli is because I went to this acting camp. Um, and one of the guys who taught the lessons was a storyteller, and he sang this song and like told it as like the story. He like could do sound effects. Okay. And so like he acted out this song called Um The Band played Waltzing Matilda, and Waltzing Matilda is like going backpacking, I guess. Okay. And so it just made me think of it as like, yeah, like they had to carry all this shit. And I'm like, well, they were used to waltzing their Matildas. They so what? Maybe they're used to carrying all that shit. Plus, kangaroos are like super mean, so they probably had to carry a gun too.

SPEAKER_04 27:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 27:15

That that also this just might be what Australians do. I don't know. Time in Australia. Fighting kangaroos, and they're like, this is so much easier than kangaroos. At least they're not kicking us in the face.

SPEAKER_04 27:27

Can I ever tell you when I worked at the zoo, it was like once a week.

SPEAKER_03 27:31

Someone got kicked by a kangaroo.

SPEAKER_04 27:34

Close. No, because remember, okay, so I worked on the aquarium side, so I never really like had to go over to like the actual zoo side, but all of our radios were still connected. So like we could hear what was going on on the zoo side, and the zoo side could hear what was going on in the aquarium. And at least once a week, at like, I don't know, like seven, eight in the morning, you would just hear someone go over the radio. You guys, I'm gonna need some help. Big red got out again. Oh god, and he was like our big like male. And then like all of us, like over on the aquarium side, would just start laughing because we're like, we're not our fucking problem.

unknown 28:18

Nope.

SPEAKER_04 28:18

But then just like listening to the radio chatter after that, like them like rounding him up. It was great, it was a good way to start the day. You just like let him out in the morning, you're like, let's just see how it goes. Well, no, because you you've been to that zoo, right?

SPEAKER_03 28:31

God, yeah, forever and ever.

SPEAKER_04 28:33

Well, they have a kangaroo walkabout where you can literally go walk around with kangaroos, kinda, yeah. Like they're in their own little like area, but like you can still like walk around. But he was just so smart that he figured out how to open the fucking door to the rest of the uh he's a problem.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

He is a problem. It was so I guess what we're getting at here is that it sounds pretty similar. So really the difference is is like if these kangaroos had guns, like if big red had a gun, he didn't need guns, okay.

SPEAKER_04 29:07

Like he was ripped, he was a very scary dude.

SPEAKER_03 29:13

So, anywes, um, many today still agree with the sentiment that they should have kept going, despite the kangaroos with rifles.

SPEAKER_04 29:22

Um if I saw a kangaroo with a rifle and I had to walk up a steep ass hill, I'd be like, just shoot me now, man. Exactly. I'm done.

SPEAKER_03 29:29

I don't think it takes into account all the fuck shit that was happening around them. You know, like it's really hard to rain. There's heavy fire that broke up units, so everyone's like scattered and lost. The maps were not good, or the map readers were not good, and no one had any idea where they should be or where the rest of their unit was. And every time they turned a corner or crested a hill, they were being ambushed. So I'm not a soldier, but I think that trying to get your bearings doesn't seem like a crazy idea. So they kind of were like, we need to figure out what the fuck is happening. Dig in, let's stop getting shot, and let's figure out what the fuck is happening. And I think that makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 30:04

Yeah, like I understand like most people are gonna be like, just keep going, but like, what if I walk into the kangaroo with the gun? Now what am I supposed to do?

SPEAKER_03 30:12

And it's like it's all over the place and chaotic. So, like being like, okay, hang on, what's happening? Like, let's come back to like the fuck is going on right now. It doesn't seem like a crazy idea to just be like, can we hold still? Yeah, two fucking seconds. Yeah, stop getting shot. So, knowing what we know now, this time that the Ansec delayed going further inland was actually the perfect respite for the Ottomans. Um, they got more people and they were able to fortify. This is the theme of the entire operation, it feels like. There's no way for them to the British to know that at the time, but every time that they would like pause, the Ottomans were like, Whew, thank God, because we were not ready for that shit. Like, they were just like flying by the sea of their pants, and then they would they took the time that the all those pauses to like re-fortify all their shit.

SPEAKER_04 31:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 31:00

Um, okay, so some of the Australians made it onto the third ridge, but they were quickly repelled by the defenders, and none of it made it on the third ridge again for the remainder of the campaign. The first few days for the Ansac were terrible, and it was hard to count their casualties, but it's estimated that of the 20,000 or so men who went ashore on April 25th, 2,000 died on day one. How many men were went? 20,000. And 2,000? Were dead on the first day. Damn. Mm-hmm. Bad first day. Yeah. Lieutenant General William Birdwood, the leader of the NSAC, was summoned ashore that evening to discuss what to do. Wounded were being carried off the slopes above, and troops who got separated from their units in the train were returning to find where to go. So it's just chaos.

SPEAKER_04 31:50

They kind of like retreated back to where they started. Yeah. Because they had nowhere else to go because they didn't know where they were.

SPEAKER_03 31:55

Yeah, it's like when you go to the mall with your mom and you're little and she says we meet at customer service, we get separated, they went back to customer service.

SPEAKER_04 32:02

You know what's funny? Hmm.

SPEAKER_03 32:03

I still got lost on my way to customer service. That doesn't surprise me. You would be really bad at orienteering. This map could have been immaculate, and you would have had to go back to customer service. You would have actually probably just gone over to the Ottomans and you're like, fuck, this was the wrong way.

SPEAKER_04 32:16

Yeah, dude. Well, I know, okay, I'm like derailing and I'm telling all these stories, but remember I told you a story. Um the first time I ever walked to school by myself.

SPEAKER_05 32:27

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04 32:28

There you go. Practice that route every single day for a month with my mother. The first time I go by myself, I'm lost.

unknown 32:37

Oh, God.

SPEAKER_03 32:38

Okay, so they're like you. They're just tottering around trying to figure out where the fuck to go. Crying. So, Major General Bridges, which was one of Birdwood's officers and commander of the first Australian Division, I'm gonna be throwing out some of these divisions. It's complicated. And I try to keep it as basic as possible by not naming every individual division. This is what took so long to finish this last part, was because they all have like their own history websites and memorials, blah, blah, blah, for each division. Um, and they'll list their dead. And I'm like, well, yeah, but you fought with other people. You just said that. How many of them were there? And they're like, I don't know, go check their website. I'm like, okay, so yeah, it was it was a time of it. Um, okay, so Major General Bridges, commander of the first Australian division, was like, hey, we should get off this godforsaken strip of land and reembark. This is going to be hell. Birdwood says, No problem, I'll pass it along. Hey, General Ian Hamilton on the Queen Elizabeth, which is like the nice fancy ship. Um, goes, I need to tell you that we should probably get off of this. This is not gonna go well. And Hamilton spoke to his naval staff who work on boats about the about the land operations. And they said, Oh no, it could take three days to get them off. We best just leave them there. Three days is too much time. And Hamilton said, Wow, you aren't seeing the carnage, but I believe that this is the best plan. And so he says, Birdwood, your men will stay put. Because the Navy says it will take too long to get your men off of there. Even though they don't know that you guys are just being mowed down because they're on boats.

SPEAKER_04 34:25

Okay, so I mean, yeah, I would ask somebody on a boat what what I should do if about the mountains. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:33

They'll know. Yeah. Um, so let's talk about day one for everyone else.

SPEAKER_04 34:38

Also sorry, everyone.

Cape Helles Plan And Leadership Issues

SPEAKER_04 34:40

I have to move a lot.

unknown 34:42

Okay. Let's see.

SPEAKER_03 34:45

Okay, we're gonna start with Cum Kale, which is on the Asiatic side of the Dardanelles of the Straits. So we have the Gallipoli Peninsula, and then like on the land side is Cum Kale. And um, we're gonna just go over that real quick because it starts and ends real quick. Okay. The French go over there and they were moving in pretty solidly before they were faced with some Ottoman resistance. By the morning of April 26th, some of the Ottoman soldiers were surrendering, and this was a surprise to literally everybody. They were like, all right, fine. Um, but the landings at Cape Pless were having such a rough go of it, um, that the French were pulled out of Kumkayel without completing their objectives. Okay. So they left the surrendering people there, didn't take all any of the guns on that side, and just left. That's weird. Isn't it though? This is why they wrote a whole book about what you shouldn't do from Sir Eaton Hamilton. They're like, don't do that. Don't be this guy. Finish the job. Um, then we have the Royal Naval Division, and they are a diversionary force at Boulevard. It was a diversion. That's what I think of every time I think of the diversionary force. I think of Moana.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

Yeah, uh, it was a diversion. The algae. Oh, she's bioluminescent algae.

SPEAKER_03 36:08

That's kind of what the Royal Naval Division does. Um, except for they're shelling the coast and they're pretending that they're gonna be landing soon. Ah, okay. They went so far as to send swimmers out to set flares along the coast as if troops would be doing a night landing there.

SPEAKER_04 36:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 36:24

So these like really strong swimmers, they're like Michael Phelpsing it up to the shore, and they're like, flare. Flare. So the the troops there are like, ah, there's gonna be troops landing. Where are all these flares coming from? And it's just like one dolphin man out there. Um, anyways, so they're having a good time of it. The distraction worked so well that Von Sanders went over there himself to make sure that things weren't gonna go to shit. Um, and it worked well for a little while. Connor, please pull up the zoom-in map of Cape Pilless. So the five beaches of Cape Piles, essentially, all of the other landings were to support the 29th and their bid for the high ground. Um, the Kiladbar Plateau on the strait side of the peninsula that would give them dominance over the peninsula and the straits so that the Navy could do its thing, which is to get to Constantinople, which is now Istanbul. I like the order that the History of the Great War podcast does. So we're gonna kind of follow his order because it goes from Y, um, it goes YXS and then V and W together because they're like the main force. So we're gonna do that. If you recall, the Navy didn't want to try to shell at night because of the difficulty. It was gonna be hard. So they started their bombardment at 5 a.m. and go for half an hour before the troops would head out to their beaches. Um, so as a reminder, the field commander for the land forces of all Cape Pilless beaches was General Hunter Weston, and I said last episode that he did an interesting job. Part of that is that he focused his attention almost entirely on the landing forces of uh W and V. Okay. Why didn't Hamilton do anything about this? Well, his chief of staff Braithwaite persuaded him not to intervene as some sort of Prussian tactic of giving orders and letting field commanders take control. Um, which might not be a bad idea unless you can see everything that's going sideways and could do something about it. So, like, if you're not there, like um when I don't know, when Birdwood was like, hey, we should get the fuck off this beach, and he goes, uh no, I think you guys should stay on that beach.

SPEAKER_04 38:35

Like, he should have probably listened to Birdwood. No, but they weren't on a ship, so why would he listen to them? I know they don't know what they're talking about on the mountains and shit.

SPEAKER_03 38:44

Um so he in that case, it would have been good to listen to the commander who's there because they can see things happening. In this case, he saw um Hamilton could see that um that Hunter Weston was making wrong choices or was not focusing as he should on the overall objective and instead did nothing to, you know, redirect him. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 39:11

So yeah. So they should write a book about that guy too? Maybe they did.

SPEAKER_03 39:16

Maybe they did. I think it's I well, maybe they didn't, because I think it's really interesting. A lot of people, so Sir Ian Hamilton gets a lot of shit, and Churchill gets a lot of shit. Like they basically take the fall for this whole thing, and honestly, not a lot of them who are the higher-ups did a good job. Yeah. Like, they didn't do a good job leading this operation because most of them were like career military people, but like career in the way that they were like administrative because they were like lordships and shit. So they didn't have actual experience. Some of them did, but a lot of them who were making like the big calls didn't, and they weren't fucking there, so they didn't know. And yeah, so it becomes a problem.

Y Beach Brawl On The Cliff

SPEAKER_03 40:00

Y Beach, and I put beach in quotations, um, because it's not a beach as you might imagine. It was a little bit of rocky ground between two steep ravines. Connor, if you could please show Y Beach photo. Um you keep it up forever, Connor. Stays here forever. We're gonna look at Y Beach forever. Do you have it? Yeah. Sweet. Okay. So I'm gonna just paraphrase what one soldier said. Um, this shit was nuts. I was looking at the shore and didn't see anything but cliffs and rough rocks. Same with the water. The rocks were right under our boats. We all jumped out to go to shore, assuming it would get shallower, but it had to get deeper for us first. Poor short dudes were up to their chins in water. Luckily, I am tall and ruggedly handsome. And that was essentially what he said. Okay. There wasn't any initial resistance here. Um, at least, because the Ottomans were like, that British soldier's right. It's a stup it's a super shitty spot. I'm still stuck. What did he say?

SPEAKER_04 41:01

He was really handsome. And rugged. Ruggedly handsome.

SPEAKER_03 41:04

To like like the terrain. Cut anyways. It was a joke, he didn't say that. I said that. Oh. And I don't even know if he was handsome. But he probably was.

SPEAKER_04 41:16

I legitimately. My brain was like, this motherfucker did not just compare us.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

I said I paraphrased pretty heavily. Oh, oh, I closed my notes.

unknown 41:29

Oh fuck.

SPEAKER_03 41:30

Uh okay, so there initially wasn't any resistance because the Ottomans were like, yeah, that is a really shitty spot to be put up. Um, no one in their right minds would land a force of any size there. It's the cliffs of insanity.

SPEAKER_04 41:44

Yeah, that doesn't mean it's it's handsomely rugged. Yeah. It is handsomely rugged. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:49

So they get to the top of the ridge and they look over the beach and they just kind of stopped, even though they didn't face any resistance, because they were like, they were told when they landed at White Beach, take this point, wait for others to get to their points, and then we will all move forward. But they didn't face any resistance. They could have just kept going, but they're like, I guess we're good here. No, the Ottomans are good in one spot during a war. The Ottomans look over and go, ah, they climbed up the crazy cliff. These people are insane. Um, and then the horrific fighting starts in the late afternoon of the 25th and goes until the mid-morning of the 26th when the final push happens. The Ottomans have the Brits on the ropes, like literally on the edge of a sheer cliff with a 300-foot drop. Jesus. The Ottomans hesitate for a moment. They go, and the British go, Thank God, and they charge. The same strapping soldier is quoted to say, and this is his actual quote, quote, no sooner had the Turks shown a hesitation than our remaining officers grasped the situation and ordered a charge. This time, everything was in the mix: bayonets, butts, fists, feet, in fact, everything, every how. End quote. The photo may go away. Is someone's ass out in the middle of this battle? No, but the butts of your gun. Oh. It was like although they blinded them with their pasty asses.

unknown 43:21

They're like, oh, I can't see.

SPEAKER_04 43:25

That would be my defense. I get it. You can see how white I am. That would work. Reflective.

SPEAKER_03 43:31

Um, yeah, so they were they like it was just like an all-out fucking brawl. Yeah. In order to not fall off a cliff. That's fair. I would think so. So unfortunately, so many of the wounded were being shipped off of the beach. Um, half of the men that went ashore would become a casualty. So either dead, and I in case you don't remember for last time, a casualty is anybody who is taken out of the fight at all. Either dying, missing an action. Or um wounded to a point where you can't fight. Yeah. That's all casualties. So some soldiers got it into their head that there was a general evacuation being called. So they all just left the beach after they had pushed the Ottomans back. Because there were so many injured people being dragged off, shipped back, that they were like, I guess we're just getting off this beach now. Huh. This beach. This rocky terrain. This tiny strip of land before this cliff. Um so X Beach, which is slightly south of Y, and

X Beach And S Beach Hold Back

SPEAKER_03 44:35

nearer to the two main beaches of V and W. They were just supposed to be support for them. They were, at the time of the landing, only 12 Ottoman defenders, so it went really well. They took their objective, which was Hill 114 by 11.30 a.m. And again, just stayed there. Okay. The commander at X Beach figured it was their job to hold the beach above all else in case the other landings went sideways and they had to be diverted to X Beach. Um, it's not a great choice because delay on the British part equals reinforcement and stiffer resistance on the Ottoman part. So he waited, they reinforced. Um I worried here for a second that I was talking for too long, and then I remembered that this is part two, and I'm only four pages into that. So, how long have we been talking?

SPEAKER_04 45:29

I don't have my glasses.

unknown 45:30

Oh, damn it.

SPEAKER_04 45:31

57. That's good.

SPEAKER_01 45:36

Fuck! All right.

SPEAKER_04 45:38

I have also been derailing you like every two seconds, and I'm very sorry.

SPEAKER_03 45:43

Okay, well, when we get to like an hour and a half, let me know, and I'll see. Maybe I have to stop. And this will be three parts. Yay, aren't you lucky? S Beach. S Beach is slightly inside the strait, and the goal of this unit is to take uh the Detots battery, and they did. Hooray! Hardly a problem, evidently, but they took their objective and just snuggled on in. From the high ground here, the battery, they could see the landings at V and W beaches, which were not going well. You think that they could get the fuck up and go over there, but they didn't. Um, they weren't told to, so they stayed put. Okay. The W Beach landing

W Beach Barbed Wire And VCs

SPEAKER_03 46:20

was a horrific endeavor. This is where all that barbed wire and trench building prep work that the Ottomans did. Um, like this was this was that place because they knew that it was a nicer beach to land on. People could actually land here. Connor, please show W Beach. So since it was a nice beach, Hamilton decided that this is where they would stage the horses and the stuff. And that's where the Ottomans thought they fucking wouldn't. Did you find the picture? Yes. Cool.

SPEAKER_04 46:47

That looks like a nicer beach. Like it is a nicer beach.

SPEAKER_03 46:50

It's a much better beach to land. Land people. Yeah. Which is why they the Ottomans reinforced it with so much barbed wire and mines and shit. Um, so facing barbed wire and relentless rifle fire, the first ashore were the first Lancashire fusiliers. As they began to make their way through the wire, they came to the unfortunate realization that their wire cutters were less than ideal. And um, while the open beach made for a nice landing spot, the entrenched Ottomans um were not much affected by the bombardment and were still able to fire continuously right at them. There were only 150 defenders. Um, however effective they were at first, the Lancashers were able to eventually push off the beach and reach Hill 114 with the Royal Fuselers. Um, I go back and forth between saying Turks and Ottomans. And I think I said last time, um, the Ottomans are also an empire. So they have people from all over, just like the British do. But in a lot of resources, they only say, they actually call them most of the time the Turks, which is not exactly correct because they had a bunch of different units from different places. So I call them the Ottomans. If it's a quote, I say the Turks, or if I know that it's like the Turkish unit, um, then I will say Turks. Okay. But I do my best to not just blanket statement Turk. Okay. So the first Lancashire Fusiliers famously earned six Victoria Crosses that day. Literally, they say it's six VCs before breakfast, um, and they suffered terrible losses. Uh, Victoria's Cross is um the Medal of Honor.

SPEAKER_05 48:33

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 48:34

Um They went ashore with 27 officers and 1,02 men. By the end of that 24-hour period, they had 16 officers and 304 men left. Fuck happened. The Ottomans. They landed on that nice open beach. That's fair. Um, yeah, it was a hell of a hell of a time. It was real, real ugly. Um, after they took Hill 114, they tried to take Hill 138, but it was again heavily fortified with wire. So shit time had by all. Um,

V Beach River Clyde Catastrophe

SPEAKER_03 49:10

on V Beach. Oh, yay, okay. So in order to talk about V Beach, we have to talk about the River Clyde, which is really interesting. Your River Clyde. What are you doing? That's more important than my story. I'm looking up your fucking V Beach. Oh, okay. Sorry.

SPEAKER_02 49:26

My bad. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 49:28

The River Clyde was a collier ship, which is a coal-carrying boat, um, before it came to war. Well, that's a fun picture of a boat. Is it the River Clyde?

SPEAKER_04 49:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:38

Yeah, that's it. So uh Connor, the River Clyde, please.

SPEAKER_05 49:42

Put it in my hand. Just kidding. I hope you can do that. Oh, that'd be fun. Yeah, you should do that, Connor.

SPEAKER_02 49:49

If you can, you should do that.

SPEAKER_03 49:53

Okay, so um a naval commander named Edward Unwin had a wonderful idea how to use it. He suggested that they basically use the ship as a Trojan horse, cut four holes on each side, fill it with troops, run it aground, and using lethal boats and boardwalks, funnel the men off the ship and ride to shore. No need to row them in. However, the Ottomans knew about Trojan horses because Troy was just across the strait from where all this was going down. Fool me once, shame on uh shame on you. Fool me you can't get fooled again.

SPEAKER_04 50:28

I think it's three times you can't get fooled again.

SPEAKER_03 50:30

It's a quote from George Debbie Bush. Okay. I was like, yeah. Fool me twice. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice you can't get fooled again. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:40

Yeah. Yes, yes. God, I love him. Oh, George Debbie, he has some good ones.

SPEAKER_03 50:46

Um He's not real.

unknown 50:48

He's not real.

SPEAKER_03 50:49

So the troops on the ship were being used as a sort of second wave to support the first wave, uh, that was put ashore in the traditional rodin method after this group took down the defenders quickly and easily. Um, and I'm here to tell you all today that your plan should never hinge on underestimating your enemy. True. While the warships did shell the beach ahead of time, the Ottomans were dug into trenches. And these older warships that they used for the campaign were pre-dreadnoughts, meaning that their guns didn't go up, like I had said. Um, so they couldn't like lob in an arch. So they just kind of like skimmed over the top of the trenches. Oh, okay. And didn't hit anybody or kill anyone. Oh, that's not helpful. Yeah. If they went into the trench, that would be helpful, but they just kind of went like over the top. That's not helpful. No. No. Um, so a few shill shills, a few shells hit their mark and just skimmed over, so they're all fine and ready for revenge. Um, and to the east of this landing area was uh settle bar fort, an actual fortress with actual people inside of it. Um, it's gonna be a hard time. So things are going poorly already. The rowboats with the initial landing party were fighting a strong current and were delayed um because they couldn't fucking row hard enough. And the river Clyde had to make several large circles um so that the boats that it was towing to make those little platforms wouldn't slam into it. So it's just like going in fucking circles with its little like duckling crew of boats and just like for fuck's sake. And um eventually at 6:30 a.m., they just he couldn't delay anymore, and the Clyde ran aground right as the first Dublin fusiliers were about to land, and utter destruction began. The moment the ship shuddered to a stop, heavy rifle fire began to tear across the rowboats with the Dublin Fusiliers. At all of the beaches, the Ottomans did not fire upon the men until they were essentially beached. Um, so they would wait for them to come all the way to shore and then start firing on them.

SPEAKER_04 52:57

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 52:57

Um, except for here. Quote, trapped in the close confines of the rowing boats, the Dublins were utterly helpless and almost before they knew what was happening had been shot to pieces. End quote. So they're literally just like sitting ducks. Damn. Um, many of the naval personnel rowing them in were shot too, and the soldiers had to take over, but they didn't know how to properly row and ended up broadsiding themselves to the beaches, which just meant gave them a bigger target of men to shoot down. Of the first wave of 200 men, 21 made it ashore.

SPEAKER_04 53:35

That's not a lot. No, no, it's and I'm sure of those 21, a lot of them were like not doing too well.

SPEAKER_03 53:43

I would highly doubt it. Yeah. But they made it to shore. Some of them were able to like hide, and they were just like, Jesus Christ. Uh that's crazy. Uh yeah, 21 made it ashore. That's crazy. The the numbers are crazy here. Like, they're really insane. Um, so the whole while the River Clyde was working to get those gangways ready for use, but the smaller boats that would be used as floating platforms were struggling to stay perpendicular because of the strong current. Unwin is like, oh for fuck's sake, everything is literally going sideways, and he books it off the ship to start correcting the boats. He and able seaman William Charles Williams were able to correct the boats and make it to shore, but they had nothing to connect the ropes to the shore, so they literally just held them in place, like tugging these boats and platforms into place under heavy fire. Jesus. As the men left the ship, many were hit, turning uh the bl the water and the sand red. I tried to find an exact number for how many attempted to get off the ship, but nothing told me exactly. There were 2,100 troops on the River Clyde that were to disembark. With such an insane death toll, though, the plan was called off, leaving a thousand men still aboard. Jeez. I found a few places that said only 300 men of that roughly um 1,100 made it to shore. Um 800 were dead. That would mean 800 were dead by the early afternoon on April 25th. So only 300 made it to shore. So, yep, not even getting the Ottomans are like on the ground. Get out of here. Get the fuck out of here. And one of these men would be Abel Seaman Williams, who's helping Captain Unwen hold the boats in place. They would both be awarded a Victoria Cross for their bravery. Able Seaman died. Captain Unwen sat with him until he passed and collapsed from exhaustion from literally holding a row of fucking boats by a rope. Yeah. Anyways, after nightfall, the rest of the men came to shore. With two days of hard fighting, the men from W and V Beach were able to link up and take Hill 141. All in all, when the landings and the first day of fighting were done, of the 30,000 British troops put to shore, they suffered 10,000 casualties. That's a lot of people. On day one. Yeah. 10,000 men are dead. That's crazy. Yep.

SPEAKER_04 56:14

So that's day one for you.

SPEAKER_03 56:16

Wonderful. It's a good day. For the Ottomans.

SPEAKER_04 56:18

Um yeah, for the Ottomans.

Anzac Stalemate And May Counterattacks

SPEAKER_04 56:20

It depends on who you're asking, really. I'm sure the British are a little upset. They were like, this sucks.

SPEAKER_03 56:25

Okay, so for the sake of our sanity, I will not detail every single battle that took place over the next eight months, but I will tell you what the lines look like, cover a few aspects, and we won't go crazy because they're mostly stalled. As always, if you want more details, let me know. Let's go over Anzac and we'll see what happens after we cover what happened in the first couple months at Anzac. It's literally within the first month, it sucks so bad. Okay, so they had not captured anything that they were supposed to, um, for all the reasons that we already talked about. They faced several severe setbacks that made it so that they were hardly able to get off of their beach head and stayed surrounded by the Ottomans in better positions. In some areas, they literally could not retreat 20 yards or they would be in the water and the line would be broken. They were 20 yards from the beach, like super fucking shitty. Jesus. The line was about 2500 yards long and only about a thousand yards deep at most. Okay. Uh I was gonna try to compare it to football fields, but actually, I don't know how big a football field is, so that's kind of pointless. Um sports ball? Yeah, the sports ball. Got it. American football.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

That's the wrong one. Go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 57:44

Um at some at some points, the Anzac line and the Ottoman line were only like a few feet apart. So they're like, this is my trench, that's your trench. How fucking shitty. Um the whole area that they took was less than one square mile. And they were like, I'll tell you. So from April to May, the fighting was the most fierce at Anzac Cove. Right away, between the 27th and the 29th of April, the Ottomans launched aggressive counterattacks, trying to drive the Ansacs back into the sea. Private Archie Barwick, stationed at one of the hottest parts of the line near Quinn Post, wrote, quote, The piece of ground opposite us was literally covered with dead bodies, our own boys and the Turks. God knows what our losses were, must have run into the few thousands. And he was right. On the first day, like I said, they'd suffered 2,000 casualties. By the end of the first week, that number jumped to 7,000.

SPEAKER_04 58:42

Damn.

SPEAKER_03 58:43

On May 2nd and 3rd of 1915, we see the battle for baby 700, a dominating position that would help them gain even better position better position of Junuk Bar. These are all high points along the ridges. That's really the important part that you need to know. Is that there's a ridge of mountains, and this is like a little poop. Um four Royal Naval Divisions, four Australian divisions, and the New Zealander units would attack together, but the New Zealanders were delayed an hour and more carnage ensued. After those first nine days of fighting, there's a short lull. Both sides had suffered significant losses. The Ottomans, approximately 14,000 casualties. Yeah. And the Ansec suffered a little over 8,000 men.

SPEAKER_04 59:39

Yeah, they need to like regroup for a minute, both sides. Yeah, and take a fucking second.

SPEAKER_03 59:44

Yeah. Think about their life choices. Um, Private Silas Ellis wrote this about the 16th Battalion's roll. Uh, sorry, roll call. Quote, few of us are left to answer our names. Just a thin line of weary, ashen-face-faced men. Behind us, a mass of silent forms, once our comrades. They had they have been there for some days. We have not the time to bury them. The single unit went ashore with over a thousand men, and only 309 remained. That's sad. By early May. That's sad. Okay. Um, the last one for right now at Ansac Cove before we move is on the 19th of May. And this is the last um major offensive until August. There's like some, you know, fighting back and forth, obviously.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:37

There's always little things in between. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:38

Yeah. There's TIFFs, but um, we're not going to talk about all those. So the Ottomans attacked parts of the line they considered weak. Sorry, and this is the 19th of May. Um, areas where the trenches were only a few yards apart, and strategic places such as Quinn's Post. Unfortunately, they were expected by the Ansac and were met with machine gun and rifle fire. The Ansac had 160 dead and 468 wounded from this attack. The Ottomans had 3,000 dead and another 10,000 wounded.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:13

I thought the Ottomans were like kicking butt. Like, what happened all of a sudden?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:17

They are still because they still hold better positions. So, but when they get into these fights, like they are fighting until the last fucking man. Like they are and it makes sense because this is their homeland. Yeah. You fight harder. Yeah. I mean, not that these Australians didn't fight really hard. Yeah. But like, if I was trying to take over somewhere, as opposed to like defending my home, I think that I would be much more aggressive defending.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:47

Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:49

Um, and many of these Ottoman troops were Turkish men from the universities in Istanbul, and they were extremely green. So they're not like fighting men. Um, they're learned boys. As the bodies lay putrefying in no man's land,

Tunnels, Truce, And No Man’s Land

SPEAKER_03 1:02:05

the stench became unbearable. A nine-hour truce was called so that both sides could go out and claim they're dead to bury them. Yep. During these battles and other small engagements, the NSAC began to dig tunnels. Um some of them were for stealth movements and others were for violence. And eventually both sides would be doing this. So instead of trying to go over all the sneaky guys, go under, they would go under. Yeah. Um that's actually kind of smart. Tunnels were dug out towards enemies' line enemy lines, packed with explosives, and detonated right before an attack to disorient the enemy and provide cover. To combat this, both sides had listening posts to try to detect when your enemy had become a mole person, which sounds fucking horrible to me.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:51

A mole person?

SPEAKER_03 1:02:52

Like, that just sounds like the worst. Okay, and this is okay. So, according to the history of the Great War, quote, sometimes two tunnels would run into each other and they would be fighting underground in the dark.

unknown 1:03:04

Ugh.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:05

It sounds like the worst. Did I ever tell you when I watched The Blair Witch too? Probably. Part of it is she's it's the one of the main girls is escaping through a tunnel underneath of the Blair Witch house, and it's like a tunnel. Yeah. And the camera's going, and I'm sitting there and I'm like, just like watching this on TV, and I'm like, oh god, oh god, oh god. And she gets stuck at one point, and there's like a little puddle of water in front of her face. I'm like, girl, drown yourself. Like, don't don't stay in a tunnel, just fucking drown yourself. And if I was digging and then somebody dug towards me, I'm just like, I think I just have a hard attack just peel over it. Um, so we're going to leave Anzac for right now and go to K Pulless. Uh, okay, so K Puls, and we're gonna see what they're up to. Um, so they had those initial hellish days landing and capturing the fort at Settle Bar. Then very quickly they have the first battle of Krithia. And you never want to hear that something is pluralistic when it sucks so bad. But bad things come in threes, and so do the battles of Krithia. The first battle was led, in quotations, by Hunter Weston. He wasn't actually there, he just made up the plan and said, go do it. Okay. But the plan was complicated and poorly communicated. He wanted the French, who are now on Cape Hill S to advance and capture Krithia, which is a little town, um, and hold on to it on the right. Um, and then the British would pivot around to the left and take the village. Um, Krithia's at the base of a hill called Achibaba. That's a fun word. Okay. It is a fun word. Um, and the problem is, is that around the base of mountains is rugged and

Krithia Battles And Gully Ravine

SPEAKER_03 1:04:50

confusing. Um, so it's just as confusing as Ansec Cove, and there is a um machine gun nest, which is near where Y-beach was. So the problem with this technique is that it has to go perfectly, or part of your line can be outflanked if you fall behind or get too far ahead. So the whole thing has to really move in unison. Right. And it's really, really hard to move in unison when they're sometimes machine gunnists and sometimes hills and sometimes ravines, and everyone's going through different things differently. So it's kind of like having to do this thing. But if this person goes ahead, well, your line is broken and they can come in here now and kill you. Okay. That makes sense. So it didn't go well. Of the 14,000 Allied troops, there are approximately 3,000 casualties in this battle alone.

unknown 1:05:42

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:42

Now we have the second battle of Grithia in which Hunter Wesson tries the same thing but slightly different. The difference um was that he explains his shitty plan slightly better. And he makes phases. Guys, I said this. Look, you uh it would have gone. Well, if you had just listened to what I said, okay, let me explain it again. Phase one, French go in and hold the right of the line. Phase two, British line wheels about. Phase three, get to the big hill of Achibaba.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:15

Is that so hard? Just listen. Use your listening ears. Pay attention. No, I will not go with you. Just do it and do it right.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:23

Um, after three days of fighting and not completing phase one, they retreated. Uh, fun fact, the New Zealanders were at this one. Birdwood said it was okay for them to go over there as they had mostly stabilized their shit where they were. Uh about one-third of the Allied troops in this troops in this battle become casualties. Not fun fact. The stretcher bears had to carry the men the entire way to the beach as there was not a collecting station or wagons. To the tip of Cape Hill S from Crithia is about four miles. Nope. And it was about a mile and a half to the Aegean Sea, where Y Beach was located. Y Beach sucks. So they have to go four miles. Nope. Carrying a stretcher. Nope.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:10

Sorry, person on the stretcher.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:14

Roll, bitch. All downhill. Yeah. You'll be fine. From May 12th to May 13th, there's an assault on Gurkha Bluff on Y Beach. If you remember, they were backed up to a cliff. They made it to a place called Gully Ravine, a little under a thousand yards away from their prior position on the cliff in which they were stuck. The Gurkhas are an elite group of um Nepalese soldiers who um enlisted in the Indian and British armies. It's like their green berets. Um the assault began with a naval bombardment. Um, and as the Ottomans were distracted, the Gurkhas scaled the cliff and rushed their trenches. And due to the bravery in the face of a formidable enemy, the men of White Beach were able to advance an additional 500 yards. That's a lot. Considering how shitty trench warfare is, not bad. That's a football field, right? I don't know.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:12

I'ma look it up. I just told you. I have no idea how big a football field is. I don't either. You think I would know, but Yeah, I actually do because you watch football. Can you just tell me how fucking long it is?

SPEAKER_03 1:08:31

No. A hundred yards? So it's five football fields. Yep. Alright, on May 21st, first Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill is demoted. He takes all of the blame for the failure of the Dardanelles campaign, despite the fact that no one really had a problem with it, and the War Council agreed to the land campaign. Um, but they're like, it was Winston's idea. It's always Winston's idea. Fucking Winston. Even so, he did a really bad job of trying to defend his role in choosing this. On June 5th, 1915, he gives a speech in which he quote urged his listeners to look at the losses the Allies had suffered on Glipley in the context of the prize for which you are contending. And he predicted that, quote, the struggle will be heavy, the risks numerous, the losses cruel, but victory when it comes will make amends for it all. Some of you may die, but that is a risk. Exactly. All right, that's our quad essentially what he said. He's like, It'll be good. Trust me. On June 4th, we begin the third Battle of Krithia. Hunter Weston was explicitly told by Hamilton to make this goal achievable, an advance of only 800 yards. This went poorly. Even with a limitation, many units faced heavily heavy casualties. While some units were able to advance alright, others were damn near wiped out. However, with more realistic goals, they got closer to achieving them than they had earlier. So that's nice. Um just little baby steps. Baby steps, yes. They got a little bit closer. Finally, we have the Battle of Gully Ravine on June 28th, 1915 to July 2nd. Are you ready for this? June 28th to July 2nd. 1915. Yep. Okay. Yep. The first wave over the so when we talk about waves over the top, it's like people. Through yeah, and over trenches. Yeah. Just in case it wasn't clear.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:41

Um I was like, there's water everywhere. Water everywhere. Ah, help!

SPEAKER_03 1:10:48

Okay. The first wave over the top. We're mowed down, weed whackers. Uh, I have to tell you the story about Major James Bindley of the one-eighth Scottish Rifles. Do you see what I'm saying here? I don't know what the hell. Why they're You're just one eighth. Or maybe it's I don't know. Anyways. I'm not in the military. I don't know. He's in the Scottish Rifles, and that's what you need to know. Okay. So he goes over the top of the boys and decides that they ought to just make a mad dash for the Ottoman lines, as they are only 50 yards away. Um, on his way though, he's like, come on! And he turns and he's shot in the neck. From his diary, so he lives. Stooping down to pick up a rifle, I was shot in the neck. At the moment, I didn't feel much, but I saw the blood spurt forward. I suppose that it got my jugular vein. I suppose I stuck a handkerchief round my neck, Ascot, and tried to get on, but I was pulled over by a hit in the shoulder. I tumbled back over some poor devil and for a minute or two tried to collect myself. He eventually gets hit with a bomb. Um, but another one is coming, so he gets up and runs back. He shows back up and he's like, He got hit in the jugular and he's not dead? I guess I don't know. Maybe it wasn't the jugular, I don't know, but he's alive. Oh, and he had a bomb dropped on him. He makes it back to his lines and he has seven major wounds and what this one website calls, quote, a liberal sprinkling of minor scrapes from bomb fragments.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:25

Is he like a fucking demigod? Like what the fuck?

SPEAKER_03 1:12:29

Yes. Major James Finlay, demigod.

SPEAKER_04 1:12:32

What the hell? That's crazy.

SPEAKER_03 1:12:34

I know. I thought it was insane. But yeah, um, that's a fun story, but they all had a really shitty time. In the end, five lines of Ottoman's trenches were captured though, so yay. Um all at the expense of this man's jugular. But he's fine. He just had a liberal sprinkling of bomb shards and seven major wounds from being exploded by a bomb. Um tis but a flesh wound. All through the summer, in addition to the fighting and the dying, there's more that they have

Heat, Disease, And Corpse Flies

SPEAKER_03 1:13:05

to face, which is the oppressive heat and disease and black black corpse fly infestations.

SPEAKER_05 1:13:13

Ew.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:14

That's disgusting. So I looked it up because I was like, is it really hot or are they just wimpy? Um, it's pretty hot. So it gets into like the average high for the summer is like the low 90s. Okay. Um, and if you blow up all the trees there and have no shade, yeah, it's hot.

SPEAKER_04 1:13:38

It's like how when you're in Phoenix, it's like a million times hotter because all there is is concrete everywhere. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:44

So it's just really fucking hot. And um, there's a lot of disease because they don't have good trench hygiene, because it's really hard to get fresh water. There's like laying everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. Yeah so no, that makes sense. Let me share a couple of quotes to put these issues into perspective. Quote, the dead Turks in from in front, and our own fellows lying at the back of us were beginning to smell. The slow drain of casualties was bad enough, but perhaps the biggest problem was that the men were prevented from burning the dead that lay between the lines. Jesus. End quote. Another quote. One can get used to anything in war, but I think that the accurate, pungent odor of the unburied dead, which gets into your very mouth and down your tortured throat, and seems to even taint the taste of your food, is really the worst thing you have to face on active service.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:40

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:40

That's a smell that stays with you forever. It is, and just months of that in your face. Last quote about this. There were millions and millions of flies. The whole side of the trench used to be one black swarming mass. They were all around your mouth and on any cuts and sores you got, which would all turn septic through it. They talked about like opening, like anything opened was immediately covered in flies. The inside of their tarps were just flies. Yeah, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:13

That's disgusting.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:14

It's I don't know how I I mean, I don't know. They don't say specifically which ones were like um psychological casualties, but I guess that that's how I would go. I would probably just run over the top of the trench just to end my suffering. Um so they suffered from malaria and dysentery. And they were being shot up by snipers and having to dig tunnels underneath of them so that they could blow them up and stuff too.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:40

I think at this point, if I were the British, I'd just be like, you fucking win, man. I'm done. Like, I know.

SPEAKER_03 1:15:47

So that's all happening all simultaneously. No, I'm out. I'm out. Which branch of the army would I be in? The administrative one. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:15:57

Going where I don't have to smell dead bodies. Yeah. Don't find a typewriter. Okay.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:03

Uh, how are we? How are we now? Good and you're not so bad.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:09

I have 133.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:11

I have 10 more pages.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:13

Jesus Christ! Who are you? Why do you why? Because this is my thing.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:19

I'm a historian, and you say that I get to tell you stories, I'm gonna tell you a fucking story.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:24

So, um, surprise! Three parts, maybe.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:28

All right, well, I'm just gonna go really hard on my next topic then. I'm really sorry. That's fine. You do you do three parts? I'll do three parts. Sorry, friends and family and not

Closing And The Plan For Part Three

SPEAKER_04 1:16:40

friends.

unknown 1:16:40

And not friends.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:42

All of you other people. Um, yeah, let's record this next 10 pages and we'll see where that gets us. And if it's like a pitdly amount, then we'll just have Connor tack it onto this one. And then it won't be three parts, but we'll figure it out. Okay, so you want me to stop recording right now? Yeah, we'll say goodbye for right now. And then if we need to, we'll just smoosh them together. Okay. Peace out. Bye. Lots of finger guns in this episode. Pew pew pew pew.

SPEAKER_04 1:17:46

I don't know how I feel about this thing. I'm not wearing glasses. Okay. These are my thoughts.