25 April to 3 May 1915
The Gallipoli Peninsula of Turkey, about forty miles long and twelve miles across at its widest point, has a spiny backbone rising to a peak of nearly a thousand feet. Largely barren or scrub-clad, it is fiercely hot and stifling in summer and bitterly cold in winter, with a tortuous terrain of razor-backed ridges and deep ravines. Outside the few settlements — Gallipoli town itself and Maidos — the peninsula has a last-place-in-the-world atmosphere. Not that it is ugly; it radiates a strange, siren beauty, as many men with reason to hate the place have acknowledged. In the morning and at sundown the forbidding coast has a compelling beauty — the gullies are deeply blue, and the sea and sky are multi-tinted. Then you can love it. When you struggle, sweat-soaked and panting, through the spiky bush and up the heart-breaking cliffs and hills, you hate it.
John Laffin
Damn the Dardanelles!