To the Dardanelles! The Entente Allies successfully capture their objective and plant their flags in this boy's 1915 war game, as they did not in life, neither in the naval campaign, nor in the invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula.
Aux Dardanelles; Victoire; Vive les AlliésLogo and number: ACA 2131Reverse:Artige - Fabricant 16, Faub. St. Denis Paris Visé Paris N. au verso. Fabrication Française - Marque A.C.A
"A week after the landing we were briefed for an attack on entrenched Turks at the head of Monash Gully, the area best known as the Chessboard. Like everything else on Gallipoli everything seemed to go wrong. We were marched a great and tiring distance to the take-off point and arrived late. We were supposed to make our advance in daylight, but it was dark by the time we were issued with picks and shovels so that we could consolidate the ground we were expected to gain. Our first obstacle was a steep and gravelly cliff down which a rope was suspended; in the pitch dark we had to haul ourselves up it. Believe me, I found it a struggle, with my rifle slung on my shoulder with bayonet fixed and a shovel in one hand. When I reached the top there was a heap of dead. The ground was totally exposed to Turk fire. . . . We weren't in platoon or company formation. We were just individuals arriving by rope at the top of the cliff to meet Turkish fire."
New Zealand veteran John Skinner describing the attack the night of May 2-3, 1915 at the northern end of Anzac Cove, Gallipoli. Skinner was a sergeant in the Otago Infantry Battalion, which landed on April 25, the first day of the Gallipoli invasion. In the first days, his battalion supported the Australians holding the front line, and lost 200 of 1,000 men. Of the attack at Monash Gully he said, 'we had worse to come.'
Voices of Gallipoli by Maurice Shadbolt, pp. 69, 70, copyright © 1988 Maurice Shadbolt, publisher: Hodder and Stoughton, publication date: 1988
1915-05-03, May, 1915, Gallipoli Campaign
