Australians at Anzac Cove, December 17, 1915, from 'Gallipoli' by John Masefield. The Allied completed evacuating their positions at Suvla Bay and Anzac Cove on December 19.
Australians at Anzac two days before the evacuation took place.
"A dull, implacable ennui began to settle on the Allied Army. It was not exactly hopelessness, not cynicism, it was an absence of purpose in their lives, a mechanical focusing down of their minds on to the simplest and the nearest things, the next meal, the last mail from home. The 'awful, horrible, lethargic flies' persisted, and the high dry winds of the early autumn sent the dust billowing through the air. Once more the soldiers began to report sick. Many of them were so weak with dysentery they moved at no faster pace than a crawl, and on the Anzac sector in particular, it was noticed that the former panache had gone . . ."
The Allied Campaigns in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli had failed. The naval campaign to force the Dardanelles, the April landings at Helles and Anzac Cove, the August 6 landing at Suvla Bay in an attempt to end the stalemate had all failed. The Allies could not advance; the Turks could not drive them into the sea. Bodies lay unburied between trench lines that were in some places only yards apart. Heat, flies, disease, and failure oppressed those men who were still alive. The last major Allied offensive took place on August 29, 1915. It failed.
Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead, page 289, copyright © 1956 by Alan Moorehead, publisher: Perennial Classics 2002 (HarperCollins Publications 1956), publication date: 2002 (1956)
1915-08-28, 1915, August, Gallipoli, Anzac
