Today is the 100th anniversary of the first landings of the Gallipoli campaign by Anzac troops. The battle to take control of the Dardanelles and Bosphorous to open a supply route to Russia and force the Ottoman Empire out of the war would, in its eight months, leave 130,000 dead. The Spectator was to report the first news of the landings in its 1 May 1915 issue. Here, from ‘News of the Week’ in the 24 April 1915 issue, The Spectator speculates about the course of action in the Dardanelles:
The other important event of the week has been the landing of a British force at Enos, the most westerly point of Turkish territory in Europe, the point just beyond which the new Bulgarian frontier begins. As we write no official statement has been made as to the incident or the intention of the British operations, but according to a Berlin “wireless” of Thursday the force landed consisted of twenty thousand English sad French troops.
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