ARTICLE: The French at Gallipoli, 1915

I’ve literally just landed from Istanbul after taking my last group tour out for the year, to Gallipoli with Peter Hart. We’ve spent a week laboriously walking the ground and examining this disaster of a campaign, and as per usual, I took every opportunity to bang on about the French. We spent a morning following in their footsteps at Kum Kale, and an afternoon tracing the latter stages of their campaign across the water, but one thing we didn’t get to do was look at their arrival at Cape Helles, on the tip of the peninsula. And so today, I’m going to share an account of this that I’ve translated.

(https://nzhistory.govt.nz)

The initial French landing at Kum Kale was a feint. They were never meant to stay put, merely to tie up Turkish troops on the Asian side of the Dardanelles at prevent them from firing at the backs of the British landing at S Beach and V Beach in particular. Once this was done, the French embarked again, and made for Helles to support an unfolding nightmare for General Sir Ian Hamilton’s forces.

Henri Feuille was an artillery officer serving with a heavy battery of old-fashioned 155s (the long version). He didn’t make it ashore at Kum Kale - landing heavies was something you do for a temporary stop if you’ve got any sense, but he had observed and recorded everything he saw. A few days later, however, his turn came…