Description
Title: The August Offensive – At ANZAC 1915
Author: Cameron, David
Condition: Mint
Edition: 1st Edition
Publication Date: 2011
ISBN: 9780987057471
Cover: Soft Cover without Dust Jacket – 141 pages
Comments: The August Offensive or ‘Anzac Breakout’ at Gallipoli saw some of the bloodiest fighting since the landing as Commonwealth and Turkish troops fought desperate battles at Lone Pine, German Officers’ Trench, Turkish Quinn’s, The Chessboard, The Nek, Chunuk Bair, The Farm, Hill Q and Hill 971. The offensive was designed to allow the allied forces to ‘break out’ of the Anzac beachhead below the Sari Bair Range; its end result was an enlarged prison for which they paid a high price in men and materials.
The appalling nature of the terrain, the complex plan and the overly ambitious objectives set for the already fatigued troops, primitive communications, poor leadership at corps, divisional and brigade level and an impossible timetable, made the ‘fog of war’ a crucial factor. Indeed, the August Offensive clearly demonstrates what happens when an overriding strategic objective does not take into account the tactical difficulties on the ground.
Whether the capture of the Sari Bair Range was of any strategic significance to the Dardanelles campaign itself is questionable. At the tactical level, the objectives were impossible; at a strategic level it was arguably meaningless.
