Death on Bloody Ridge

Chunuk Bair – the battle that decided the fate of the Gallipoli Campaign

By David W Cameron

Published by Big Sky Publishing
RRP $29.99 in paperback * ISBN 9781922896261

David W Cameron has an impressive list of books to his credit. In Death on Bloody Ridge, he returns to the Gallipoli Campaign.

The August Offensive or ‘Anzac Breakout’ at Gallipoli was an attempt to break the stalemate of the campaign. The British, of course, had not imagined they would meet such resistance when they set about knocking the Ottoman Empire out of the War.

Secretary of War, Lord Kitchener, expected that ‘[if] one submarine pops up opposite the town of Gallipoli and waves a Union Jack three times, the whole Turkish garrison on the peninsula will take to their heels and make a beeline for Bulair’.

His assessment was seriously flawed. A mere six weeks later the army replaced the naval ships with the aim of silencing the Turk’s big guns to allow the fleet to finally sail through the Dardanelles unmolested.

By mid-May Lieutenant General William Birdwood, commanding the Anzac forces, was planning an operation to break out of the Anzac position at a point least expected by the Turks – the Sari Bair Range to the north. It 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, The Farm, Hill Q, Chunuk Bair, and Hill 971. The offensive was designed to allow the allied forces to ‘break out’ of the Anzac beachhead below the Sari Bair Range.

The capture of Chunuk Bair by the New Zealanders resulted in some of the bloodiest fighting at Gallipoli and an appalling casualty rate for the New Zealanders. While it was taken and held for a few days – it’s recapture by the Turks on 10 August 1915 decided the fate of the Gallipoli Campaign.

Within four months the Allies were forced to evacuate the peninsula, leaving it to the Turks – a decisive victory for the Ottoman Empire.

This book focuses solely on this one decisive battle in an ill-conceived campaign that achieved nothing and cost the lives of so many. Cameron recounts this battle in extraordinary, often visceral detail.

It was, in reality, a case of lambs to the slaughter.