The August Offensive: At ANZAC, 1915 (Australian Army Campaigns)

The August Offensive or 'Anzac Breakout' at Gallipoli saw some of the bloodiestfighting since the landing as Commonwealth and Turkish troops foughtdesperate 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 Anzacbeachhead below the Sari Bair Range; its end result was an enlarged prisonfor which they paid a high price in men and materials. The appalling natureof the terrain, the complex plan and the overly ambitious objectives set for thealready fatigued troops, primitive communications, poor leadership at corps, divisional and brigade level and an impossible timetable, made the 'fog of war' acrucial factor. Indeed, the August Offensive clearly demonstrates what happenswhen an overriding strategic objective does not take into account the tacticaldifficulties on the ground. Whether the capture of the Sari Bair Range was ofany strategic significance to the Dardanelles campaign itself is questionable. Atthe tactical level, the objectives of the offensive were impossible; at a strategiclevel it was arguably meaningles