Istanbul: A City on Two Continents - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 202

lies portside of the entering ship. Three monuments stand ashore: one to the French who
died during the attempted landings of April and May 1915, another to the memory of the
British and empire troops who perished in the landings, and a third to the Turkish soldiers
who died defending the strait. Each side threw nearly a half-million men into a long, mur-
derous battle, and each side lost about a quarter-million men. Each memorial shines with
an appropriate sentiment to the fallen, but the Turkish memorial is a plea for reconciliation:
“There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Memmets…Where they lie side by
side in this country of ours.”
Figure 14.1. Strait of Dardanelles
The Gallipoli campaign was conceived by Winston Churchill as a way of crushing
Germany's Turkish ally and as a way of opening a supply line to the faltering Russian army.
Had the assault on Gallipoli succeeded, perhaps (but only perhaps) the subsequent history
of Russia might have been altered, and Churchill would not have been forced from his
post as First Lord of the Admiralty. No less important, the Turkish commander at Gallipoli,
Mustafa Kemal (the future Kemal Atatürk), gave the order that would put him on the path
to military and political glory: “I do not order you to attack. I am ordering you to die.” [162]
The Dardenelles is the Hellespont of Ancient Greece, where Leander drowned as he
attempted to swim to his beloved Hero—a crossing of the strait successfully swum by Lord