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Second August Offensive

REFERENCE
An account of the fighting of 21 August on Gallipoli, by British correspondent Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett 1915
The Argus, 6 September 1915, p. 7 NLA newspaper call no. NX 11
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The second major August offensive, and the final battles for the peninsula, took place on 21 August 1915. Two assaults were planned in a final attempt to break out onto the Gallipoli highlands and link the Anzac Cove and Suvla Bay offensives. The Anzacs were to try to take Hill 60 above the Cove and the British at Suvla were to attack Scimitar Hill to the north. The attempt on Hill 60 was dogged by some of the repeated failures of the Gallipoli campaign-inadequate planning, inadequate ammunition, and, in this case, no maps. Men had no idea where they were and literally stumbled into Turkish machine gun fire. The assault was abandoned on 28 August. The attack on Scimitar Hill was initially successful, but was eventually repulsed by Turkish defences and it, too, had to be abandoned.

No further major assaults were launched by allied troops on Gallipoli. The troops had to endure over three months of stalemate before their evacuation in December. Throughout those final months, disease and dysentery and, later, bitterly cold weather, took their toll of the exhausted soldiers.

IMAGE
A game of cricket was played on Shell Green in an attempt to distract the Turks from the imminent departure of allied troops
ENLARGE IMAGE
Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey, 17 December 1915.
A game of cricket was played on Shell Green in an attempt to distract the Turks from the imminent departure of allied troops
Australian War Memorial, AWM G01289