#New Zealand Army soldiers of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force

[mypastnow]

New Zealand Army soldiers of the Second New Zealand Expeditionary Force

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.13 (before 1950)

585 BC – Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victories over the Sabines, and the surrender of Collatia. 509 BC – The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Rome's Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September. 379 – Yax Nuun Ahiin I is crowned as 15th Ajaw of Tikal 533 – Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeats Gelimer and the Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimum, near Carthage, North Africa. 1229 – Ögedei Khan is proclaimed Khagan of the Mongol Empire in Kodoe Aral, Khentii: Mongolia. 1437 – Battle of Tangier: a Portuguese expeditionary force initiates a failed attempt to seize the Moroccan citadel of Tangier. 1609 – Henry Hudson reaches the river that would later be named after him – the Hudson River. 1645 – Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Scottish Royalists are defeated by Covenanters at the Battle of Philiphaugh. 1743 – Great Britain, Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia sign the Treaty of Worms. 1759 – Battle of the Plains of Abraham: the British defeat the French near Quebec City in the Seven Years' War, known in the United States as the French and Indian War. 1782 – American Revolutionary War: Franco-Spanish troops launch the unsuccessful "grand assault" during the Great Siege of Gibraltar. 1788 – The Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the first presidential election in the United States, and New York City becomes the country's temporary capital. 1791 – King Louis XVI of France accepts the new constitution. 1808 – Finnish War: In the Battle of Jutas, Swedish forces under Lieutenant General Georg Carl von Döbeln beat the Russians, making von Döbeln a Swedish war hero. 1812 – War of 1812: A supply wagon sent to relieve Fort Harrison is ambushed in the Attack at the Narrows. 1814 – In a turning point in the War of 1812, the British fail to capture Baltimore. During the battle, Francis Scott Key composes his poem "Defence of Fort McHenry", which is later set to music and becomes the United States' national anthem. 1843 – The Greek Army rebels (OS date: September 3) against the autocratic rule of king Otto of Greece, demanding the granting of a constitution. 1862 – American Civil War: Union soldiers find a copy of Robert E. Lee's battle plans in a field outside Frederick, Maryland. It is the prelude to the Battle of Antietam. 1880 – The Basuto Gun War breaks out after the Basuto launch a rebellion against the Cape Colony. 1882 – Anglo-Egyptian War: The Battle of Tel el-Kebir is fought. 1898 – Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film. 1899 – Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident. 1899 – Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel make the first ascent of Batian (5,199 m – 17,058 ft), the highest peak of Mount Kenya. 1900 – Filipino insurgents defeat a small American column in the Battle of Pulang Lupa, during the Philippine–American War. 1906 – The Santos-Dumont 14-bis makes a short hop, the first flight of a fixed-wing aircraft in Europe. 1914 – World War I: The Battle of Aisne begins between Germany and France. 1922 – The final act of the Greco-Turkish War, the Great Fire of Smyrna, commences. 1923 – Following a military coup in Spain, Miguel Primo de Rivera takes over, setting up a dictatorship. 1933 – Elizabeth McCombs becomes the first woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament. 1942 – World War II: Second day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge in the Guadalcanal Campaign. U.S. Marines successfully defeat attacks by the Japanese with heavy losses for the Japanese forces. 1944 – World War II: Start of the Battle of Meligalas between the Greek Resistance forces of the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) and the collaborationist security battalions. 1948 – Deputy Prime Minister of India Vallabhbhai Patel orders the Army to move into Hyderabad to integrate it with the Indian Union. 1948 – Margaret Chase Smith is elected United States senator, and becomes the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate.

[thewardlowcollection]

Lest We Forget

In 1915, around 4.30 am on the 25th of April, the 3rd Australian Brigade made their way onto boats to begin the invasion of Gallipoli. It was the beginning of eight long months of fighting - and dying - and the first time both Australia and New Zealand fought under their own flags with the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and New Zealand Expeditionary Force (NZEF) joining together to form the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC).

The attack on Gallipoli was the brainchild of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty. His idea was to take Turkey out of the war, opening a clear sea route for the allies to Russia. It might have worked, it might have provided an early end to the war saving millions of lives - if the weather had been better, if he had been given all the troops he asked for, if the British navy had been able to make the most of its initial advantage, if the landing parties had not drifted two kilometres off target… but instead 130,000 men died from both sides with no real impact on the fighting in Europe.

In Australia and New Zealand however the combined loss of over 8,000 men was deep and far-reaching which is why, all across the world, at around 5.00 am every 25th of April ten of thousands of Aussies and Kiwis rise to attend a Dawn Service.

The world of Miss Fisher is interwoven with the experiences of the great war so it is no surprise that there are many fics which explore the hardships endured by both those who fought and those that were left behind. Below is a small selection of these: some focus on those involved in actual conflicts, others on those who kept the home fires burning, many on the ongoing impact of the war but hopefully you will find them all thought provoking.

Boer War

500 Words You Should Know: #150 Encomium (2015) by Shamashe. Mr. Butler is decorated with a Medal of Honor from the Boer War - willed to him from an Army comrade and old friend.

World War One

What a difference a day made (2015) by cosmogyral. "You're sure someone will come to rescue us," she said. Her eyes went wide and sympathetic. "That is sweet of you to say. But very unhelpful, because actually we're going to be shot by German soldiers unless we think of something.” Warning: This is an incomplete fic but so well written it would be a shame not to include it and really I think it can be read as a stand alone piece.

Money Meta, Chapter 2 The Victoria Police at War (2018) by Scratch_Pad. Excellent research and links to resources.

Passchendaele (2014) by FiBeeN is a recommendation by @bellairian. Jack Robinson went to war and he was never the same again.

The Soldier (2018) by Allison_Wonderland.  Even now, more than a decade on, Jack had to forcibly hold himself in at the sound of gunfire.

See also our Remembrance Day post 11.11 Lest We Forget

The Inter-War Years

Fragile (2018) by marlen. A video about Phryne's and Jack`s memories about the Great War.

Smile the while (2016) by Meldanya. 1919. Rosie Robinson is preparing their home for her husband's return.

Homecoming (2015) by @flashofthefuse.  A short story about the early days after Jack returns home from the war.

500 Words You Should Know: 264. Kudos (2015)  by RakishAngle (afterdinnerminx). Tobias Butler makes Anzac biscuits every April on Anzac Day and every November on Armistice Day to commemorate his unlikely homecoming from the great war.

Comrades in Arms (2017) by @scruggzi.  Having saved a bank full of people from a machine gun wielding anarchist, Phryne returns to Wardlow with Jack. On the way they discuss death, justice and their experience of war.

War Stories (2016 - ongoing) by RositaLG. A series of one shots surrounding the war's effects on Jack and Phryne in their current lives.

Ivy’s Birthday (2018) / Time Passes (2018) by @rithebard are part of a series (She did make defect, perfect) that shows how Phryne and Jack’s love lives and personal lives entwine. The two chapters mentioned above consider the impact of the approaching war.

World War Two

One Night In Berlin (2017) by @firesign23. Part of The World War II Tales series.

Then the Sky will Seem More Blue (2016) by Meldanya.  During World War II, Dot and her family start a new project.

When the Clouds Roll By (2016) by Meldanya. 1942. Occupied France. Phryne Fisher is working as a British intelligence officer, focused on surviving. Her heart stops when she meets another agent: she would give anything to keep him out of danger.

The Home Fires Burning (2016) by @firesign23 is a short collection of Phrack drabbles set in Melbourne during WW2.

Fourteen Years and a Second Time Around (2016) by RakishAngle (afterdinnerminx). It's Jack's birthday and Phryne is stationed in the Pacific Theatre thinking of him, wherever he is.

Modern AU

ANZAC Day 2015 (2015) by @aljohnsonwrites. Jack is working on ANZAC Day.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,

We will remember them.

[bantarleton]

The Storming of Vimy Ridge

Revisionist historians contend that British leadership in World War I was not subpar and that the Western Front was not a byword for ‘senseless slaughter’.

Whether one agrees with them or not, it certainly can’t be denied that two smaller scale offensives conducted by the British in 1917 had considerable success.

One of these was Messines Ridge, a short operation in June that preceded and contrasted with the muddy slog and enormous death toll of Third Ypres, or Passchendaele, the centenary of which will occur later this year.

But even before Messines Ridge, British forces, including some ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corp) and large numbers of Canadians, hammered the Germans at Vimy Ridge between April 9 and 12, 1917.

In ‘Vimy Ridge 1917’, Alexander Turner tells us that the hill, taken by the Germans during the opening moves of the First World War, rose only gently from the west, but more prominently in the east.

This, and the fact that it was beyond the captured coalfields at Lens and Douai, made it an excellent defensive position incorporating important resources.

But the attack on Vimy was not launched for its own sake.

Rather, it was one component of a larger French-led offensive meant to recapture vast swathes of territory in 48 hours.

The commander was General Robert Nivelle.

He was supremely confident after replacing the more cautious General Phillipe Petain at Verdun and winning back ground taken by the Germans earlier in 1916.

Nivelle’s success at Verdun gave way to grander ambitions the following spring.

As Turner explains, his objective was “the destruction of the main body of German forces on the Western Front” and a breakthrough at the Chemin des Dames heights (which dominated the area).

This, he felt, would enable the Allies to “roll up the entire German line to the Flemish coast”.

British Expeditionary Force (BEF) commander Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig had reluctantly agreed to put some of his forces under Nivelle’s command during the course of the offensive.

They would be used at Vimy to conduct a diversionary assault and tie down large numbers of German reserves to prevent them counter-attacking any French soldiers after they ‘broke through’.

Haig wanted to drive straight for the channel ports at Zeebrugge and Ostend in Belgium because taking these would severely hamper the U-boat campaign against shipments bound for Britain.

Thus, the prospect of Nivelle’s assault going on to enable a ‘roll up of the whole German line’ to these ports must have helped pitch the operation to Haig, and to compensate him for leasing his forces to the French general.

But there was a spanner in the works.

The Germans had compensated for their losses at Verdun and the Somme the previous year by building the Hindenburg Line, a new section of their front running from Vimy Ridge in the north to the Chemin des Dames in the south.

Although retiring to it meant ceding ground to the Allies, the great advantage lay in the fact that the German line would be shortened, requiring fewer men to garrison it.

This created a new reserve for them of 13 divisions.

So tying down German reserves would not be as straight forward as Nivelle had hoped.

The Germans though, were still largely outnumbered.

For every 150-man company front at Vimy (German companies were understrength on the sector by this point), they were to be faced by two or more 1,000-man Allied battalions (mostly Canadian).

However, the Germans were playing a defensive game, and facing the Allies was a murderous jigsaw puzzle of thick barbed-wire, some of which was deliberately skewed to channel attackers into murderous kill zones of overlapping machine-gun arcs.

The guns themselves were usually located in the second line of trenches to give their bullets, when fired up in arcs, sufficient distance to spread out and separate more, creating conical ‘beaten paths’ of bullets.

But despite these cunning preparations, the Germans weren’t exactly comfortable on the ridge

Their trenches were well-prepared (they invented quick-drying cement during the war to help with their defences), but during a barrage their dugouts became insufferable.

Alexander Turner describes the atmosphere vividly:

“The air down in those dugouts was foul. Everything was damp. When it rained on the surface, a few days later it would ‘rain’ in the tunnels and dugouts as well. They were infested with enormous rats that scuttled and scavenged fearlessly. The claustrophobia when under barrage can only be imagined and eyewitness accounts abound with instances of men going berserk.”

Turner also points out that although Vimy Ridge is remembered as a Canadian battle waged and won in the absence of former French and British victories (as is the message of the William Shatner-narrated piece below), no attempt had really been made to take the ridge since the French Artois offensive of 1915.

The Canadian Corps also had within it many British officers, and tunnelling preparations before the attack were carried out by British sappers.

As well as the mines these sappers would lay below ground, artillery preparations were extensive.

In the weeks leading up to the offensive, three phases of bombardment had been unleashed, each one getting more intense.

The last, dubbed by the sheltering Germans as the ‘Symphony of Hell’, was so intense that windows 20km away were shattered by it.

German guns fired back before they were taken out, and the effects of this meant that the Canadians took 10 percent of their casualties before the battle had even started. Still, the preparation would save lives.

Part of this effort involved trench raids, meant to ascertain the state of German trenches before the main infantry assault was launched.

The Allies had air superiority, but the rudimentary nature of photographic equipment limited the scope of aerial reconnaissance and made it difficult for details to be grasped in this way.

But combining this with raids yielded tremendously useful intelligence.

In one instance, on the night of April 8, a raid was used to confirm that German barbed wire was still in place in front of the German lines.

(Aerial shots had said that it was, while distant ground observations had contradicted this).

So the artillery bombardment was stepped up to take out this remaining wire before infantry were sent over the following day.

The picture below illustrates the ‘box barrage’ technique of using field artillery and mortars to create a perimeter that would isolate a given pocket of the enemy line.

Trench raiders would dash into the area at a pre-arranged time to take prisoners and gather intelligence.

After all the raiding and shelling was done, the British troops assembled in the front lines, laden with supplies.

Each man had 170 bullets, two Mills bombs (bombers had 15 and rifle grenade lobbers 12), bayonets, gas masks, 48-hours’ worth of rations, two water bottles, sandbags, rubber groundsheets, and two signal flares.

Lewis gunners carried drum magazines between them, and shovels, picks, and wire cutters were shared amongst members of a battalion.

They filed to the front, ushered on by a traffic light system and military police through subways and communication trenches, “tripping on duckboards, snagging on communications cable and bumping into each other (in the darkness)”.

Again, Turner describes brilliantly the building tension that troops must have felt as they readied themselves to attack:

“Around 0400 (on Easter Monday, 9 April), the subway exits were opened and having had their customary rum ration and final mug of sweet tea, the leading assault waves filed noiselessly into no man’s land… they clambered up trench ladders and crawled forward into shell holes. Those final moments witnessed pats of encouragement and handshakes. By now, a grim determination was setting in. As one Canadian private recalled it, ‘First a little rum, then blood …’”

At 5:30 am, the attack began, with only five of the 18 intended mines detonating.

Aircraft took to the skies as soon as it was light enough to locate any enemy guns not already taken out.

Of course, they were in the path of this duelling artillery, and three Allied planes were smashed out of the sky by ‘friendly’ artillery fire in this way that morning.

For the infantry, though, the assault went well, with first (black) line objectives taken from stunned and disoriented German defenders by 6:15 am.

Those further back were often driven back by the oncoming Canadians, with their Lewis (machine) gun and rifle-grenade support.

Unfortunately for the Germans, they couldn’t run all the way back to their rear – the creeping barrage was still falling on the trench lines behind them

Although the artillery was there to help them, it must have unnerved the Allied troops too.

German Stormtrooper Ernst Junger described the barrages of the First World War as a ‘storm of steel’, and one Canadian veteran used similar language about Vimy:

“As our men went over the parapet, the heaven above them was a canopy of shrieking steel.”

The enemy were also harassed by heavier Vickers gun fire. One German recalled:

“About 200m south-west from the abandoned fire trenches (I Stellung), the first English were appearing… who had brought into position… a machine gun whose monotone melody crackled incessantly from here on. Hotly pursued by fire from this troublesome machine gun in the midst of artillery fire raging directly over Vimy village, the staff hurried to the Zwischenstellung in almost knee-deep mud. Besides the Adjutant, the Signals officer, both orderlies and three radio operators were lost.”

Unable to retire, they counter-attacked in sections, leaving one group of Canadians desperately beating them off whilst clinging to the cover of tree stumps in what had been an orchard.

Some, such as the Canadian Black Watch, were also harassed by enfilade machine-gun fire.

Turner points out that for the Germans, this was very much a platoon and section battle as small isolated units presented pockets of resistance to the attacking waves.

Many of the details of these men’s brave exploits, he says, obviously died with them as they were overwhelmed.

Attacking was nerve-wracking, but defence, in this case, was probably worse, as men were pinned down, freezing and slime-covered and often isolated:

“Imagine a 19-year-old private sheltering alone in the cover of a shell hole. Every ten seconds or so, the methodical traverse swept his position, some rounds snapping over, others clipping the lip of his hole and showering him in mud and grit. Beyond view were the cries of leaders, flat bass crump of grenades and the haunting screams of wounded. He would have already seen his friends cut down in a heap, some mutilated beyond recognition. Men of a ghostly pallor lying in their own entrails, others clutching shattered limbs feebly.”

But, Turner reminds us, “worst of all were the head and facial injuries – brains blown out and jaws shot away” and that fear would have turned these men into ‘cowering empty vessels’ quaking in the muddy shell holes.

The British pressed on, and by 10:30 am the Canadian 3rd Division was able to glimpse the green fields beyond no man’s land.

One veteran interviewed in the BBC’s 1964 series ‘The Great War’ recalled:

“When we reached the top of the ridge, a remarkable site was unfolded. We saw before our eyes all the German-occupied villages around Lens, the mining villages with the slag heaps and mine shafts and you could even see beyond lens. They didn’t seem to have been affected at all, they still seemed to be intact.”

Some of the men even got through to the German artillery guns in the rear, but, having had to snip their way through uncut barbed wire 'as thick as brambles', and then being shot at over open sights by the nearby artillery, they were seething when they reached the enemy.

A bayonet charge followed and the German gunners were quickly overwhelmed, and impaled when caught.

But the success of the attack was running into the same problem the Germans faced at Verdun, and would face the following year during Operation Michael: Mud.

The British very soon found that they weren’t able to drag their guns forward to continue supporting the infantry, and the attack slowed.

By the end of the first day, the Canadians had suffered 1,660 men killed and a further 979 missing (who, most likely, were also dead and had simply disappeared into the morass of no man's land).

German resistance hadn’t entirely disappeared either.

On April 10, ‘the Pimple’, a bit of raised ground in the middle of the front that was honeycombed with bunkers and dugouts and zigzagged by trenches, would be occupied by fresh German Guard Grenadiers.

They subsequently harassed British troops.

They were right to. When Germans did flee for the rear, they were shown no mercy in many cases.

One war diary reports that:

“A large party, estimated at 80 to 100 of the enemy, ran out of the dugouts in the direction of Givenchy (in the rear). These men were taken on by the Lewis guns of D Company so effectively that not a single man reached Givenchy.”

But the slogging would not continue for months as it had at the Somme, and would again at Passchendaele.

Things had largely wound down by the early morning of April 13.

There were calls to renew the offensive, but here Haig showed restraint, realising it would be fruitless to continue without being able to get artillery forward.

Attacks did start again on the Scarpe valley on April 23 on a small scale, but by 24 May the line had settled down.

As the BBC’s Great War put it:

“They (commanders) had not the means nor the experience to follow up this great feat of arms.”

For the British, attention would shift north to Messines Ridge and Ypres, in Belgium, where the next summer offensive would be unleashed.

Their attack had been a success, achieving the objective of pinning down large numbers of the German reserves (even if there were more reserves than had been expected after the German withdrawal to the shorter Hindenburg Line).

The real tragedy of Vimy lay in the larger French offensive effort it was a part of.

The grand breakthrough, as per usual on the Western Front, failed to materialise. What the French got instead was huge numbers of dead and wounded. Under the pressure, Nivelle's scheme soon broke down, and this time, so too did the French Army.

One French soldier commented bitterly:

“Our commanders are incapable of leading us to victory. Peace ought to be made straight away.”

There were executions – 55 that we known of (and possibly others we don’t). But conditions were improved and leave increased.

The Army, and the front, held.

For now, the British had been spared this, but they too would face smaller-scale mutiny at Etaples, later in 1917, as well as their own tragic slaughter at Third Ypres.

But that’s another story...

For more on Vimy Ridge, read Alexander Turner's 'Vimy Ridge 1917', and 'World War I Battlefield Artillery Tactics' by Dale Clarke for more on artillery.

'Ghosts of Vimy Ridge' depicts ghosts of the Canadian Corps on Vimy Ridge surrounding the Canadian National Vimy Memorial.

SOURCE.

[courtneytincher]

Winston Churchill Was Almost Sent Packing Forever After This Military Defeat

The fighting at Anafarta was the high point of the almost nine-month campaign, although the Allies continued half-hearted attacks throughout September and October. In the English-speaking world, most students of military history would be hard-pressed to identify the time, place, or antagonists of the Canakkale Campaign. However, they would readily recognize it by its English name—Gallipoli. The Allied troops who went ashore at Gallipoli believed they were fighting for democracy. Few Westerners realized (or at any rate admitted) that their Turkish opponents were fighting for an even higher ideal—they were defending their country. A significant portion of the Turkish soldiers who fought in the Canakkale Campaign were recruited from the towns and villages of the Gallipoli Peninsula. With their families close behind the battle lines, these soldiers were literally fighting for their homes. To them, the Allied soldiers were invaders who had come to defile their country and their Muslim faith.Deutschland uber Allah: the Ottomans Enter the War:In 1915, World War I was in its second year. On the Western Front, the inexorable meat grinder of trench warfare had replaced the early war of maneuver. Stalemated British, French, and German armies stared at each other across the scarred Belgian and French countryside. Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, where operations of Austro-German and Russian armies still maintained some measure of fluidity, things were beginning to bog down there as well. The eyes of both sides turned south, toward the Ottoman Empire. With the Turks firmly in command of both the Dardanelles and Bosporus Straits, a vital supply route between Russia and Western Europe had been cut. Russia needed weapons and munitions from England and France. In turn, those two countries needed Russian food shipments. To England and France, Turkey seemed like the soft underbelly through which a serious blow could be delivered at Germany. The Germans, for their part, were looking for a place to divert British and French efforts and relieve some of the pressure on the Fatherland.Recommended: Why an F-22 Raptor Would Crush an F-35 in a 'Dogfight'Recommended: Air War: Stealth F-22 Raptor vs. F-14 Tomcat (That Iran Still Flies)Recommended: A New Report Reveals Why There Won't Be Any 'New' F-22 RaptorsFor more than a decade, the German and Ottoman empires had maintained close ties, especially in the military sphere. Shortly before the start of the war, a German military mission of almost 100 officers arrived in Turkey, invited there to overhaul the creaking Ottoman war machine. One of the most senior members of this mission was General Otto Liman von Sanders, who was destined to play a key role in the Gallipoli campaign. When the war started, Turkey initially maintained its neutrality. Then, in an act of either calculated effrontery or callous arrogance, England withheld two battleships it had been building for Turkey. The Turks’ indignation was understandable, since they had already paid for the battleships. Not only was England keeping the vessels, it also refused to return its client’s money.German warships soon entered the picture. On August 10, 1914, hotly pursued by combined British and French squadrons, two German vessels, Goeben and Breslau, took refuge in Turkish territorial waters. In a sham sale, Turkey acquired the ships from Germany. Re-flagged under Ottoman colors and bearing the new names Midilli and Yavuz, the two ships were still manned by their German crews, who went through the ridiculous charade of wearing fezzes and pretending to be Turks. A rueful pun made the rounds: “Deutschland uber Allah.”Turkey decided to enter the conflict on the German side. On October 27, the two newly acquired warships sailed into the Black Sea, bombarded several Russian cities on the north shore of the sea, and sank two merchant vessels. Although damage was minimal, Russia immediately declared war on Turkey. Great Britain and France quickly followed suit, and on November 3 combined British and French squadrons bombarded Turkish military installations near the entrance to the Dardanelles Straits, heavily damaging two small forts. Turkey, in turn, formally declared war on England and France. Another country had been drawn into the European bloodbath.Dardanelles Strait: Istambul’s Gate:The Ottoman Empire was separated into the European portion and the Asian portion by the narrow Sea of Marmara. The Dardanelles Straits formed the gates to that British lake, the Mediterranean Sea, while the Bosporus Straits guarded the entrance to the Black Sea, dominated by Russia. The Gallipoli Peninsula (anglicized name of the small town of Gelibolu on the European side of the Dardanelles) gave its name to the upcoming campaign in the English-speaking world. The Turks named the campaign after the town of Canakkale, on the Asian side of the straits.Hoping for a quick knockout blow, the British government planned to force the Dardanelles Straits, enter the Sea of Marmara and bombard the Turkish capital of Istanbul into submission. Original Allied plans drawn up by Winston Churchill, the British First Lord of the Admiralty, called for naval actions alone. However, six months of naval bombardments and raids by marine landing parties did not have much success. The British and French squadrons operated on predictable sailing patterns, and the Turks laid a series of mine fields across their routes. On March 18, Allied naval squadrons received a terrible mauling at the hands of the Turks, resulting in three Allied battleships sunk and three more crippled. The British abruptly changed tactics and placed the Army in charge of forcing the Dardanelles Straits. British General Sir Ian Hamilton was appointed to command the Mediterranean Expeditionary Forces, which included Australian and New Zealand (ANZAC) contingents as well as English.Liman von Sanders Takes Command;On March 24, the Turkish premier, Enver Pasha, offered Liman von Sanders command of the Fifth Army, which was being organized to defend the Dardanelles. A typical product of Prussian military upbringing—professional, aloof, and nonpolitical—Liman von Sanders readily accepted the offer and wasted no time departing for his new command. On March 26, he set up headquarters in the small port town of Gallipoli. Efforts to improve defenses at the strategic straits began at once. At the time, the Fifth Army was composed of five divisions deployed along both the European and the Asiatic coasts of the straits. Each division was made up of nine to 12 battalions, each numbering between 800 and 1,000 men. By the time of the Allied landings, another division, the 3rd, had arrived.The Asian side of the straits, characterized by low hills and large tracts of flatlands, was more susceptible to Allied landings. The coast of the Gallipoli Peninsula on the European side consisted of very mountainous terrain with steep slopes and deep ravines. Immediately behind the beaches, the landscape was dotted with small woods and thickets. Farther inland, the peninsula became flatter and more open for maneuver. Liman von Sanders considered the Asian shore the place most likely to see an Allied landing. It was, however, the most heavily defended sector of the Turkish defenses. The Gallipoli Peninsula, on the other hand, offered only a handful of likely places to land enemy troops. One of them was the southern tip of the peninsula at Sedd-el-Bahr, completely covered by the guns of British warships. After landing there, the next immediate Allied objective inland would be the Achi Baba ridge. From this ridge, the British would be able to put a large part of the Turkish defensive works under fire.Another likely landing place was on the north side of the Gulf of Saros, at Bulair. From this place to Maidos, the Gallipoli Peninsula is only approximately four miles wide. If the enemy could cut the peninsula along the line from the Gulf of Saros to Maidos, a considerable part of the Ottoman Fifth Army would be cut off and surrounded. In his memoirs, British Seaman Joseph Murray wrote, “No doubt the Turks were wondering exactly where and when we would strike; as invaders it was for us to choose the time and place. The Turks had to remain where they were, ready to defend their homeland.”Reorganizing the Turkish Fifth Army:Before Liman von Sanders took command of the Fifth Army, the Turkish troops were distributed evenly along the entire perimeter of the Gallipoli Peninsula, without any reserves allocated to halt the enemy in case they breached the shore defenses. Liman von Sanders completely reorganized Turkish deployment. He pulled back the bulk of his troops, leaving company- and platoon-sized detachments to watch the possible landing sites. Since he considered the Gulf of Saros the most likely landing location on the peninsula, Liman von Sanders repositioned the 5th and 7th Divisions close to it. The 9th Division was centered on the southern tip of the peninsula and the 19th Division was placed in strategic reserve in the center. The 3rd and 11th Divisions were allocated to defend the Asiatic side of the straights. By using internal lines of communication, Liman von Sanders would be able to rush reserves to the threatened sectors.To conceal Turkish redeployments, most movements were done during the night. Work on improving the roads began at once to prepare them for the higher traffic of supplies and reinforcements. To toughen up his troops, grown complacent in their previous static defensive positions, Liman von Sanders ordered them to conduct training marches and maneuvers. This training also had to be conducted at night to shield them from British warships, which would immediately rain shells on any group of Turks, however small.The Amphibious Assault Begins:In the early morning of April 25, Liman von Sanders began receiving reports that hostile landings were taking place. The 3rd and 11th Divisions defending the Asiatic side reported heavy fighting with the French troops landing around the Besika Bay. At the same time, British warships lying off Sedd-el-Bahr (called Cape Helles by the British) were laying down a heavy barrage covering the landing of British troops under fire from the Turkish 9th Division. More naval gunfire soon announced further enemy landings.Quickly dispatching the bulk of the 7th Division to the Bulair Ridge, Liman von Sanders hurried ahead of them, accompanied by his German adjutants. From the bare Bulair Ridge, they had a full view of the Gulf of Saros. While the British were heavily bombarding the area, they were not landing any troops there yet. Reports began filtering in. At the southern tip of the peninsula, the British were taking tremendous casualties but bringing in more and more troops. The Allies were not having any success against the 9th Division at Gaba Tepe. However, the British occupied the heights at Ari Burnu, to which the bulk of the reserve 19th Division under Lt. Col. Mustafa Kemal was hurrying.Liman von Sanders estimated that his 60,000 troops were facing upward of 90,000 Allies, supported by an incredible array of warships. The Turkish high command was amazed to count almost 200 Allied warships and transports facing them. By mid-afternoon, Liman von Sanders received news that the French landing at Besika Bay has been repulsed, and that it seemed to have been a diversion. The enemy actions at the Gulf of Saros appeared to be a mere demonstration as well. The Turkish defenders put up a very spirited fight against the invading Allies. In many places, the British troops hitting the beaches were mowed down under an unrelenting hail of Turkish bullets. Many small groups of Allied soldiers managed to penetrate the shore defenses and move inland, melting away along the mazes of ravines, gullies, and thickets.The fight was far from being one-sided, however. The full weight of British naval guns was brought to bear on Turkish positions. Rear Admiral R.J.B. Keyes recalled, “The enemy’s position was obliterated in sheets of flame and clouds of yellow smoke and dust from our high explosive. It seemed incredible that anyone could be left alive in the enemy’s position, but when the fire was lifted that ghastly tat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire broke out again, and took toll of anyone who moved.” A less exalted viewer was British midshipman H.M. Denham, who noted, “We opened fire on the Turks with twelve-pounders. I could see a dozen of them rush out of their trench, run fifty yards, lie flat with our men’s rifle bullet splashes all around them. When we directed our fire at them I saw a lot of heads, legs and arms go up in the air; however, they fought very bravely.”The Allied Foothold:The Allies had gained a foothold at the southern point of the Gallipoli Peninsula and were constantly bringing in reinforcements. The whole of the Turkish 9th Division under Colonel Sami Bei had been committed to the fight and still more troops were needed. Liman von Sanders ordered two battalions from the 7th Division to be moved there by boat from Maidos. He also sent three battalions from the 5th Division, in readiness at the Gulf of Saros, to Maidos to follow those of the 7th Division. The 19th Division, although holding its own at Gaba Tepe and Ari Burnu, was heavily engaged against Australian and New Zealand forces.Even though he suspected that the Allied movements at the Gulf of Saros were a feint, Liman von Sanders remained on the Bulair heights throughout the night. On the morning of April 26, he ordered units from the 5th and 7th Divisions, along with most of the field artillery of the two divisions, to Maidos for transportation to the southern tip of the peninsula. Meanwhile, he left his chief of staff, Lt. Col. Kazim Bei, in charge of the remaining troops at the Gulf of Saros. Bei had orders to send his remaining troops to Maidos if no enemy landing manifested itself the following day.Mustafa Kemal, leading his 19th Division, was one of those rare men whom providence places at exactly the right place at exactly the right time. On the morning of the Allied landings, Kemal’s division was held in reserve approximately five miles away from the shores. Its sister division, the 9th, bore the brunt of Allied assault, and its commander urgently requested reinforcements. Kemal personally took charge of one of his regiments, a company of cavalry and an artillery battery, and hurried forward. As he later described in his memoirs, Kemal stopped on a crest of a hill to wait for his troops to catch up. While he sat resting his horse, he spotted a group of retreating Turkish soldiers from the 9th Division. They informed him that they were out of ammunition and were being closely followed by the British. Kemal quickly saw a skirmish line of British soldiers climbing up the hill. He ordered the few 9th Division soldiers to fix bayonets and lie down. He later wrote, “As they did so, the enemy too lay down. We had won time.”The Turkish Counterattack;In the late morning, as more and more units from his 19th Division began arriving opposite the landing sites, Kemal organized a counterattack against the ANZAC positions. Leading toward the 57th Infantry Regiment, the 36-year-old officer addressed his men. “I don’t order you to attack,” he said. “I order you to die. By the time we are dead, other units and commanders will have come up to take our place.” While containing more that a little dramatic flair, Kemal’s orders reflected his correct estimation of the situation: hold at all costs.During April 25 and the next few days, the 57th Regiment lived up to its commander’s expectation—casualties were so heavy that the regiment practically ceased to exist. To recognize the sacrifice of men of the 57th Infantry Regiment, the Turkish government did not reconstitute the unit, retiring its number with honors. Throughout the day, Kemal continued feeding reinforcements into the maelstrom. The Australians and New Zealanders tenaciously clung to their slivers of shoreline, soaking up casualties themselves and dealing out even greater casualties to the counterattacking Turks. One of the Turkish regiments advancing on the left flank, the 77th, composed mainly of unsteady Arab recruits, broke and ran after suffering severe loses. Kemal quickly shifted a battalion from the right to plug the gap. By the time night mercifully fell, the bloodied beachheads, gullies, hilltops, and slopes were littered with the carnage of war. Corpses of fallen Turks, Australians, New Zealanders, British, and Arabs presented a nightmarish landscape. The moaning of wounded made it seem as if the hills themselves were crying out in anguish.While Kemal’s division suffered terrible losses, he scored a moral victory over the Allies. The casualties among the Australian and New Zealand soldiers were also so great that their brigade and divisional commanders convinced Maj. Gen. William Birdwood, commander of the Anzac contingent, to request that they be evacuated. The expedition’s commander, British General Sir Ian Hamilton, denied the request, instead advising, “You have got through the difficult business, now you have only to dig, dig, dig, until you are safe.” As ANZAC shovels bit into the rocky soil, the Allies lost the initiative.Containing the Beachhead:All through the fighting on April 25, Kemal managed to contain the Allied advance. For his role in events, he would be awarded the Turkish Order of Distinguished Service. Later, Kaiser Wilhelm II would award Kemal Germany’s Iron Cross. Extremely outspoken and nationalistic, Kemal soon came to disagree with the overall commander at Gallipoli, Liman von Sanders, who preferred to have German officers in key positions. Kemal’s attitude and language in addressing his Turkish and German superiors were not always the most politic. Despite multiple ruffled feathers, his personal courage and abilities were never in doubt, and on May 1 he was promoted to the rank of full colonel.Heavy fighting continued for the next two days. The Allies, intent on breaking through to the hinterland of the peninsula, threw more and more men into the fighting. For their part, the Turks were just as determined to push the invaders back into the sea. As the result, neither side gained their objectives. By the beginning of May, stationary warfare, reminiscent of Western Europe, had developed on the peninsula. Despite large quantities of blood shed on both sides, progress was measured in feet. Two distinct fronts soon took shape: at Sedd-el-Bahr (Cape Helles) and Ari Burnu (Anzac Cove).To minimize the effectiveness of British naval gunfire, Liman von Sanders ordered his troops in the first line to dig their trenches as close to the British as possible. With the opposing trench lines within a grenade’s throw from each other, British naval gunfire could just as easily hit a friend as a foe. However, the British ships still could rain heavy fire onto Turkish second and subsequent lines of defense. Turkish villages and small towns on the Gallipoli Peninsula were turned to rubble by British naval gunfire. The once-beautiful port town of Maidos was left in ruins. The town of Gallipoli was severely damaged. Krithia, located just one mile north of the battle lines at Sedd-el-Bahr, was reduced to a heap of rubble. Allied warships, cruising the waters of the Aegean Sea with impunity, were able to bring a punishing flanking fire across almost the entire peninsula. Especially hard hit were the Turkish flanks, resting on the Aegean Sea in the west and the Dardanelles in the east.The Defenders Resupply:The resupply situation of the Turkish Fifth Army was extremely difficult. The railhead nearest to the front lines was at a small town of Uzun-Kupru in Thrace (modern-day Bulgaria). Since the Turkish Army had no trucks, all supplies had to be moved by horse- and ox-drawn wagons, a journey of several days. The overwhelming majority of supplies coming to Gallipoli arrived by boat from the Asiatic mainland across the Sea of Marmara. As British and Australian submarines tried unsuccessfully to close the supply line, the Turkish Army continued the struggle. At the beginning of the campaign, even entrenching tools were hard to come by. During their attacks on the British trenches, Turkish infantrymen often carried away any digging implements they could capture and scavenged wood, bricks, and other materials from destroyed villages. Even sand bags were in short supply. When several thousand of them did arrive, large numbers of the precious items were used to patch up the ragged uniforms of the Turkish soldiers.Four more Turkish divisions—the 4th, 13th, 15th, and 16th—arrived to reinforce Liman von Sanders’s depleted command. These divisions brought several batteries of much-needed heavy artillery. Even though consisting mostly of older models, the guns proved invaluable in counteracting British artillery, which was being landed on the peninsula in increasing numbers. The Turkish Navy, particularly its two German-crewed ships, contributed two machine-gun detachments of 12 weapons each to the Gallipoli defenses.During the night of May 18, the newly arrived Turkish 2nd Division attacked the Allies at Ari Burnu. It succeeded in breaking through the first British trench line and reaching the second. However, the British immediately counterattacked and pushed the exhausted 2nd Division back to its starting position. Casualties on both sides were heavy, with the 2nd Division losing 9,000 men killed and wounded. In his memoirs, Liman von Sanders took the blame for the attack’s failures, citing insufficient artillery preparation and quantity of ammunition. British losses were significant as well, and British command requested a cease-fire to collect and bury their dead. Liman von Sanders agreed to halt the hostilities for one day on May 23.At the end of June, a provisional German company of 200 commissioned and noncommissioned officers joined the Fifth Army. However, the unfamiliar climate and Allied fire quickly reduced its numbers. Distributed in small groups along the whole front, the Germans nevertheless proved invaluable in supervising Turkish engineering and construction efforts. A significant weakness in Turkish positions was the gap between the Ari Burnu and Sedd-el-Bahr fronts. While the Turkish flanks at Sedd-el-Bahr were anchored on the water, the flanks at Ari Burnu were hanging in the air. Advancing through the Anafarta Valley, the Allies could threaten both Turkish fronts and cause them to give up their positions.The Allies Reinforce:At the beginning of August, five fresh British and ANZAC divisions were landed at Ari Burnu and Suvla Bay. In the evening of August 6, Liman von Sanders received alarming reports that a strong Allied force was moving north along the coast from Ari Burnu, aiming at the Anafarta Valley. Immediately, he moved troops from the Turkish 9th, 7th, and 12th Divisions to parry the new threat. As the forward elements of the 9th Division reached the Koja Chemen Mountain, they discovered that the British infantry was advancing up the opposite slope of the same mountain. In a brief and decisive counterattack, the Turks completely drove the British off the mountain. Leading from the front, German Colonel Hans Kannengiesser, commander of the 9th Division, was killed by a bullet through the chest.Heavy fighting for the hills around the Anafarta Valley continued through August 7, as the outnumbered Turkish soldiers from the 9th Division hung on waiting for reinforcements. After a grueling forced march, the 7th and 12th Divisions reached the threatened area the next day. Liman von Sanders appointed Kemal the overall commander of all Turkish forces on the Anafarta Front. His six divisions, centered on the two villages, Great and Little Anafarta, became known as the Anafartalar Group (“Anafartalar” in Turkish is plural for Anafarta). Throughout August 9, Kemal launched attack after attack at the British lines. In extremely bloody fighting, the Allies were pushed back to the coast in several places. Not lacking in bravery, the British and ANZAC troops tenaciously hung on to several key pieces of hilly terrain. On the evening of August 10, Kemal personally led another attack. After a difficult contest, the British were driven off all the dominating terrain at the head of the Anafarta Valley.During the attack on August 10, Kemal was hit in the chest by a spent piece of shrapnel. Fortunately for him, the shrapnel struck his pocket watch, leaving him unscathed. He later presented this watch to Liman von Sanders, who in turn gave Kemal his own watch, bearing his family’s coat of arms. On August 15, the Allies launched their own strong attack from Suvla Bay northeast toward the Kiretch Tepe Ridge. Their initial attack was a success, driving the Turks off a large portion of the ridge. A Turkish battalion composed largely of policemen from the Gallipoli Peninsula bore the brunt of the attack. It was almost completely annihilated, and its commander, Captain Kadri Bei, was killed.A Grinding Stalemate:Throughout August 16, the British continued heavy pressure on the beleaguered Turks. Turkish reinforcements were rushed forward and had to attack in daylight, in full view of supporting British warships. Turkish casualties from flanking naval gunfire were frightening, but the Allied ground advance was held up at all points. On August 21, the British launched another all-out attack against the Anafarta Valley. The fighting was as futile as it was bloody. The Allies made no progress, losing 15,000 men killed and 45,000 wounded. Turkish losses were equally frightening, forcing them to commit the last reserves, including the dismounted cavalry.Had the British been able to break through the Kiretch Tepe Ridge onto the wide Anafarta plain, the Turkish Fifth Army would have been outflanked and forced to stand and die or else fall back, ceding the Gallipoli Peninsula to the British. As it was, due to the incredible tenacity of the Mehmetciks (Turkish equivalent of American doughboys), the British merely extended the front lines at Ari Burnu. Liman von Sanders attributed their failure to the timidity of British commanders in waiting too long at the coast before pushing inland. The British, for their part, underestimated how quickly the Turks could rush reinforcements to the threatened sectors.On September 20, Kemal fell ill with malaria. Upset over real or imagined slights, he offered his resignation on September 27. While Liman von Sanders attempted to smooth over matters, Kemal remained unpersuaded. His relations with the German commander continued to deteriorate. On December 5, Liman von Sanders granted Kemal unconditional medical leave.The Allied Withdrawal:The fighting at Anafarta was the high point of the almost nine-month campaign, although the Allies continued half-hearted attacks throughout September and October. At the end of October, the Allied command began planning the evacuation of their troops from Gallipoli. An Austrian mortar battery arrived in mid-November, followed by an Austrian howitzer battery in December. The Austrian gunners, well-trained and -equipped, contributed significantly to the Turkish defenses in the later stage of the campaign. Along with approximately 500 Germans, the Austrian artillerymen were the only non-Turkish troops fighting the Allies at Gallipoli.Toward the end of November, the Turkish forces gathered for a decisive counteroffensive on the Allied positions. Their objective was to pierce the junction between the Ari Burnu and Anafarta fronts. Mock defensive positions were constructed behind the front and Turkish divisions assigned to participate in the attack were rotated back to practice offensive operations. However, before the offensive was launched, the Allies evacuated the Ari Burnu and Anafarta fronts. The Allied command planned and executed the withdrawal so skillfully that the Turks never realized what was about to happen. During the night of December 19, under covering fire from British warships, Allied land forces slipped away from the blood-soaked beaches. Liman von Sanders praised the Allied efforts: “The withdrawal had been prepared with extraordinary care and carried out with great skill.”While the Allies evacuated their men from Ari Burnu with hardly a loss, they had to leave behind a trove of supplies and war materiél: ammunition, tents, spare parts for cannons and machine guns, canned food, hand grenades, even a few small steamers and more than 60 rowboats. Supply-starved Turkish forces distributed the booty among all theaters of operation. Now Liman von Sanders was able to concentrate all of his forces against the only remaining Allied beachhead at Sedd-el-Bahr. The Turks kept up a steady pressure on the British lines, watchful for any further sign of withdrawal. When an Allied pullback was detected during the night of January 8, the Turks launched a determined effort to trap as many British troops as possible on the beaches. The British rear guard put up a spirited fight, aided by booby traps, land mines, and naval gunfire. In spite of losing many men, the Allies once again achieved an orderly withdrawal and evacuated Sedd-el-Bahr.By the morning of January 9, jubilant Turkish forces held the whole peninsula. An even greater amount of war booty had been abandoned on the southern tip of the peninsula. Ragged Turkish soldiers gleefully fell upon the riches the British left behind. Liman von Sanders recalled, “What the ragged and insufficiently nourished Turkish soldiers took away cannot be estimated. I tried to stop plundering by a dense line of sentinels, but the endeavor was in vain. During the ensuing time we saw the Turkish soldiers on the peninsula in the most incredible garments which they had made up from every kind of uniform. They even carried British gas masks for fun.”Counting Losses:During the height of the Dardanelles campaign, Liman von Sanders commanded 22 infantry divisions in the Fifth Army. Turkish losses amounted to 66,000 men killed and 152,000 wounded. Of those wounded, 42,000 soldiers were later returned to duty. Allied casualties reached upward of 200,000 men killed, wounded, or missing in action. The men evacuated from the Gallipoli beaches later were shipped to France, smack into the bloodbath of the Western Front trenches.As for Gallipoli, it would be difficult to find another location where so many men from so many nations fought and died in such a small place. Turks, Germans, British, Australians, New Zealanders, French, Indians, Senegalese, Arabs, Austrians, Gurkhas, and others were locked in mortal combat where bravery was never in short supply. Years later, while serving as the president of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal would write: “Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this county of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”This article by Victor J. Kamenir originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.Image: Wikimedia Commons

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The fighting at Anafarta was the high point of the almost nine-month campaign, although the Allies continued half-hearted attacks throughout September and October. In the English-speaking world, most students of military history would be hard-pressed to identify the time, place, or antagonists of the Canakkale Campaign. However, they would readily recognize it by its English name—Gallipoli. The Allied troops who went ashore at Gallipoli believed they were fighting for democracy. Few Westerners realized (or at any rate admitted) that their Turkish opponents were fighting for an even higher ideal—they were defending their country. A significant portion of the Turkish soldiers who fought in the Canakkale Campaign were recruited from the towns and villages of the Gallipoli Peninsula. With their families close behind the battle lines, these soldiers were literally fighting for their homes. To them, the Allied soldiers were invaders who had come to defile their country and their Muslim faith.Deutschland uber Allah: the Ottomans Enter the War:In 1915, World War I was in its second year. On the Western Front, the inexorable meat grinder of trench warfare had replaced the early war of maneuver. Stalemated British, French, and German armies stared at each other across the scarred Belgian and French countryside. Meanwhile, on the Eastern Front, where operations of Austro-German and Russian armies still maintained some measure of fluidity, things were beginning to bog down there as well. The eyes of both sides turned south, toward the Ottoman Empire. With the Turks firmly in command of both the Dardanelles and Bosporus Straits, a vital supply route between Russia and Western Europe had been cut. Russia needed weapons and munitions from England and France. In turn, those two countries needed Russian food shipments. To England and France, Turkey seemed like the soft underbelly through which a serious blow could be delivered at Germany. The Germans, for their part, were looking for a place to divert British and French efforts and relieve some of the pressure on the Fatherland.Recommended: Why an F-22 Raptor Would Crush an F-35 in a 'Dogfight'Recommended: Air War: Stealth F-22 Raptor vs. F-14 Tomcat (That Iran Still Flies)Recommended: A New Report Reveals Why There Won't Be Any 'New' F-22 RaptorsFor more than a decade, the German and Ottoman empires had maintained close ties, especially in the military sphere. Shortly before the start of the war, a German military mission of almost 100 officers arrived in Turkey, invited there to overhaul the creaking Ottoman war machine. One of the most senior members of this mission was General Otto Liman von Sanders, who was destined to play a key role in the Gallipoli campaign. When the war started, Turkey initially maintained its neutrality. Then, in an act of either calculated effrontery or callous arrogance, England withheld two battleships it had been building for Turkey. The Turks’ indignation was understandable, since they had already paid for the battleships. Not only was England keeping the vessels, it also refused to return its client’s money.German warships soon entered the picture. On August 10, 1914, hotly pursued by combined British and French squadrons, two German vessels, Goeben and Breslau, took refuge in Turkish territorial waters. In a sham sale, Turkey acquired the ships from Germany. Re-flagged under Ottoman colors and bearing the new names Midilli and Yavuz, the two ships were still manned by their German crews, who went through the ridiculous charade of wearing fezzes and pretending to be Turks. A rueful pun made the rounds: “Deutschland uber Allah.”Turkey decided to enter the conflict on the German side. On October 27, the two newly acquired warships sailed into the Black Sea, bombarded several Russian cities on the north shore of the sea, and sank two merchant vessels. Although damage was minimal, Russia immediately declared war on Turkey. Great Britain and France quickly followed suit, and on November 3 combined British and French squadrons bombarded Turkish military installations near the entrance to the Dardanelles Straits, heavily damaging two small forts. Turkey, in turn, formally declared war on England and France. Another country had been drawn into the European bloodbath.Dardanelles Strait: Istambul’s Gate:The Ottoman Empire was separated into the European portion and the Asian portion by the narrow Sea of Marmara. The Dardanelles Straits formed the gates to that British lake, the Mediterranean Sea, while the Bosporus Straits guarded the entrance to the Black Sea, dominated by Russia. The Gallipoli Peninsula (anglicized name of the small town of Gelibolu on the European side of the Dardanelles) gave its name to the upcoming campaign in the English-speaking world. The Turks named the campaign after the town of Canakkale, on the Asian side of the straits.Hoping for a quick knockout blow, the British government planned to force the Dardanelles Straits, enter the Sea of Marmara and bombard the Turkish capital of Istanbul into submission. Original Allied plans drawn up by Winston Churchill, the British First Lord of the Admiralty, called for naval actions alone. However, six months of naval bombardments and raids by marine landing parties did not have much success. The British and French squadrons operated on predictable sailing patterns, and the Turks laid a series of mine fields across their routes. On March 18, Allied naval squadrons received a terrible mauling at the hands of the Turks, resulting in three Allied battleships sunk and three more crippled. The British abruptly changed tactics and placed the Army in charge of forcing the Dardanelles Straits. British General Sir Ian Hamilton was appointed to command the Mediterranean Expeditionary Forces, which included Australian and New Zealand (ANZAC) contingents as well as English.Liman von Sanders Takes Command;On March 24, the Turkish premier, Enver Pasha, offered Liman von Sanders command of the Fifth Army, which was being organized to defend the Dardanelles. A typical product of Prussian military upbringing—professional, aloof, and nonpolitical—Liman von Sanders readily accepted the offer and wasted no time departing for his new command. On March 26, he set up headquarters in the small port town of Gallipoli. Efforts to improve defenses at the strategic straits began at once. At the time, the Fifth Army was composed of five divisions deployed along both the European and the Asiatic coasts of the straits. Each division was made up of nine to 12 battalions, each numbering between 800 and 1,000 men. By the time of the Allied landings, another division, the 3rd, had arrived.The Asian side of the straits, characterized by low hills and large tracts of flatlands, was more susceptible to Allied landings. The coast of the Gallipoli Peninsula on the European side consisted of very mountainous terrain with steep slopes and deep ravines. Immediately behind the beaches, the landscape was dotted with small woods and thickets. Farther inland, the peninsula became flatter and more open for maneuver. Liman von Sanders considered the Asian shore the place most likely to see an Allied landing. It was, however, the most heavily defended sector of the Turkish defenses. The Gallipoli Peninsula, on the other hand, offered only a handful of likely places to land enemy troops. One of them was the southern tip of the peninsula at Sedd-el-Bahr, completely covered by the guns of British warships. After landing there, the next immediate Allied objective inland would be the Achi Baba ridge. From this ridge, the British would be able to put a large part of the Turkish defensive works under fire.Another likely landing place was on the north side of the Gulf of Saros, at Bulair. From this place to Maidos, the Gallipoli Peninsula is only approximately four miles wide. If the enemy could cut the peninsula along the line from the Gulf of Saros to Maidos, a considerable part of the Ottoman Fifth Army would be cut off and surrounded. In his memoirs, British Seaman Joseph Murray wrote, “No doubt the Turks were wondering exactly where and when we would strike; as invaders it was for us to choose the time and place. The Turks had to remain where they were, ready to defend their homeland.”Reorganizing the Turkish Fifth Army:Before Liman von Sanders took command of the Fifth Army, the Turkish troops were distributed evenly along the entire perimeter of the Gallipoli Peninsula, without any reserves allocated to halt the enemy in case they breached the shore defenses. Liman von Sanders completely reorganized Turkish deployment. He pulled back the bulk of his troops, leaving company- and platoon-sized detachments to watch the possible landing sites. Since he considered the Gulf of Saros the most likely landing location on the peninsula, Liman von Sanders repositioned the 5th and 7th Divisions close to it. The 9th Division was centered on the southern tip of the peninsula and the 19th Division was placed in strategic reserve in the center. The 3rd and 11th Divisions were allocated to defend the Asiatic side of the straights. By using internal lines of communication, Liman von Sanders would be able to rush reserves to the threatened sectors.To conceal Turkish redeployments, most movements were done during the night. Work on improving the roads began at once to prepare them for the higher traffic of supplies and reinforcements. To toughen up his troops, grown complacent in their previous static defensive positions, Liman von Sanders ordered them to conduct training marches and maneuvers. This training also had to be conducted at night to shield them from British warships, which would immediately rain shells on any group of Turks, however small.The Amphibious Assault Begins:In the early morning of April 25, Liman von Sanders began receiving reports that hostile landings were taking place. The 3rd and 11th Divisions defending the Asiatic side reported heavy fighting with the French troops landing around the Besika Bay. At the same time, British warships lying off Sedd-el-Bahr (called Cape Helles by the British) were laying down a heavy barrage covering the landing of British troops under fire from the Turkish 9th Division. More naval gunfire soon announced further enemy landings.Quickly dispatching the bulk of the 7th Division to the Bulair Ridge, Liman von Sanders hurried ahead of them, accompanied by his German adjutants. From the bare Bulair Ridge, they had a full view of the Gulf of Saros. While the British were heavily bombarding the area, they were not landing any troops there yet. Reports began filtering in. At the southern tip of the peninsula, the British were taking tremendous casualties but bringing in more and more troops. The Allies were not having any success against the 9th Division at Gaba Tepe. However, the British occupied the heights at Ari Burnu, to which the bulk of the reserve 19th Division under Lt. Col. Mustafa Kemal was hurrying.Liman von Sanders estimated that his 60,000 troops were facing upward of 90,000 Allies, supported by an incredible array of warships. The Turkish high command was amazed to count almost 200 Allied warships and transports facing them. By mid-afternoon, Liman von Sanders received news that the French landing at Besika Bay has been repulsed, and that it seemed to have been a diversion. The enemy actions at the Gulf of Saros appeared to be a mere demonstration as well. The Turkish defenders put up a very spirited fight against the invading Allies. In many places, the British troops hitting the beaches were mowed down under an unrelenting hail of Turkish bullets. Many small groups of Allied soldiers managed to penetrate the shore defenses and move inland, melting away along the mazes of ravines, gullies, and thickets.The fight was far from being one-sided, however. The full weight of British naval guns was brought to bear on Turkish positions. Rear Admiral R.J.B. Keyes recalled, “The enemy’s position was obliterated in sheets of flame and clouds of yellow smoke and dust from our high explosive. It seemed incredible that anyone could be left alive in the enemy’s position, but when the fire was lifted that ghastly tat-tat-tat of machine-gun fire broke out again, and took toll of anyone who moved.” A less exalted viewer was British midshipman H.M. Denham, who noted, “We opened fire on the Turks with twelve-pounders. I could see a dozen of them rush out of their trench, run fifty yards, lie flat with our men’s rifle bullet splashes all around them. When we directed our fire at them I saw a lot of heads, legs and arms go up in the air; however, they fought very bravely.”The Allied Foothold:The Allies had gained a foothold at the southern point of the Gallipoli Peninsula and were constantly bringing in reinforcements. The whole of the Turkish 9th Division under Colonel Sami Bei had been committed to the fight and still more troops were needed. Liman von Sanders ordered two battalions from the 7th Division to be moved there by boat from Maidos. He also sent three battalions from the 5th Division, in readiness at the Gulf of Saros, to Maidos to follow those of the 7th Division. The 19th Division, although holding its own at Gaba Tepe and Ari Burnu, was heavily engaged against Australian and New Zealand forces.Even though he suspected that the Allied movements at the Gulf of Saros were a feint, Liman von Sanders remained on the Bulair heights throughout the night. On the morning of April 26, he ordered units from the 5th and 7th Divisions, along with most of the field artillery of the two divisions, to Maidos for transportation to the southern tip of the peninsula. Meanwhile, he left his chief of staff, Lt. Col. Kazim Bei, in charge of the remaining troops at the Gulf of Saros. Bei had orders to send his remaining troops to Maidos if no enemy landing manifested itself the following day.Mustafa Kemal, leading his 19th Division, was one of those rare men whom providence places at exactly the right place at exactly the right time. On the morning of the Allied landings, Kemal’s division was held in reserve approximately five miles away from the shores. Its sister division, the 9th, bore the brunt of Allied assault, and its commander urgently requested reinforcements. Kemal personally took charge of one of his regiments, a company of cavalry and an artillery battery, and hurried forward. As he later described in his memoirs, Kemal stopped on a crest of a hill to wait for his troops to catch up. While he sat resting his horse, he spotted a group of retreating Turkish soldiers from the 9th Division. They informed him that they were out of ammunition and were being closely followed by the British. Kemal quickly saw a skirmish line of British soldiers climbing up the hill. He ordered the few 9th Division soldiers to fix bayonets and lie down. He later wrote, “As they did so, the enemy too lay down. We had won time.”The Turkish Counterattack;In the late morning, as more and more units from his 19th Division began arriving opposite the landing sites, Kemal organized a counterattack against the ANZAC positions. Leading toward the 57th Infantry Regiment, the 36-year-old officer addressed his men. “I don’t order you to attack,” he said. “I order you to die. By the time we are dead, other units and commanders will have come up to take our place.” While containing more that a little dramatic flair, Kemal’s orders reflected his correct estimation of the situation: hold at all costs.During April 25 and the next few days, the 57th Regiment lived up to its commander’s expectation—casualties were so heavy that the regiment practically ceased to exist. To recognize the sacrifice of men of the 57th Infantry Regiment, the Turkish government did not reconstitute the unit, retiring its number with honors. Throughout the day, Kemal continued feeding reinforcements into the maelstrom. The Australians and New Zealanders tenaciously clung to their slivers of shoreline, soaking up casualties themselves and dealing out even greater casualties to the counterattacking Turks. One of the Turkish regiments advancing on the left flank, the 77th, composed mainly of unsteady Arab recruits, broke and ran after suffering severe loses. Kemal quickly shifted a battalion from the right to plug the gap. By the time night mercifully fell, the bloodied beachheads, gullies, hilltops, and slopes were littered with the carnage of war. Corpses of fallen Turks, Australians, New Zealanders, British, and Arabs presented a nightmarish landscape. The moaning of wounded made it seem as if the hills themselves were crying out in anguish.While Kemal’s division suffered terrible losses, he scored a moral victory over the Allies. The casualties among the Australian and New Zealand soldiers were also so great that their brigade and divisional commanders convinced Maj. Gen. William Birdwood, commander of the Anzac contingent, to request that they be evacuated. The expedition’s commander, British General Sir Ian Hamilton, denied the request, instead advising, “You have got through the difficult business, now you have only to dig, dig, dig, until you are safe.” As ANZAC shovels bit into the rocky soil, the Allies lost the initiative.Containing the Beachhead:All through the fighting on April 25, Kemal managed to contain the Allied advance. For his role in events, he would be awarded the Turkish Order of Distinguished Service. Later, Kaiser Wilhelm II would award Kemal Germany’s Iron Cross. Extremely outspoken and nationalistic, Kemal soon came to disagree with the overall commander at Gallipoli, Liman von Sanders, who preferred to have German officers in key positions. Kemal’s attitude and language in addressing his Turkish and German superiors were not always the most politic. Despite multiple ruffled feathers, his personal courage and abilities were never in doubt, and on May 1 he was promoted to the rank of full colonel.Heavy fighting continued for the next two days. The Allies, intent on breaking through to the hinterland of the peninsula, threw more and more men into the fighting. For their part, the Turks were just as determined to push the invaders back into the sea. As the result, neither side gained their objectives. By the beginning of May, stationary warfare, reminiscent of Western Europe, had developed on the peninsula. Despite large quantities of blood shed on both sides, progress was measured in feet. Two distinct fronts soon took shape: at Sedd-el-Bahr (Cape Helles) and Ari Burnu (Anzac Cove).To minimize the effectiveness of British naval gunfire, Liman von Sanders ordered his troops in the first line to dig their trenches as close to the British as possible. With the opposing trench lines within a grenade’s throw from each other, British naval gunfire could just as easily hit a friend as a foe. However, the British ships still could rain heavy fire onto Turkish second and subsequent lines of defense. Turkish villages and small towns on the Gallipoli Peninsula were turned to rubble by British naval gunfire. The once-beautiful port town of Maidos was left in ruins. The town of Gallipoli was severely damaged. Krithia, located just one mile north of the battle lines at Sedd-el-Bahr, was reduced to a heap of rubble. Allied warships, cruising the waters of the Aegean Sea with impunity, were able to bring a punishing flanking fire across almost the entire peninsula. Especially hard hit were the Turkish flanks, resting on the Aegean Sea in the west and the Dardanelles in the east.The Defenders Resupply:The resupply situation of the Turkish Fifth Army was extremely difficult. The railhead nearest to the front lines was at a small town of Uzun-Kupru in Thrace (modern-day Bulgaria). Since the Turkish Army had no trucks, all supplies had to be moved by horse- and ox-drawn wagons, a journey of several days. The overwhelming majority of supplies coming to Gallipoli arrived by boat from the Asiatic mainland across the Sea of Marmara. As British and Australian submarines tried unsuccessfully to close the supply line, the Turkish Army continued the struggle. At the beginning of the campaign, even entrenching tools were hard to come by. During their attacks on the British trenches, Turkish infantrymen often carried away any digging implements they could capture and scavenged wood, bricks, and other materials from destroyed villages. Even sand bags were in short supply. When several thousand of them did arrive, large numbers of the precious items were used to patch up the ragged uniforms of the Turkish soldiers.Four more Turkish divisions—the 4th, 13th, 15th, and 16th—arrived to reinforce Liman von Sanders’s depleted command. These divisions brought several batteries of much-needed heavy artillery. Even though consisting mostly of older models, the guns proved invaluable in counteracting British artillery, which was being landed on the peninsula in increasing numbers. The Turkish Navy, particularly its two German-crewed ships, contributed two machine-gun detachments of 12 weapons each to the Gallipoli defenses.During the night of May 18, the newly arrived Turkish 2nd Division attacked the Allies at Ari Burnu. It succeeded in breaking through the first British trench line and reaching the second. However, the British immediately counterattacked and pushed the exhausted 2nd Division back to its starting position. Casualties on both sides were heavy, with the 2nd Division losing 9,000 men killed and wounded. In his memoirs, Liman von Sanders took the blame for the attack’s failures, citing insufficient artillery preparation and quantity of ammunition. British losses were significant as well, and British command requested a cease-fire to collect and bury their dead. Liman von Sanders agreed to halt the hostilities for one day on May 23.At the end of June, a provisional German company of 200 commissioned and noncommissioned officers joined the Fifth Army. However, the unfamiliar climate and Allied fire quickly reduced its numbers. Distributed in small groups along the whole front, the Germans nevertheless proved invaluable in supervising Turkish engineering and construction efforts. A significant weakness in Turkish positions was the gap between the Ari Burnu and Sedd-el-Bahr fronts. While the Turkish flanks at Sedd-el-Bahr were anchored on the water, the flanks at Ari Burnu were hanging in the air. Advancing through the Anafarta Valley, the Allies could threaten both Turkish fronts and cause them to give up their positions.The Allies Reinforce:At the beginning of August, five fresh British and ANZAC divisions were landed at Ari Burnu and Suvla Bay. In the evening of August 6, Liman von Sanders received alarming reports that a strong Allied force was moving north along the coast from Ari Burnu, aiming at the Anafarta Valley. Immediately, he moved troops from the Turkish 9th, 7th, and 12th Divisions to parry the new threat. As the forward elements of the 9th Division reached the Koja Chemen Mountain, they discovered that the British infantry was advancing up the opposite slope of the same mountain. In a brief and decisive counterattack, the Turks completely drove the British off the mountain. Leading from the front, German Colonel Hans Kannengiesser, commander of the 9th Division, was killed by a bullet through the chest.Heavy fighting for the hills around the Anafarta Valley continued through August 7, as the outnumbered Turkish soldiers from the 9th Division hung on waiting for reinforcements. After a grueling forced march, the 7th and 12th Divisions reached the threatened area the next day. Liman von Sanders appointed Kemal the overall commander of all Turkish forces on the Anafarta Front. His six divisions, centered on the two villages, Great and Little Anafarta, became known as the Anafartalar Group (“Anafartalar” in Turkish is plural for Anafarta). Throughout August 9, Kemal launched attack after attack at the British lines. In extremely bloody fighting, the Allies were pushed back to the coast in several places. Not lacking in bravery, the British and ANZAC troops tenaciously hung on to several key pieces of hilly terrain. On the evening of August 10, Kemal personally led another attack. After a difficult contest, the British were driven off all the dominating terrain at the head of the Anafarta Valley.During the attack on August 10, Kemal was hit in the chest by a spent piece of shrapnel. Fortunately for him, the shrapnel struck his pocket watch, leaving him unscathed. He later presented this watch to Liman von Sanders, who in turn gave Kemal his own watch, bearing his family’s coat of arms. On August 15, the Allies launched their own strong attack from Suvla Bay northeast toward the Kiretch Tepe Ridge. Their initial attack was a success, driving the Turks off a large portion of the ridge. A Turkish battalion composed largely of policemen from the Gallipoli Peninsula bore the brunt of the attack. It was almost completely annihilated, and its commander, Captain Kadri Bei, was killed.A Grinding Stalemate:Throughout August 16, the British continued heavy pressure on the beleaguered Turks. Turkish reinforcements were rushed forward and had to attack in daylight, in full view of supporting British warships. Turkish casualties from flanking naval gunfire were frightening, but the Allied ground advance was held up at all points. On August 21, the British launched another all-out attack against the Anafarta Valley. The fighting was as futile as it was bloody. The Allies made no progress, losing 15,000 men killed and 45,000 wounded. Turkish losses were equally frightening, forcing them to commit the last reserves, including the dismounted cavalry.Had the British been able to break through the Kiretch Tepe Ridge onto the wide Anafarta plain, the Turkish Fifth Army would have been outflanked and forced to stand and die or else fall back, ceding the Gallipoli Peninsula to the British. As it was, due to the incredible tenacity of the Mehmetciks (Turkish equivalent of American doughboys), the British merely extended the front lines at Ari Burnu. Liman von Sanders attributed their failure to the timidity of British commanders in waiting too long at the coast before pushing inland. The British, for their part, underestimated how quickly the Turks could rush reinforcements to the threatened sectors.On September 20, Kemal fell ill with malaria. Upset over real or imagined slights, he offered his resignation on September 27. While Liman von Sanders attempted to smooth over matters, Kemal remained unpersuaded. His relations with the German commander continued to deteriorate. On December 5, Liman von Sanders granted Kemal unconditional medical leave.The Allied Withdrawal:The fighting at Anafarta was the high point of the almost nine-month campaign, although the Allies continued half-hearted attacks throughout September and October. At the end of October, the Allied command began planning the evacuation of their troops from Gallipoli. An Austrian mortar battery arrived in mid-November, followed by an Austrian howitzer battery in December. The Austrian gunners, well-trained and -equipped, contributed significantly to the Turkish defenses in the later stage of the campaign. Along with approximately 500 Germans, the Austrian artillerymen were the only non-Turkish troops fighting the Allies at Gallipoli.Toward the end of November, the Turkish forces gathered for a decisive counteroffensive on the Allied positions. Their objective was to pierce the junction between the Ari Burnu and Anafarta fronts. Mock defensive positions were constructed behind the front and Turkish divisions assigned to participate in the attack were rotated back to practice offensive operations. However, before the offensive was launched, the Allies evacuated the Ari Burnu and Anafarta fronts. The Allied command planned and executed the withdrawal so skillfully that the Turks never realized what was about to happen. During the night of December 19, under covering fire from British warships, Allied land forces slipped away from the blood-soaked beaches. Liman von Sanders praised the Allied efforts: “The withdrawal had been prepared with extraordinary care and carried out with great skill.”While the Allies evacuated their men from Ari Burnu with hardly a loss, they had to leave behind a trove of supplies and war materiél: ammunition, tents, spare parts for cannons and machine guns, canned food, hand grenades, even a few small steamers and more than 60 rowboats. Supply-starved Turkish forces distributed the booty among all theaters of operation. Now Liman von Sanders was able to concentrate all of his forces against the only remaining Allied beachhead at Sedd-el-Bahr. The Turks kept up a steady pressure on the British lines, watchful for any further sign of withdrawal. When an Allied pullback was detected during the night of January 8, the Turks launched a determined effort to trap as many British troops as possible on the beaches. The British rear guard put up a spirited fight, aided by booby traps, land mines, and naval gunfire. In spite of losing many men, the Allies once again achieved an orderly withdrawal and evacuated Sedd-el-Bahr.By the morning of January 9, jubilant Turkish forces held the whole peninsula. An even greater amount of war booty had been abandoned on the southern tip of the peninsula. Ragged Turkish soldiers gleefully fell upon the riches the British left behind. Liman von Sanders recalled, “What the ragged and insufficiently nourished Turkish soldiers took away cannot be estimated. I tried to stop plundering by a dense line of sentinels, but the endeavor was in vain. During the ensuing time we saw the Turkish soldiers on the peninsula in the most incredible garments which they had made up from every kind of uniform. They even carried British gas masks for fun.”Counting Losses:During the height of the Dardanelles campaign, Liman von Sanders commanded 22 infantry divisions in the Fifth Army. Turkish losses amounted to 66,000 men killed and 152,000 wounded. Of those wounded, 42,000 soldiers were later returned to duty. Allied casualties reached upward of 200,000 men killed, wounded, or missing in action. The men evacuated from the Gallipoli beaches later were shipped to France, smack into the bloodbath of the Western Front trenches.As for Gallipoli, it would be difficult to find another location where so many men from so many nations fought and died in such a small place. Turks, Germans, British, Australians, New Zealanders, French, Indians, Senegalese, Arabs, Austrians, Gurkhas, and others were locked in mortal combat where bravery was never in short supply. Years later, while serving as the president of Turkey, Mustafa Kemal would write: “Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this county of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”This article by Victor J. Kamenir originally appeared on the Warfare History Network.Image: Wikimedia Commons

September 01, 2019 at 07:00AM via IFTTT

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.13

585 BC – Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victories over the Sabines, and the surrender of Collatia. 509 BC – The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Rome's Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September. 379 – Yax Nuun Ahiin I is crowned as 15th Ajaw of Tikal 533 – Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeats Gelimer and the Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimum, near Carthage, North Africa. 1229 – Ögedei Khan is proclaimed Khagan of the Mongol Empire in Kodoe Aral, Khentii: Mongolia. 1437 – Battle of Tangier: a Portuguese expeditionary force initiates a failed attempt to seize the Moroccan citadel of Tangier. 1501 – Italian Renaissance: Michelangelo begins work on his statue of David. 1504 – Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issue a Royal Warrant for the construction of a Royal Chapel (Capilla Real) to be built. 1541 – After three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva to reform the church under a body of doctrine known as Calvinism. 1584 – San Lorenzo del Escorial Palace in Madrid is finished. 1609 – Henry Hudson reaches the river that would later be named after him – the Hudson River. 1645 – Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Scottish Royalists are defeated by Covenanters at the Battle of Philiphaugh. 1743 – Great Britain, Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia sign the Treaty of Worms. 1759 – Battle of the Plains of Abraham: the British defeat the French near Quebec City in the Seven Years' War, known in the United States as the French and Indian War. 1782 – American Revolutionary War: Franco-Spanish troops launch the unsuccessful "grand assault" during the Great Siege of Gibraltar. 1788 – The Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the first presidential election in the United States, and New York City becomes the country's temporary capital. 1791 – King Louis XVI of France accepts the new constitution. 1808 – Finnish War: In the Battle of Jutas, Swedish forces under Lieutenant General Georg Carl von Döbeln beat the Russians, making von Döbeln a Swedish war hero. 1812 – War of 1812: A supply wagon sent to relieve Fort Harrison is ambushed in the Attack at the Narrows. 1814 – In a turning point in the War of 1812, the British fail to capture Baltimore. During the battle, Francis Scott Key composes his poem "Defence of Fort McHenry", which is later set to music and becomes the United States' national anthem. 1843 – The Greek Army rebels (OS date: September 3) against the autocratic rule of king Otto of Greece, demanding the granting of a constitution. 1847 – Mexican–American War: Six teenage military cadets known as Niños Héroes die defending Chapultepec Castle in the Battle of Chapultepec. American troops under General Winfield Scott capture Mexico City in the Mexican–American War. 1848 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives an iron rod 1+1⁄4 inches (3.2 cm) in diameter being driven through his brain; the reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulate discussion of the nature of the brain and its functions. 1862 – American Civil War: Union soldiers find a copy of Robert E. Lee's battle plans in a field outside Frederick, Maryland. It is the prelude to the Battle of Antietam. 1882 – Anglo-Egyptian War: The Battle of Tel el-Kebir is fought. 1898 – Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film. 1899 – Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident. 1899 – Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel make the first ascent of Batian (5,199 m – 17,058 ft), the highest peak of Mount Kenya. 1900 – Filipino insurgents defeat a small American column in the Battle of Pulang Lupa, during the Philippine–American War. 1906 – The Santos-Dumont 14-bis makes a short hop, the first flight of a fixed-wing aircraft in Europe. 1914 – World War I: The Battle of Aisne begins between Germany and France. 1922 – The final act of the Greco-Turkish War, the Great Fire of Smyrna, commences. 1923 – Following a military coup in Spain, Miguel Primo de Rivera takes over, setting up a dictatorship. 1933 – Elizabeth McCombs becomes the first woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament. 1942 – World War II: Second day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge in the Guadalcanal Campaign. U.S. Marines successfully defeated attacks by the Japanese with heavy losses for the Japanese forces. 1944 – World War II: Start of the Battle of Meligalas between the Greek Resistance forces of the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) and the collaborationist security battalions. 1948 – Deputy Prime Minister of India Vallabhbhai Patel orders the Army to move into Hyderabad to integrate it with the Indian Union. 1948 – Margaret Chase Smith is elected United States senator, and becomes the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate. 1953 – Nikita Khrushchev is appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1956 – The IBM 305 RAMAC is introduced, the first commercial computer to use disk storage. 1956 – The dike around the Dutch polder East Flevoland is closed. 1962 – An appeals court orders the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith, the first African-American student admitted to the segregated university. 1964 – South Vietnamese Generals Lâm Văn Phát and Dương Văn Đức fail in a coup attempt against General Nguyễn Khánh. 1964 – Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a crowd of 20,000 West Berliners on Sunday, in Waldbühne. 1968 – Cold War: Albania leaves the Warsaw Pact. 1971 – State police and National Guardsmen storm New York's Attica Prison to quell a prison revolt, which claimed 43 lives. 1971 – Chairman Mao Zedong's second in command and successor Marshal Lin Biao flees China after the failure of an alleged coup. His plane crashes in Mongolia, killing all aboard. 1977 – General Motors introduces Diesel engine, with Oldsmobile Diesel engine, in the Delta 88, Oldsmobile 98, and Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser models amongst others. 1979 – South Africa grants independence to the "homeland" of Venda (not recognised outside South Africa). 1982 – Spantax Flight 995 crashes at Málaga Airport during a rejected takeoff, killing 50 of the 394 people on board. 1985 – Super Mario Bros. is released in Japan for the NES, which starts the Super Mario series of platforming games. 1987 – Goiânia accident: A radioactive object is stolen from an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, Brazil, contaminating many people in the following weeks and causing some to die from radiation poisoning. 1988 – Hurricane Gilbert is the strongest recorded hurricane in the Western Hemisphere, later replaced by Hurricane Wilma in 2005 (based on barometric pressure). 1989 – Largest anti-Apartheid march in South Africa, led by Desmond Tutu. 1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shakes hands with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House after signing the Oslo Accords granting limited Palestinian autonomy. 1997 – A German Air Force Tupolev Tu-154 and a United States Air Force Lockheed C-141 Starlifter collide in mid-air near Namibia, killing 33. 2001 – Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the United States after the September 11 attacks. 2007 – The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. 2007 – The McLaren F1 team were found guilty of possessing confidential information from the Ferrari team, and were fined $100 million and were excluded from the constructors' championship standings. 2008 – Delhi, India, is hit by a series of bomb blasts, resulting in 30 deaths and 130 injuries. 2008 – Hurricane Ike makes landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, causing heavy damage to Galveston Island, Houston, and surrounding areas. 2013 – Taliban insurgents attack the United States consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, with two members of the Afghan National Police reported dead and about 20 civilians injured. 2018 – The Merrimack Valley gas explosions: One person is killed, 25 are injured, and 40 homes are destroyed when excessive natural gas pressure caused fires and explosions.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.13

585 BC – Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victories over the Sabines, and the surrender of Collatia. 509 BC – The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Rome's Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September. 379 – Yax Nuun Ahiin I is crowned as 15th Ajaw of Tikal 533 – Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeats Gelimer and the Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimum, near Carthage, North Africa. 1229 – Ögedei Khan is proclaimed Khagan of the Mongol Empire in Kodoe Aral, Khentii: Mongolia. 1437 – Battle of Tangier: a Portuguese expeditionary force initiates a failed attempt to seize the Moroccan citadel of Tangier. 1501 – Italian Renaissance: Michelangelo begins work on his statue of David. 1504 – Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issue a Royal Warrant for the construction of a Royal Chapel (Capilla Real) to be built. 1541 – After three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva to reform the church under a body of doctrine known as Calvinism. 1584 – San Lorenzo del Escorial Palace in Madrid is finished. 1609 – Henry Hudson reaches the river that would later be named after him – the Hudson River. 1645 – Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Scottish Royalists are defeated by Covenanters at the Battle of Philiphaugh. 1743 – Great Britain, Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia sign the Treaty of Worms. 1759 – Battle of the Plains of Abraham: the British defeat the French near Quebec City in the Seven Years' War, known in the United States as the French and Indian War. 1782 – American Revolutionary War: Franco-Spanish troops launch the unsuccessful "grand assault" during the Great Siege of Gibraltar. 1788 – The Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the first presidential election in the United States, and New York City becomes the country's temporary capital. 1791 – King Louis XVI of France accepts the new constitution. 1808 – Finnish War: In the Battle of Jutas, Swedish forces under Lieutenant General Georg Carl von Döbeln beat the Russians, making von Döbeln a Swedish war hero. 1812 – War of 1812: A supply wagon sent to relieve Fort Harrison is ambushed in the Attack at the Narrows. 1814 – In a turning point in the War of 1812, the British fail to capture Baltimore. During the battle, Francis Scott Key composes his poem "Defence of Fort McHenry", which is later set to music and becomes the United States' national anthem. 1843 – The Greek Army rebels (OS date: September 3) against the autocratic rule of king Otto of Greece, demanding the granting of a constitution. 1847 – Mexican–American War: Six teenage military cadets known as Niños Héroes die defending Chapultepec Castle in the Battle of Chapultepec. American troops under General Winfield Scott capture Mexico City in the Mexican–American War. 1848 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives an iron rod 1 1⁄4 inches (3.2 cm) in diameter being driven through his brain; the reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulate discussion of the nature of the brain and its functions. 1862 – American Civil War: Union soldiers find a copy of Robert E. Lee's battle plans in a field outside Frederick, Maryland. It is the prelude to the Battle of Antietam. 1882 – Anglo-Egyptian War: The Battle of Tel el-Kebir is fought. 1898 – Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film. 1899 – Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident. 1899 – Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel make the first ascent of Batian (5,199 m – 17,058 ft), the highest peak of Mount Kenya. 1900 – Filipino insurgents defeat a small American column in the Battle of Pulang Lupa, during the Philippine–American War. 1906 – The Santos-Dumont 14-bis makes a short hop, the first flight of a fixed-wing aircraft in Europe. 1914 – World War I: The Battle of Aisne begins between Germany and France. 1922 – The final act of the Greco-Turkish War, the Great Fire of Smyrna, commences. 1923 – Following a military coup in Spain, Miguel Primo de Rivera takes over, setting up a dictatorship. 1933 – Elizabeth McCombs becomes the first woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament. 1942 – World War II: Second day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge in the Guadalcanal Campaign. U.S. Marines successfully defeated attacks by the Japanese with heavy losses for the Japanese forces. 1944 – World War II: Start of the Battle of Meligalas between the Greek Resistance forces of the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) and the collaborationist security battalions. 1948 – Deputy Prime Minister of India Vallabhbhai Patel orders the Army to move into Hyderabad to integrate it with the Indian Union. 1948 – Margaret Chase Smith is elected United States senator, and becomes the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate. 1953 – Nikita Khrushchev is appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1956 – The IBM 305 RAMAC is introduced, the first commercial computer to use disk storage. 1956 – The dike around the Dutch polder East Flevoland is closed. 1962 – An appeals court orders the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith, the first African-American student admitted to the segregated university. 1964 – South Vietnamese Generals Lâm Văn Phát and Dương Văn Đức fail in a coup attempt against General Nguyễn Khánh. 1964 – Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a crowd of 20,000 West Berliners on Sunday, in Waldbühne. 1968 – Cold War: Albania leaves the Warsaw Pact. 1971 – State police and National Guardsmen storm New York's Attica Prison to quell a prison revolt, which claimed 43 lives. 1971 – Chairman Mao Zedong's second in command and successor Marshal Lin Biao flees China after the failure of an alleged coup. His plane crashes in Mongolia, killing all aboard. 1977 – General Motors introduces Diesel engine, with Oldsmobile Diesel engine, in the Delta 88, Oldsmobile 98, and Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser models amongst others. 1979 – South Africa grants independence to the "homeland" of Venda (not recognised outside South Africa). 1985 – Super Mario Bros. is released in Japan for the NES, which starts the Super Mario series of platforming games. 1987 – Goiânia accident: A radioactive object is stolen from an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, Brazil, contaminating many people in the following weeks and causing some to die from radiation poisoning. 1988 – Hurricane Gilbert is the strongest recorded hurricane in the Western Hemisphere, later replaced by Hurricane Wilma in 2005 (based on barometric pressure). 1989 – Largest anti-Apartheid march in South Africa, led by Desmond Tutu. 1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shakes hands with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House after signing the Oslo Accords granting limited Palestinian autonomy. 2001 – Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the United States after the September 11 attacks. 2007 – The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. 2008 – Delhi, India, is hit by a series of bomb blasts, resulting in 30 deaths and 130 injuries. 2008 – Hurricane Ike makes landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, causing heavy damage to Galveston Island, Houston, and surrounding areas. 2013 – Taliban insurgents attack the United States consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, with two members of the Afghan National Police reported dead and about 20 civilians injured. 2018 – The Merrimack Valley gas explosions: One person is killed, 25 are injured, and 40 homes are destroyed when excessive natural gas pressure caused fires and explosions.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.13

585 BC – Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victories over the Sabines, and the surrender of Collatia. 509 BC – The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Rome's Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September. 379 – Yax Nuun Ahiin I is crowned as 15th Ajaw of Tikal 533 – Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeats Gelimer and the Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimum, near Carthage, North Africa. 1229 – Ögedei Khan is proclaimed Khagan of the Mongol Empire in Kodoe Aral, Khentii: Mongolia. 1437 – Battle of Tangier: a Portuguese expeditionary force initiates a failed attempt to seize the Moroccan citadel of Tangier. 1501 – Italian Renaissance: Michelangelo begins work on his statue of David. 1504 – Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issue a Royal Warrant for the construction of a Royal Chapel (Capilla Real) to be built. 1541 – After three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva to reform the church under a body of doctrine known as Calvinism. 1584 – San Lorenzo del Escorial Palace in Madrid is finished. 1609 – Henry Hudson reaches the river that would later be named after him – the Hudson River. 1645 – Wars of the Three Kingdoms: Scottish Royalists are defeated by Covenanters at the Battle of Philiphaugh. 1743 – Great Britain, Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia sign the Treaty of Worms. 1759 – Battle of the Plains of Abraham: the British defeat the French near Quebec City in the Seven Years' War, known in the United States as the French and Indian War. 1782 – American Revolutionary War: Franco-Spanish troops launch the unsuccessful "grand assault" during the Great Siege of Gibraltar. 1788 – The Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the first presidential election in the United States, and New York City becomes the country's temporary capital. 1791 – King Louis XVI of France accepts the new constitution. 1808 – Finnish War: In the Battle of Jutas, Swedish forces under Lieutenant General Georg Carl von Döbeln beat the Russians, making von Döbeln a Swedish war hero. 1812 – War of 1812: A supply wagon sent to relieve Fort Harrison is ambushed in the Attack at the Narrows. 1814 – In a turning point in the War of 1812, the British fail to capture Baltimore. During the battle, Francis Scott Key composes his poem "Defence of Fort McHenry", which is later set to music and becomes the United States' national anthem. 1843 – The Greek Army rebels (OS date: September 3) against the autocratic rule of king Otto of Greece, demanding the granting of a constitution. 1847 – Mexican–American War: Six teenage military cadets known as Niños Héroes die defending Chapultepec Castle in the Battle of Chapultepec. American troops under General Winfield Scott capture Mexico City in the Mexican–American War. 1848 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives an iron rod 1 1⁄4 inches (3.2 cm) in diameter being driven through his brain; the reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulate discussion of the nature of the brain and its functions. 1862 – American Civil War: Union soldiers find a copy of Robert E. Lee's battle plans in a field outside Frederick, Maryland. It is the prelude to the Battle of Antietam. 1882 – Anglo-Egyptian War: The Battle of Tel el-Kebir is fought. 1898 – Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film. 1899 – Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident. 1899 – Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel make the first ascent of Batian (5,199 m – 17,058 ft), the highest peak of Mount Kenya. 1900 – Filipino insurgents defeat a small American column in the Battle of Pulang Lupa, during the Philippine–American War. 1906 – The Santos-Dumont 14-bis makes a short hop, the first flight of a fixed-wing aircraft in Europe. 1914 – World War I: The Battle of Aisne begins between Germany and France. 1922 – The final act of the Greco-Turkish War, the Great Fire of Smyrna, commences. 1923 – Following a military coup in Spain, Miguel Primo de Rivera takes over, setting up a dictatorship. 1933 – Elizabeth McCombs becomes the first woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament. 1942 – World War II: Second day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge in the Guadalcanal Campaign. U.S. Marines successfully defeated attacks by the Japanese with heavy losses for the Japanese forces. 1944 – World War II: Start of the Battle of Meligalas between the Greek Resistance forces of the Greek People's Liberation Army (ELAS) and the collaborationist security battalions. 1948 – Deputy Prime Minister of India Vallabhbhai Patel orders the Army to move into Hyderabad to integrate it with the Indian Union. 1948 – Margaret Chase Smith is elected United States senator, and becomes the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate. 1953 – Nikita Khrushchev is appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1956 – The IBM 305 RAMAC is introduced, the first commercial computer to use disk storage. 1956 – The dike around the Dutch polder East Flevoland is closed. 1962 – An appeals court orders the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith, the first African-American student admitted to the segregated university. 1964 – South Vietnamese Generals Lâm Văn Phát and Dương Văn Đức fail in a coup attempt against General Nguyễn Khánh. 1964 – Martin Luther King Jr. addresses a crowd of 20,000 West Berliners on Sunday, in Waldbühne. 1968 – Cold War: Albania leaves the Warsaw Pact. 1971 – State police and National Guardsmen storm New York's Attica Prison to quell a prison revolt, which claimed 43 lives. 1971 – Chairman Mao Zedong's second in command and successor Marshal Lin Biao flees the People's Republic of China after the failure of an alleged coup. His plane crashes in Mongolia, killing all aboard. 1977 – General Motors introduces Diesel engine, with Oldsmobile Diesel engine, in the Delta 88, Oldsmobile 98, and Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser models amongst others. 1979 – South Africa grants independence to the "homeland" of Venda (not recognised outside South Africa). 1985 – Super Mario Bros. is released in Japan for the NES, which starts the Super Mario series of platforming games. 1987 – Goiânia accident: A radioactive object is stolen from an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, Brazil, contaminating many people in the following weeks and causing some to die from radiation poisoning. 1988 – Hurricane Gilbert is the strongest recorded hurricane in the Western Hemisphere, later replaced by Hurricane Wilma in 2005 (based on barometric pressure). 1989 – Largest anti-Apartheid march in South Africa, led by Desmond Tutu. 1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shakes hands with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House after signing the Oslo Accords granting limited Palestinian autonomy. 2001 – Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the United States after the September 11 attacks. 2007 – The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. 2008 – Delhi, India, is hit by a series of bomb blasts, resulting in 30 deaths and 130 injuries. 2008 – Hurricane Ike makes landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, causing heavy damage to Galveston Island, Houston, and surrounding areas. 2013 – Taliban insurgents attack the United States consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, with two members of the Afghan National Police reported dead and about 20 civilians injured. 2018 – The Merrimack Valley gas explosions: One person is killed, 25 are injured, and 40 homes are destroyed when excessive natural gas pressure caused fires and explosions.

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 9.13

585 BC – Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victories over the Sabines, and the surrender of Collatia. 509 BC – The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Rome's Capitoline Hill is dedicated on the ides of September. 379 – Yax Nuun Ahiin I is crowned as 15th Ajaw of Tikal 533 – Belisarius of the Byzantine Empire defeats Gelimer and the Vandals at the Battle of Ad Decimum, near Carthage, North Africa. 1229 – Ögedei Khan is proclaimed Khagan of the Mongol Empire in Kodoe Aral, Khentii: Mongolia. 1437 – Battle of Tangier: a Portuguese expeditionary force initiates a failed attempt to seize the Moroccan citadel of Tangier. 1501 – Michelangelo begins work on his statue of David. 1504 – Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issue a Royal Warrant for the construction of a Royal Chapel (Capilla Real) to be built. 1541 – After three years of exile, John Calvin returns to Geneva to reform the church under a body of doctrine known as Calvinism. 1584 – San Lorenzo del Escorial Palace in Madrid is finished. 1609 – Henry Hudson reaches the river that would later be named after him – the Hudson River. 1645 – Battle of Philiphaugh Covenanters win the day over the royalists. 1743 – Great Britain, Austria and the Kingdom of Sardinia sign the Treaty of Worms. 1759 – Battle of the Plains of Abraham: the British defeat the French near Quebec City in the Seven Years' War, known in the United States as the French and Indian War. 1782 – American Revolutionary War: Franco-Spanish troops launch the unsuccessful "grand assault" during the Great Siege of Gibraltar. 1788 – The Philadelphia Convention sets the date for the first presidential election in the United States, and New York City becomes the country's temporary capital. 1791 – King Louis XVI of France accepts the new constitution. 1808 – Finnish War: In the Battle of Jutas, Swedish forces under Lieutenant General Georg Carl von Döbeln beat the Russians, making von Döbeln a Swedish war hero. 1812 – War of 1812: A supply wagon sent to relieve Fort Harrison is ambushed in the Attack at the Narrows. 1814 – In a turning point in the War of 1812, the British fail to capture Baltimore. During the battle, Francis Scott Key composes his poem "Defence of Fort McHenry", which is later set to music and becomes the United States' national anthem. 1843 – The Greek Army rebels (OS date: September 3) against the autocratic rule of king Otto of Greece, demanding the granting of a constitution. 1847 – Mexican–American War: Six teenage military cadets known as Niños Héroes die defending Chapultepec Castle in the Battle of Chapultepec. American troops under General Winfield Scott capture Mexico City in the Mexican–American War. 1848 – Vermont railroad worker Phineas Gage survives an iron rod 1 1⁄4 inches (3.2 cm) in diameter being driven through his brain; the reported effects on his behavior and personality stimulate thinking about the nature of the brain and its functions. 1850 – First ascent of Piz Bernina, the highest summit of the eastern Alps. 1862 – American Civil War: Union soldiers find a copy of Robert E. Lee's battle plans in a field outside Frederick, Maryland. It is the prelude to the Battle of Antietam. 1882 – Anglo-Egyptian War: The Battle of Tel el-Kebir is fought. 1898 – Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film. 1899 – Henry Bliss is the first person in the United States to be killed in an automobile accident. 1899 – Mackinder, Ollier and Brocherel make the first ascent of Batian (5,199 m – 17,058 ft), the highest peak of Mount Kenya. 1900 – Filipino resistance fighters defeat a small American column in the Battle of Pulang Lupa, during the Philippine–American War. 1906 – First flight of a fixed-wing aircraft in Europe. 1914 – World War I: South African troops open hostilities in German south-west Africa (Namibia) with an assault on the Ramansdrift police station. 1914 – World War I: The Battle of Aisne begins between Germany and France. 1922 – The final act of the Greco-Turkish War, the Great Fire of Smyrna, commences. 1923 – Following a military coup in Spain, Miguel Primo de Rivera takes over, setting up a dictatorship. 1933 – Elizabeth McCombs becomes the first woman elected to the New Zealand Parliament. 1935 – Rockslide near Whirlpool Rapids Bridge ends the International Railway (New York–Ontario). 1942 – World War II: Second day of the Battle of Edson's Ridge in the Guadalcanal Campaign. U.S. Marines successfully defeated attacks by the Imperial Japanese Army with heavy losses for the Japanese forces. 1948 – Deputy Prime Minister of India Vallabhbhai Patel orders the Army to move into Hyderabad to integrate it with the Indian Union. 1948 – Margaret Chase Smith is elected United States senator, and becomes the first woman to serve in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the United States Senate. 1953 – Nikita Khrushchev is appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. 1956 – The dike around the Dutch polder East Flevoland is closed. 1956 – The IBM 305 RAMAC is introduced, the first commercial computer to use disk storage. 1964 – South Vietnamese Generals Lâm Văn Phát and Dương Văn Đức fail in a coup attempt against General Nguyễn Khánh. 1968 – Albania leaves the Warsaw Pact. 1971 – State police and National Guardsmen storm New York's Attica Prison to quell a prison revolt. 1971 – Chairman Mao Zedong's second in command and successor Marshal Lin Biao flees the People's Republic of China after the failure of an alleged coup. His plane crashes in Mongolia, killing all aboard. 1979 – South Africa grants independence to the "homeland" of Venda (not recognised outside South Africa). 1985 – Super Mario Bros. is released in Japan for the NES, which starts the Super Mario series of platforming games. 1987 – Goiânia accident: A radioactive object is stolen from an abandoned hospital in Goiânia, Brazil, contaminating many people in the following weeks and causing some to die from radiation poisoning. 1988 – Hurricane Gilbert is the strongest recorded hurricane in the Western Hemisphere, later replaced by Hurricane Wilma in 2005 (based on barometric pressure). 1989 – Largest anti-Apartheid march in South Africa, led by Desmond Tutu. 1993 – Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shakes hands with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat at the White House after signing the Oslo Accords granting limited Palestinian autonomy. 2001 – Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the United States after the September 11 attacks. 2007 – The Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples is adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. 2008 – Delhi, India, is hit by a series of bomb blasts, resulting in 30 deaths and 130 injuries. 2008 – Hurricane Ike makes landfall on the Texas Gulf Coast of the United States, causing heavy damage to Galveston Island, Houston, and surrounding areas. 2013 – Taliban insurgents attack the United States consulate in Herat, Afghanistan, with two members of the Afghan National Police reported dead and about 20 civilians injured.