The Struggle for the Dardanelles by Philip Rance

Author:Philip Rance
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War I
ISBN: 9781473890145
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2015-02-27T16:00:00+00:00

THE STRUGGLE FOR THE

DARDANELLES

by

Major E.R. Prigge

Adjutant to His Excellency Marshal Liman von Sanders

with a Foreword by Ernst Jäckh

together with Maps and Pictures

1916

Dedicated to His Highness

Duke Bernhard of Sachsen-Meiningen

FOREWORD

It was in September that the Turkish torpedo boat brought me from Constantinople to Gallipoli in a night-time, fast-flitting voyage across the Sea of Marmara, where British submarines were on patrol. There, as a guest of the general of the army of the Dardanelles, Marshal Liman von Sanders, who was now confident of victory, I was permitted to go out from his headquarters to visit and inspect the front-line trenches – from the north angle of the Anafarta Group, on over the peninsula, down and across the straits as far as Troy and into the Maeander valley. From the silent burial mounds of Achilles and Patroclus, we gazed out at the wide-mouthed monsters of the British warships brazenly gaping ... There, the full historical magnitude of the unique achievements of the troops in the Dardanelles suddenly became apparent to me in a single comparison: on that side, the supreme culmination of the inventions and know-how of European technology and of the British dreadnought, an abundance of veritable wonders of the twentieth-century world and its genius – and on this side, still the primitive mode of transport of the Trojan War: the two-wheeled chariot, with its creaking wheels, drawn by heavy, black buffaloes, conveyed the modern ammunition to the Turkish soldiers; no lorries and no railway! And yet, on that side are the vanquished, and on this the victors ...

However, at the time one could read in the British press: the Turkish army is cut off from its lines of communication with Constantinople and now only has a choice between allowing itself to be annihilated or being forced to surrender – a catastrophe!1 Yet, on all sides, I myself saw, with an astonishment that grew by the hour, how consistently the Turkish defenders stood firm and that only our lack of large calibre [guns] had hitherto saved the British attackers from being completely driven into the sea from their narrow strip of land, which was covered by their ships’ long-range guns. I therefore urged Marshal Liman to reveal the truth and reality to the uninformed public of Germany and Europe – by means of his war diary. His adjutant, Major Prigge (the only officer who was and remained in the field with him from the beginning of the land battles onwards), has in this simple book revealed the acts of valour of this year – in the midst of the thundering of guns and the jangling of telephones at headquarters, short and to the point, as is the German officer’s way, though not without the thrilling tension exerted by the dramatic battles at the central point of this world war.

This war is indeed in essence ‘the war for Constantinople’, as it has been called also in the Russian Duma. This war comes out of the Orient: out of the collision between Russia’s oriental policy, guided by Britain, and German achievement.

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