THE DARDANELLES: Desperate fighting; brilliant success of Allies

IN THE WEST: Extensive German offensive

The outstanding feature of war news this morning is Sir Ian Hamilton’s vivid description of the desperate and unsuccessful efforts of the Turks to recover ground in the Gallipoli Peninsula lost by them on June 28.

The long telegram despatch from the Dardanelles on June 29, which appeared in our issues of yesterday, amplified the information previously received of the brilliant achievement of the 28th, and described in graphic language, the terrific bombardment of Turkish positions by the fleet and the splendid élan with which five lines of trenches were rushed by our troops.

A mile of the ground was thus gained on our left front, which was necessary to straighten out our line. An attack early in the month carried out centre about a thousand yards in advance of the flanks. There is always danger in such a salient, but the French advance on the right and our still greater progress on the left.

We are thus on a fair way towards turning Achi Baba, the hill, 730 feet high, which has been described as almost impregnable to direct assault, and which towers above our whole line. Another Spion Kop is one simile.

Alive to the peril, the enemy launched a series of attacks, preceded by heavy bombardment. Part of the operations, at least, seem to have been under direction of Enver Pasha, and the fighting was fierce in the extreme.

Every attack, however, was repulsed, and Sir Ian Hamilton estimates that it cost the enemy in the five days’ fighting, June 28 - July 2, in killed 5,150, in wounded quite 15,000 – over 20,000 in all.

The close co-operation of the Allies’ land and sea forces find striking evidence in every dispatch, and this, of course, is of supreme importance.

But natural elation at successes in a situation where even a couple of hundred yards requires fighting enough to carry a mile upon other fronts must not lead to over-sanguine expectations.

A long and arduous task has to be accomplished before the Allies succeed in forcing the Dardanelles; and this is not merely the opinion, but the conviction of the War Office and Admiralty.

The Gallipoli Peninsula is a succession of fortified hills and ravines, while an American war correspondent, after a recent visit wrote:: ‘I am tempted to classify the whole coast as one great fortress. For such it is. Since March 18 every position that offered a field of fire in the least suitable has been turned into a battery. The banks of the Straits bristle with guns. Artillery of large calibre, expecting the moveable howitzers, is absent in these new defences, but they are armed with an uncounted number of small guns.’ The French communiqué of yesterday afternoon describes further fierce attacks by the Germans in the region of North of Arras. The fighting here has been violent for some days, a French colonel asserting that nothing grander or more fruitful having happened on the western front since the battle of the Marne.