ITV - Great Battles of the Great War (1999) Part 1 Gallipoli The Last Crusade

For four years, from 1914 to 1918, World War I raged across Europe's western and eastern fronts after assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria ignited the war. Along the 1915 Gallipoli campaign, the savage combat on the Western Front in France and Belgium came to define modern warfare. The Western Front evokes images of mud-spattered men in waterlogged trenches, shielded from artillery blasts and machine-gun fire by a few feet of dirt. This iconic setting was the most critical arena of the Great War, a 400-mile combat zone stretching from Belgium to Switzerland where more than three million Allied and German soldiers struggled during four years of almost continuous combat. It has persisted in our collective memory as a tragic waste of human life and a symbol of the horrors of industrialized warfare. The great set-piece battles of the World War One - Gallipoli, the Somme and Messines/Passchendaele - are explored in this landmark series which combines unique archive footage with carefully researched location photography, transporting the viewer back to the exact spot where so many momentous events occurred.

Part 1 Gallipoli The Last Crusade

In April 1915 this was the location for the infamous allied attempt to take the Turkish held Gallipoli Peninsula and control the entrance to the Black Sea. The failed naval attack and subsequent seaborne landings at ANZAC and Cape Helles ended in humiliating retreat and cost over one hundred thousand lives from all sides. What must it have felt like to be a soldier in an amphibious landing craft, heading for the beaches of Gallipoli on April 25th, 1915? The Allied troops - which included the ANZACS - had to cross the exposed beaches under a hail of Turkish rifle and machine gun fire. It was a terrible baptism of fire for the soldiers of the Australian Imperial Force. In the nine-month carnage of Gallipoli, the Allies lost 50,000 killed and gained a tiny foothold which they then abandoned when the 100,000 survivors were evacuated nine months later.

Full Version Available Upon Request
Related Documentary