10 August 1915
Chunuk Bair: the counterattack
About 2,000 British troops of the New Army hold the summit of Chunuk Bair and the slope below it, and General Baldwin's brigade of another 3,000 lies at the Farm on the northern side. Mustafa Kemal's plan is to overrun them by weight of numbers with six battalions.
The Battle of Chunuk Bair, painting by Ion Brown, 1990, commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the campaignWikimedia Commons, Ion Brown, CC BY-SA 4.0 (Battle-of-chunuk-bair.jpg)
At dawn on 10 August Mustafa Kemal leads the attack himself. The Ottoman infantry sweep over the 6th South Lancashires on the summit, scatter the Wiltshires below them and take the Pinnacle on the spur to the south west. On the northern slope they overrun Baldwin's brigade at the Farm, and Baldwin is killed. New Zealand machine guns at the Apex stop the advance down the spur, and the exhausted Ottoman troops fall back to the main ridge.
The Allies' loss of Chunuk Bair ends the Battle of Sari Bair. The Apex becomes the new front line, and no further attempt is made on the heights.
Sources
- Christopher Pugsley, Gallipoli: The New Zealand Story (1984).
- Andrew Mango, Atatürk (1999).
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