10 
LAND ^ WATER 
September 5, 1918 
TCHEMENLIK AND 
The latter, the works in the background, was the 
chief (ortiflcation on the Asiatic side. It inflicted 
the most damage on the Allied fleet and was 
was nothing in the northern part of the Straits, from Point 
Nagara to the Marmora, that could offer resistance to any 
modern fleet. The chief interest which I found in this part 
of the Dardanelles was purely historic and legendary. The 
ancient town of Lampsacus appeared in the modern Lapsaki ; 
just across from Gallipoli, and Nagara Point is the site of 
the ancient Abydos, from which village Leander used to 
swim nightly across the Hellespont to Hero — a feat which 
was repeated about one hundred years ago by Lord Byron. 
Here also Xerxes crossed from Asia to Greece on a bridge 
of boats, embarking on that famous expedition which was 
to make him master of the world. The tribe of Xerxes, 
1 thought, as I passed the' scene of his exploit, is not yet 
entirely extinct ! 
The Germans and 
Turks had found 
a less romantic 
use for this, the 
narrowest part of 
the Dardanelles, 
for here they had 
stretched a cable 
and anti - sub- 
marine barrage of 
mines and nets — 
a device which, as 
I shall describe, 
did not keep the 
English and 
French under- 
water boats out 
of the Marmora 
and the Bos- 
phorus. It was 
not until we 
rounded this his- 
toric point of 
Nagara that the 
dull monotony of 
flat shores gave 
place to a more 
diversified land- 
scape. On the 
European side 
the cliffs now began to descend precipitously to the water, 
reminding .me of our own Palisades along the Hudson, 
and I obtained glimpses of the hills and mountain ridges 
that afterwards proved such tragical stumbling blocks to 
the valiant Allied armies. The configuration of the land 
south of Nagara, with its many hiUs and ridges, made it 
plain why the miHtary engineers had selected this stretch 
of the Dardanelles as the section best adapted to defence. 
Our boat was now approaching what was perhaps the most 
commanding point in the whole strait — -the city of Tchanak, 
or, to give it its modern European name, of Dardanelles. 
In normal times this was a thriving port of i6,ooo people, 
its houses built of wood, the headquarters of a considerable 
trade in wool and other products, and for centuries it has 
been an important -military station. Now, excepting for the 
soldiers, it was deserted, the large civilian population having 
been moved into Anatolia. The British Fleet, we were told, 
had bombarded this city ; yet this statement seemed hardly 
probable, for I saw only a single house that had been hit, 
evidently by a stray shell which had been aimed at the 
near-by fortifications. 
Djevad Pasha, the Turkish Commander-in-Chief at the 
Dardanelles, met us, and escor'ted our party to headquarters. 
Djevad was a man of culture and of pleasing and cordial 
manners ; as he spoke excellent German, I had no need of 
an interpreter. I was much impressed by the deference 
with which the German officers treated him ; that he was 
the Commander-in-Chief in this theatre of war and that 
the generals of the Kaiser were liis subordinates was made 
plainly apparent. As we passed into his office, Djevad 
stopped in front of a piece of a torpedo, mounted in the 
middle of the hall, evidently as a souvenir. 
"There is the great criminal !" he said, calling my atten- 
tion to the relic. 
About this time the newspapers were hailing the exploit 
of an English submarine, which had sailed from England to 
the Dardanelles, passed under the mine-field, and torpedoed 
the Turkish warship MesudU. 
"That's the torpedo that did it!" said Djevad. "You'll 
see the wreck of the ship when you go down." 
The first fortification I visited was that of Anadolu 
Hamidie (that is, Asiatic Hamidie), located on the water's 
edge just outside of Tchanak. My first impression was that 
I was in Germany. The officers were practically all Germans, 
FORT ANADOLU HAMIDIE 
the chief object of the fleet's attack. It was 
almost entirely manned by German officers and 
men at the time of Mr. Morgenthau's visit. 
and everywhere Germans were building up buttresses witli 
sacks of sand, and in other ways strengthening the emplace- 
ments. Here German — not Turkish — was the language 
heard on every side. Oberst Wehrle, who conducted me 
over these batteries, took the greatest delight in showing 
them. He had the simple pride of the artist in his work, 
and told me of the happiness that had come into his days 
when Germany had at last found herself at war. All his life, 
he said, he hafl spent in military practices, and, like most 
Germans, he had become tired of manoeuvres, sham battles, 
and other forms of mimic hostilities. Yet he was approaching 
fifty, he had Income a colonel, and he was fearful that his 
career would close without actual military experienc& — and 
then the splendid 
thing had hap- 
pened, and here 
he was, fighting 
a real English 
enemy, firing real 
guns and shells ! 
There was noth- 
ing brutal about 
Wehrle's m a n- 
ners ; he was a 
" gemiUlich" gen- 
tleman from 
Baden, and 
thoroughly like- 
able ; yet he was 
all aglow with the 
spirit of "Der 
Tag." His atti- 
tude was simply 
that of a man 
who had spent 
his lifetime learn- 
ing a trade and 
who now rejoiced 
at the chance of 
exercising it. But 
he furnished an 
illuminating light 
on the German 
militar^^ charac- 
ter and the forces that liad really caused the wai\ Feeling 
myself so completely in German country, I asked Colonel 
Wehrle why there were so few , Turks on this side of 
the Straits. "You won't ask me that question this after- 
noon," he said, smiling, "when you go over to the other 
side." 
The location of Anadolu Hamidie seemed ideal. It stands 
right at the water's edge, and consists — or it did then — 
of ten guns, every one completely sweeping the Dardanelles. 
■Walking upon the parapet, I had a cleat view of the Strait, 
Kum Kale, at the entrance, about fifteen miles away, standing 
out conspicuously. No warship could enter these waters 
without immediately coming within complete sight of her 
gunners. Yet the fortress itself, to an unprofessional eye 
like my own, was not particularly impressive. The parapet 
and traverses were merely mounds of earth, and stand to-day 
practically as they were finished by their French constructors 
in 1837. There is a general belief that the Germans had 
completely modernised the Dardanelles defences, but this 
was not true at that time. The guns defending Fort Anadolu 
Hamidie were more than thirty years old, all being the 
Krupp model of 1885, and the rusted exteriors of some of 
them gave evidences of their age. Their extreme range was 
only about nine miles, while the range of the battleships 
opposing them was about ten miles, and that of the Queen 
Elizabeth, was not far from. eleven. Nor did the fortifications 
contain very considerable stores of ammunition.' A small 
number of "red heads" — that is, non-armour-piercing pro- 
jectiles useful only for fighting landing parties — had been 
brought from Adrianople, and were reposing in Hamidie at 
the time of my visit ; but' these were small in quantity, 
and of no value in fighting ships. I lay this stress upon 
Hamidie because this was the most important fortification 
in the Dardanelles. Throughout the whole bombardment 
it attracted more of the Allied fire than any other position, 
and it inflicted at least 60 per cent, of all the damage 
that was done to the attacking ships. It was Anadolu 
Hamidie which, in the great bombardment of March 
18th, sank the Bouvet, the French battleship, and which 
in the course of the whole attack had disabled several 
other units. All its officers were Germans, and 85 per 
cent, of the men on duty came from the crews of the 
Goehen and the Breslau. 
{To be continued) 
