AHC/WI: Successful Gallipoli Campaign

On the subject of ammunition, in Gallipoli: a fatal shore Harvey Broadbent went through Turkish archives. He said the ‘almost out of ammo’ story was from a Turkish officer (who may not have been on Gallipoli) to a Brit staff officer after the war and like some of Hamilton’s canards, has been accepted ever since.
 
One of the early lessons was don’t use your target in your operation. The mail sent to Egypt was stamped ‘CEF’ for Constantinople Expeditionary Force. It was quickly changed to MEF (Mediterranean Expeditionary Force) but the damage was done. Face palms all round.
 
Well the security around the operation was so bad as to be worse than none at all. It really was like they erected a large neon sign saying "look, secrets here - Gallipoli invasion". This was, of course, on top of the tipping of the hand with the aborted naval affair. The documents available in the BNA (Kew, near London) are truly astonishing. We are now three years past the 100 year mark, so some new documents may have been released since my work there, but what was readily available was shocking. Had the troops been led by actual donkeys it might have been better.
 
Peter Chasseaud goes into the background planning and intelligence gathering for his excellent ‘Grasping Gallipoli’. Hamilton’s ‘I was given a pamphlet and guidebook to the Turkish army’ was quite incorrect. The planning officer dumped mailbags of material provided to Hamilton and his staff on the table at the Dardanelles Royal Commission.
 
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