The Dardanelles

February 19, 1915

The 29th Infantry Division was the only division left to the British Army to deploy and the command had been looking around for a likely place to deploy it.  Sir John French took it for granted that it would be added to the BEF in Belgium but the war was also heating up in the middle east, where many British shipping interests (like the Suez Canal) were located.  At first it was imagined that the 29th would be sent there in support of a combined land and sea effort to maintain control of the eastern Mediterranean.  Such a fuss is kicked up by French that the 29th is held back in England and untrained provincial troops from Australia and New Zealand are sent to a base on a Greek island instead.

Simultaneously, a large combined fleet is engaged in clearing the water passage between the Mediterranean Sea and Constantinople on the Black Sea, known as the Dardanelles.  Turkey, and ally of Germany had been salting those waters with mines to disrupt British shipping and close a key supply line to the Russians.  Today, that fleet begins shelling forts on both sides of the Dardanelles.  By the 25th, allied shock troops are being unloaded and the land forts have been neutralized .  But Turkish mines remain a problem for the British Navy to deal with.