Welcome to today's custom tailored deep dive.
We are absolutely thrilled to have you with us
today. Yeah, thanks for joining us. We've got
a really incredible topic lined up. We really
do. Today we are we're traveling back in time
to August 1915. We're stepping into this brutal,
heartbreaking and just incredibly pivotal clash
during the World War One Gallipoli campaign.
Right. We are talking about the Battle of Chunuk
Ber. It is a profound. piece of military history.
I mean, for this deep dive, we're drawing our
insights from a single comprehensive source.
Yeah, a highly detailed Wikipedia article dedicated
entirely to this battle. Exactly. And it lays
out the sprawling strategies, the unforgiving
geography, and really the immense human cost
of this specific engagement. So our mission today
is to extract the most vital nuggets of this
history for you. We're going to explore how a
combination of impossibly rugged terrain delayed
decisions and fierce leadership turned what could
have been a decisive, you know, war -altering
allied victory into a devastating tragedy. It's
a heavy one, but so important to understand.
It is. OK, let's unpack this. To really understand
the stakes at Chonok Bear, you have to place
yourself in the sheer frustration of the Gallipoli
campaign up to that late summer point. Right.
The Allies were just entirely bogged down. Completely.
The attempts to capture Krithia or make any progress
on the Cape Hellas front had failed completely.
He was a grinding bloody stalemate. And that
stalemate meant... General Ian Hamilton, he's
the commander of the Mediterranean Expeditionary
Force, he was sitting there with his forces,
tripling in size, desperate for a breakout. Yeah,
he originally had five divisions, and now he
was up to 15. Meanwhile, the Ottoman defenders
had swelled from six divisions to 16. So Hamilton
needed a radical shift to break the deadlock,
which leads him to launch the August offensive.
And the grand prize of this offensive was the
Saray Bear Range. Specifically, the high ground
of Hill 971 and a secondary peak called Chinook
Bear. Because controlling the high ground in
warfare is always critical, but... But eglipli,
it dictated everything. If the Allies could take
those peaks, they could look down directly onto
the Ottoman trench lines. They could potentially
sever their communications and break the entire
siege. But the Ottoman senior commanders weren't
really losing much sleep over an attack on Chinook
Bear, were they? Not at all. They looked at the
terrain. these steep, rocky, scrub -covered ridges
intersected by deep valleys, which they called
darays, and they genuinely considered an assault
there to be a logistical impossibility. I mean,
if the terrain was that brutal, did the Ottomans
just leave the entire ridge exposed? Basically,
yes. Most of the high command did. But there
was one commander who looked at the exact same
map and saw a massive vulnerability. Mustafa
Kemal. Exactly. Mustafa Kemal, the commander
of the Ottoman 19th Division. He anticipated
this exact allied move. He realized that the
peak of Juniper was incredibly dangerous precisely
because it was lightly defended and he pleaded
with his superiors to strengthen the line Yeah,
he did but his warnings were completely ignored
man So the stage is set for this massive allied
nighttime advance. We are looking at the night
of August 6th going into the 7th The plan is
highly complex. The New Zealand and Australian
Division, commanded by Major General Alexander
Godley, is tasked with pushing up a piece of
high ground called Rhododendron Spur. This spur
runs directly from the beach up to the peak of
Chinook Bear. But they couldn't just march in
a salt column straight up the spur. The Ottomans
had heavily protected outposts scattered all
along the way. fortified with machine gun positions.
So before the main assault column could even
begin their climb, a covering force had to go
in under the cover of darkness and clear those
outposts one by one. Sending a covering force
into the pitch black of that terrain to clear
machine gun nests sounds like a recipe for absolute
chaos. It was a brutal undertaking. They sent
in four under strength regiments of the New Zealand
Mounted Rifles Brigade. We're talking about the
Auckland Regiment clearing old number three outposts.
Right. And the Wellingtons taking Destroyer Hill
and Tabletop and the Otago and Canter... regiments
assaulting Bouchops Hill. And the fighting was
ferocious. Strictly hand -to -hand combat in
the dark. Bouchops Hill is actually named after
Lieutenant Colonel Arthur Bochop who died capturing
it that very night. The New Zealanders lose about
a hundred men just clearing that initial path
but they do succeed. The outposts fall. The outposts
fall but that struggle cost them two precious
hours. And in a coordinated offensive Two hours
is an eternity. Exactly. The plan begins to run
dangerously behind schedule. The main assault
columns advance up the valleys on either side
of the stir, and by 4 .30 in the morning shortly
before dawn, three battalions finally manage
to get into position on a null dubbed the Apex.
Here's where it gets really interesting because
the geography at the apex is agonizing. They
are only 500 yards away from the summit of Chinook
Bear. Just 500 yards. And at that exact moment,
at 430 in the morning, the peak is essentially
empty. Completely wide open. There were only
about 20 Ottoman soldiers up there and they were
sleeping. The entire Gallipoli campaign was sitting
there ripe for the taking. It remains the ultimate
what if of the entire campaign. The door was
wide open, but the Canterbury battalion, which
was traveling along the south side of the spur,
had gotten hopelessly lost in the dark and the
confusing ravines. They were delayed. Yeah. And
the overall commander of the attack on the ground,
Colonel Francis Johnston, makes a fateful decision.
Even though he had explicit original orders not
to halt for any reason. Right. He decides to
stop the advance at the apex and wait for the
lost battalion to arrive. He just stops, 500
yards away. It's agonizing. And this attack was
supposed to coordinate with other assaults happening
simultaneously down at a place called The Neck.
An attack goes ahead at 430 a .m. Which was supposed
to coincide with the New Zealanders attacking
down from Tunic Bear into the rear of the Ottoman
trenches. But because Johnston halted at the
apex, the New Zealanders weren't there to support
them. The Battle of the Neck goes ahead anyway,
resulting in absolutely staggering allied casualties.
And while Johnston is waiting at the apex, the
sun inevitably comes up. With the daylight comes
the realization for the Ottomans that Chunuk
Ber is in imminent danger. Mustafa Kemal, the
man who had predicted this exact scenario, rushes
to the area and frantically starts ordering regiments
to the peak. German Lieutenant Colonel Hans Kanengasser,
commander of the Ottoman 9th Division, also reaches
the summit and immediately begins organizing
the defense. The cost of that delay changes history.
By 10 a .m., the window of opportunity has slammed
shut. Those 20 sleeping soldiers have been reinforced
by around 500 Ottoman and German troops. I want
you to imagine the psychological toll of that
scenario. Put yourself in the boots of those
soldiers sitting at the apex. You've climbed
all night through impossible terrain, surviving
hand -to -hand combat in the dark. Just brutal
conditions. You get within a short sprint of
a victory that could end the stalemate. You can
literally see the empty summit. Then you are
ordered to sit in the dirt and wait. Just sit
there and watch. Exactly. As you wait hour after
hour, you watch the enemy heavily fortify the
very hill you now have to charge. It's an unimaginable
level of frustration. And the tragedy compounds
from there. Because it's daylight and the enemy
is now entrenched on the high ground, taking
the peak looks suicidal. Totally suicidal. Colonel
Johnston, seeing the reinforced peak, actually
requests permission to wait until nightfall to
resume the attack. But General Godley, who is
stationed miles away from the front line, sends
down a rigid response. Attack now. So at 11 duro
a .m. on August 7th, the Auckland Battalion is
ordered to charge. They have to sprint from the
apex to another knoll called the pinnacle and
from there it's a straight utterly exposed climb
to the summit. It's an absolute disaster. Barely
100 men make it as far as the Pinnacle, desperately
trying to dig into the rocky ground. Around 300
fall as casualties just trying to cross the open
space between the apex and the Pinnacle. And
seeing his men slaughtered, Johnston turns to
the Wellington Battalion and tells them to continue
the attack. This brings us to one of the most
remarkable figures in this battle, Lieutenant
Colonel William Lone, the commander of the Wellington
Battalion. Yes. When ordered to send his men
into that same meat grinder, Malone flat out
refuses. He just says no. He states that he is
not willing to order his men to carry out a hopeless
suicidal daylight attack. He insists his battalion
will take Chinook Bear, but they will do it at
night. Standing there while men are dying and
refusing a direct order because you know it's
a death sentence takes incredible amount of conviction.
What's fascinating here is how history has recorded
this moment and how the line between insubordination
and tactical sanity is sometimes drawn. Right.
For decades, the myth was that Malone directly
defied General Godley. But the source highlights
a 2018 insight from New Zealand military historian
Ian McGibbon, who challenges this narrative.
OK, so what really happened? McGibbon points
out that Malone and Johnston actually both vehemently
disagreed with Godley's order. Johnston had reluctantly
accepted it. But Malone pushed back. Right. Crucially,
Malone didn't actually refuse a direct order
from the general himself. He argued fiercely
with a junior British officer. Major Arthur Temperley.
Exactly. Major Temperley, who was Johnston's
brigade major. This nuance adds a really compelling
layer to how chaotic the chain of command had
become on that ridge and how Malone navigated
that friction to save his men from a pointless
slaughter. Godley finally calls off the daytime
attacks, but hundreds of Anzacs are already dead
or wounded on the slopes. So they pivot to a
night attack plan. The shattered Auckland and
Canterbury battalions are pulled back, replaced
by the Otago and Wellington battalions. At 3
.30 a .m. on August 8th, a heavy naval bombardment
pounds the peak for 45 minutes. And this time,
the tactics align with the terrain. How so? Well,
the ground on Chunuk Ber was too hard and rocky
for the Ottomans to dig deep, protective trenches.
So the naval barrage essentially sweeps the defenders
right off the summit. Wow. Following the bombardment,
Malone's Wellingtons, followed by the British
7th Gloucesters, push up and reach the summit
virtually unopposed. They secure Chunuk Ber.
But taking the high ground is one thing. Holding
it proves to be a completely different nightmare.
As daylight breaks on August 8th, the peak is
totally exposed to inflating fire from the main
Ottoman line on Battleship Hill to the south
and from Hill Q to the north. And the terrain
turns against them again. It's solid rock. The
New Zealanders can only scrape the shallowest
of trenches, offering minimal cover. Which is
terrifying. Worse, the slope of the hill on the
Ottoman side is incredibly steep, creating a
terrifying blind spot. The Ottoman troops could
creep up the slope and get within 22 yards of
the allied trenches, completely unseen. 22 yards!
They were practically breathing on the summit
before they could be spotted. Yeah. By 5 .00
a .m., massive Ottoman counterattacks surge up
that blind spot. It results in desperate, close
-quarters combat. Just relentless. The New Zealanders
fought so relentlessly, firing their own rifles
and picking up the rifles of their fallen friends
to keep up the rate of fire, that the wooden
stocks of the guns became physically too hot
to hold. Too hot to hold? That is insane. And
when the Ottomans crested the ridge and poured
into those shallow trenches, the fighting devolved
entirely into vicious bayonet combat. They managed
to hold on all day through sheer willpower. But
around 5 day OPM, a devastating blow strikes
the Wellingtons. Yeah. Colonel Malone, the man
who had saved his men the day before, is killed.
And he isn't killed by an Ottoman bullet. He
is struck by a misdirected artillery shell. It
was friendly fire, either from their own Anzac
artillery or a British ship off the coast. It's
a catastrophic loss of leadership and a crushing
blow to morale. As darkness falls on August 8th,
the Wellington Battalion is finally relieved.
And the casualty numbers are difficult to process.
Out of the 760 men of the Wellington Battalion
who reached the summit that morning, 711 had
become casualties. 711 out of 760. Unbelievable.
And a British regiment suffered terribly as well.
The Gloucesters lost 350 men, which included
every single one of their officers. The Welch
pioneers had 417 casualties. For the wounded
who survived the summit, getting off that mountain
was an ordeal in itself. It took some men three
full days to travel just over a kilometer down
the rugged rhododendron spur back to the beach.
Meanwhile, General Godley remains at his headquarters
near the beach. largely insulated from the horrific
realities on the summit and the exhausted state
of his troops. Completely disconnected. Ignorant
of the conditions, he devises a new, highly complex
operational plan for August 9th. While the men
on Chinook Bear are just trying to survive the
night, Godly decides it's time to capture the
neighboring peak. Hill Q. Right. He sends a mixed
force commanded by Brigadier General Anthony
Baldwin to assault the hill. They are supposed
to stage their attack from a small sheltered
plateau on the north side of the spur known as
the farm. But the friction of war immediately
takes over. It's pitch black. The terrain is
an absolute labyrinth of ravines and thick scrub.
And Baldwin's battalions get completely lost.
They wander in the dark and don't manage to locate
the farm until six series a .m. Well after dawn.
So the coordinated attack entirely falls apart
before it even begins. There is one agonizingly
fleeting moment of success on Hill Q. A battalion
of Gurpas commanded by Major Allenson actually
manages to fight their way to the summit of Hill
Q. But in a horrifying repeat of the tragedy
that killed Colonel Malone, they are almost immediately
shelled by their own artillery. and forced to
retreat off the high ground. It perfectly illustrates
the total breakdown of communication between
the front lines and the supporting artillery
batteries. Commanders firing the guns simply
don't know where their advancing men are. Right.
As night falls on August 9th, the surviving,
exhausted New Zealanders are pulled back down
to the apex. And they are replaced on the summit
of Chinook Bear by two British New Army battalions,
the 6th South Lancashire's and some of the 5th
Wilchers. These were troops unfamiliar with the
sheer brutality of the landscape they had just
walked into. And waiting for them in the dark
is Mustafa Kemal. He spent August 9th personally
reconnoitering the area, right? Yes. He knows
the allied troops holding the peak are exhausted,
disjointed, and stretched thin. So at dawn on
August 10th, he launches the final decisive blow.
If we connect this to the bigger picture... If
we connect this to the bigger picture, you really
see Kemal's ruthless military pragmatism. His
plan for this counterattack lacked any kind of
subtle maneuvering. It was terrifyingly direct.
His strategy was simply to overrun the defenders
using the sheer overwhelming weight of numbers.
He amassed six entire battalions for this dawn
strike. Six battalions charging against about
2 ,000 defenders scattered on or below the summit,
plus Baldwin's brigade down at the farm plateau.
When the sun comes up, the Ottomans charge. They
completely sweep over the Lancashire battalion
on the summit in minutes. The Wilchers were caught
unequipped and were just scattered. The Ottomans
reclaim the peak and then pour down the slopes
like a tidal wave. They capture the pinnacle,
leading to one of the most chaotic and tragic
moments of the entire battle down at the apex.
The fog of war at the apex becomes an absolute
nightmare. The New Zealand machine gunners are
still positioned there, watching this massive
wave of Ottoman soldiers charging down the spur
directly toward them. They open fire to break
the assault. But the retreating British new army
troops are entirely mixed in with the charging
Ottomans. The gunners cannot discriminate friend
from foe. in the smoke, the dust, and the chaos
of the charge. To stop the Ottoman advance from
breaking the entire line, they have to keep the
guns firing, knowing they're cutting down many
of their own allies in the process. It's devastating.
And on the other side of the spur, the Ottoman
wave crashes down onto the farm plateau. They
completely overrun Baldwin's lost brigade. Entire
regiments are decimated. Brigadier General Baldwin
himself is killed in the slaughter. The survivors
are forced to retreat. all the way back to Cheshire
Ridge. The Ottoman infantry, utterly exhausted
by the momentum of their own attack and the sheer
scale of the casualties, finally fall back to
the main ridge. And just like that, the Allied
offensive is definitively over. The human cost
of these four days is staggering. In the fighting
around Chinook Bear and Hill 971, the Ottomans
suffered 9 ,200 casualties. Which contributed
to roughly 18 ,000 total Ottoman casualties across
the entire Anzac sector during this offensive.
On the allied side, the British Empire forces,
the New Zealanders, Australians, British and
Indian troops, suffered between 12 ,000 and 13
,000 casualties. All of this blood was spilled
for a peak they held for barely two days before
being violently pushed back to where they started.
The Battle of Chinook Bear left a massive enduring
scar, particularly on the national consciousness
of New Zealand. Out of that tragedy, incredible
acts of bravery emerged. Corporal Cyril Bassett
was awarded the Victoria Cross for repeatedly
repairing fragile telephone lines under heavy
enemy fire throughout the battle, ensuring some
level of communication remained intact. And the
leaders who sacrificed themselves are also etched
into memory. In 1923, the Malone Memorial Gate
was constructed in Stratford, New Zealand, honoring
the lieutenant colonel who pushed back against
a feudal order to save his men. Two years later,
a memorial honoring all the New Zealand soldiers
who died there was unveiled right on the peak
of Chinook Bear itself. It's a battle that heavily
influenced pop culture and art, too. New Zealand
writer Marie Shadbolt wrote a play about it in
1982 called Ones on Chinook Bear, which was adapted
into a 1991 film. There's a brilliant brass band
piece by composer Duane Bloomfield called Behold
the Narrows from the Hill. Musician PJ Harvey
even wrote about the lingering ghosts of this
landscape in her 2011 song on Battleship Hill.
These artists gravitated to this battle because
it perfectly encapsulates the profound, almost
futile sacrifice that defines so much of the
First World War. This raises an important question.
Why does learning the granular details of this
specific battle matter to you? Listening to this
right now. over a century later. Why does it
matter? It matters because Januk Baer is a master
class in the dangers of disconnect. It exposes
exactly what happens when rigid, inflexible planning
from a distant headquarters collides with the
chaotic, unpredictable realities of the ground.
It's a profound study in the friction of war.
How a battalion taking a wrong turn in the dark,
a two -hour delay at a ridge, or a miscalculated
artillery coordinate can completely alter the
trajectory of world history. The capture of Chunuk
Ber was the single fleeting success for the Allies
during the entire Gallipoli campaign. Right.
For a few brief hours, those soldiers could look
down from the summit and actually see the Dardanelles
Straits, the ultimate objective of the entire
war in that theater. But because of delays, miscommunications
and overwhelming counterattacks, that victory
slipped right through their fingers. So what
does this all mean? I want to leave you with
a deeply unsettling detail from our source material
regarding the aftermath of this battle. OK. We
discussed the small plateau called the farm where
Baldwin's brigade was overrun and effectively
destroyed on the morning of August 10th. After
the battle ended, the farm became an unreachable
part of no man's land. It was completely abandoned
to the dead. The source reveals that it wasn't
until 1919, long after the war had ended and
the guns had fallen silent, that the Imperial
War Graves Commission burial teams finally returned
to that exact spot. Four years later, when they
arrived, they found a macabre reality. The earth
was still so thoroughly carpeted in the surface
bones of the men from Baldwin's Lost Brigade
that they couldn't even separate or move them.
Oh my god. Instead of relocating the remains,
they were forced to build a farm Commonwealth
War Graves Commission Cemetery right there, directly
on top of the bones where the men had fallen
four years prior. Wow. It is a stark, haunting
reminder that the earth literally holds on to
the brutal mistakes of our past, forcing us to
reckon with them long after the politics of the
war had faded. A truly powerful thought to end
on. Thank you for joining us on this deep dive
into the Battle of Chinook Bear. We hope we've
helped you understand the profound weight and
the cascading consequences of this historical
moment. Keep questioning, keep exploring, and
we'll catch you next time.