Germany -- Foreign relations -- Turkey; Turkey -- Foreign relations -- Germany; World War, 1914-1918 -- Turkey
the narrowest part of the Dardanelles, for here they had stretched a
cable and anti-submarine barrage of mines and nets--a device, which, as
I shall describe, did not keep the English and French underwater boats
out of the Marmora and the Bosphorus. It was not until we rounded this
historic point of Nagara that the dull monotony of flat shores gave
place to a more diversified landscape. 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 afterward proved such tragical stumbling blocks to
the valiant Allied armies. The configuration of the land south of
Nagara, with its many hills and ridges, made it plain why the military
engineers had selected this stretch of the Dardanelles as the section
best adapted to defense. Our boat was now approaching what was perhaps
the most commanding point in the whole strait--the city Tchanak, or, to
give it its modern European name, Dardanelles. In normal times this was
a thriving port of 16,000 people, its houses built of wood, the
headquarters of a considerable trade in wool and other products, and for
centuries it had 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 escorted 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 his
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 attention 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 _Mesudié_.
“That’s the torpedo that did it!” said Djevad. “You’ll see the wreck of
the ship when you go down.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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