Background
Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton was born on January 16, 1853, on the island of Corfu.
(Includes Gallipoli Campaign Map and Illustrations Pack 7...)
Includes Gallipoli Campaign Map and Illustrations Pack 71 photos and 31 maps of the campaign spanning the entire period of hostilities. The desperate losses and ultimate failure of the Gallipoli campaign are legendary even among the holocaust of the First World War. The man ultimately held responsible for the failure was General Ian Hamilton, the officer in charge of the operation; criticism has been heaped on him since the last Allied soldier left the Turkish peninsula in 1915. His diaries however paint a different picture; that of a General struggling with a task that was night-on impossible to begin with; Thrust in to a mad-cap operation he was given the scantest of details; But my knowledge of the Dardanelles was nil; of the Turk nil; of the strength of our own forces next to nil. Although I have met K. almost every day during the past six months, and although he has twice hinted I might be sent to Salonika; never once, to the best of my recollection, had he mentioned the word Dardanelles. Short of men, supplies and most all ammunition; his failure was not from a lack of effort. Fighting uphill against an entrenched enemy, the ground that he and his men fought over was some of the toughest on Earth to attack. Always too close to the fighting line he was out of his depth with the strategic thinking necessary in an army commander. There is much in his diaries that is of interest the serious student of the Gallipoli campaign and the casual reader of the story of the First World War.
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Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton was born on January 16, 1853, on the island of Corfu.
He entered the army in 1872, served in the Afghan War from 1878 to 1880, and participated in the First Boer War (1881), in which he was wounded and taken prisoner.
He took part in the Nile expedition, 1884-1885, and the Burmese expedition, 1886-1887.
He then commanded a brigade in India on the northwest frontier during the Tirah campaign.
Hamilton served in South Africa from 1899 to 1901, and was engaged in the defense of Ladysmith.
He returned to England to become military secretary at the War Office, and a little later went back to South Africa as chief of staff to Lord Kitchener, 1901-1902.
In 1903 he returned to the War Office as quartermaster general. He was then appointed military representative with the Japanese forces in Manchuria. His impressions on this mission are contained in A Staff Officer's Scrap Book (1906 - 1907). When he returned to England, Hamilton was placed in charge of the southern command, 1905-1909.
After serving as adjutant general to the Home Forces, he succeeded Lord Kitchener as chief of the Mediterranean Command and as inspector general of Overseas Forces, 1910-1915.
He was made a full general and placed in command of the Home Forces at the beginning of World War I.
In March 1915 he was given command of the expeditionary force being sent to the Dardanelles; this project, conceived and advocated by Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, went badly from the start.
Hamilton "had only a manual of the Turkish Army, an out-of-date Admiralty report on the Dardanelles defenses, and an old map" with which to plan his campaign.
The British fleet was defeated in its efforts to secure control of the Dardanelles, and the army, when it arrived, was forced to land on the Gallipoli Peninsula.
One misadventure followed another. On October 19, 1915, Hamilton was relieved of his command, but subsequent inquiry attached no censure to his leadership.
The army was withdrawn by the end of 1915, and a "splendid failure" ended.
(Includes Gallipoli Campaign Map and Illustrations Pack 7...)