The story of the mysterious cloud in the Gallipoli Campaign...

“The Gallipoli Campaign was won thanks to mysterious clouds,” some even say.

Even crows would laugh at this.

It is the height of absurdity.

But unfortunately, some dubious individuals who pose as guides or are commissioned on behalf of the Ministry of Culture peddle this nonsense while taking people around the Gallipoli front.

And they do it as if it were true.

What is it, they say? That during the Gallipoli Campaign, saints sent a cloud, which engulfed the British battalion and carried them away. And that is how we won the war, and so on.

Get out of here.

Let us tell the truth;

Refusing to accept the defeat at Anafartalar and Conkbayırı, the British launched an attack on August 12 with the 163rd Brigade on Kavaktepe and Tekketepe, north of the village of Küçükanafarta, to reclaim the territory they had lost.

Colonel Sir Horace Beauchamp, commander of the 54th Norfolk Regiment, began to advance with his soldiers along the foothills of Karakol Hill because the terrain was suitable. They advanced for exactly 4 hours. However, the 5th Battalion attached to this Regiment disappeared among the bushes after a while. It had become separated and cut off from its main unit.

Without realizing they were lost, the battalion advanced a little further and entered between the Turkish lines. The British soldiers were unaware of the danger awaiting them. Eventually, the 36th Regiment Commander, Münip Bey, spotted them.

He waited.

Meanwhile, command on the northern front of Gallipoli was in the hands of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

When the British Battalion got close enough, Münip Bey ordered his soldiers to fix bayonets and surrounded them. After the clash began, he had the vast majority of the British bayoneted.

The Turkish fire was so effective that 180 soldiers from the 5th Battalion Sandringham Company of the 54th Norfolk Regiment were killed, and only Lieutenant W. George Stewart Fawkes and a sergeant remained. They, too, advanced about 90-100 meters.

They could no longer turn back.

A while later, the sergeant was also shot and fell. Lieutenant Fawkes continued to advance alone. He had lost his senses in the face of the attack he had encountered. He was wounded and had lost a lot of blood. After about 25-30 meters, he passed out and collapsed. When he came to, it was night.

He opened his eyes; he was lucky.

He realized he had been taken prisoner within the Turkish trenches. He had been found by Turkish soldiers, it was understood that he was not dead, his initial treatment was performed, and he was carried to the position.

His life had been saved.

The event consisted of nothing more than this.

Documents regarding this clash and the destruction of the British Battalion are available within the Ottoman Documents of the Prime Ministry General Directorate of State Archives.

Moreover, Lieutenant S. Fawkes told everyone about this clash and the humane treatment he received from the Turks when he returned to England.

Therefore, the British Battalion in question was not destroyed by clouds sent by saints, but by the Mehmetçik (Turkish soldiers) themselves.

So, if you ask where the cloud story came from, let me explain;

The war was over. General Ian Hamilton, who was defeated by Atatürk, had to answer to the British government. Naturally, he had to prepare a report on this. Hamilton wrote a report on January 6, 1916, and in this report, he used vague expressions regarding the 5th Battalion, such as “They entered the trees and disappeared” and “no news could be received about their fate.”

Later, screenwriters appeared in England who tried to give a secret, a mystery to these vague words of a great general. Some British screenwriters and film producers, who distorted these vague expressions to make them more watchable, made films titled “The Lost Battalion” about the Norfolk battalion that was slaughtered in the war.

Because the Norfolk Regiment was important. It consisted of some of the most elite soldiers of the British Army. They were guarding the King's summer palace. The British Eastern Daily Press reported the disappearance of these soldiers on January 7, 1916, with the headline “soldiers lost.”

Therefore, this event caused a great stir in England and caught the attention of screenwriters.

In reality, the battalion was indeed lost.

But not by clouds; it was lost in this way. It had broken away from the 54th Norfolk Regiment, gone missing, and fallen into the hands of the Turks.

Since the film industry is unregulated in England, as it is here and all over the world, the event was distorted significantly. In New Zealand, it was published in a UFO magazine, again giving it a mystery, a secret.

These diversionary propaganda efforts took on a strange form in Turkey. There was fog in Gallipoli from time to time. Furthermore, since this clash took place in a very hot and dry terrain, like in August, a dust cloud had risen during the fighting. This was perfectly natural. Reactionary circles began to use this fog or cloud domestically, building upon these distortions by the British.

Our bigots were no less than the British. They published claims that a cloud mass came, took the British soldiers away, and that the war was won in this manner.

For this, they supposedly cited the testimony of 3 soldiers who survived the war. However, that is also a distortion. The testimony stated that the soldiers disappeared into the clouds. Soldiers fighting each other with rifles and guns in August would not disappear in rain and mud, of course, they would disappear in a dust cloud.

What is it, they say? That these clouds also looked like mounted warriors.

Give me a break.

That was not enough; they even spread the word that these mysterious clouds were sent by Saints.

These false narratives, created by believing the British, were nothing more than belittling and trivializing Mustafa Kemal's success in that war and ignoring the Mehmetçik who watered those lands with their blood.

The Norfolk battalion suffered 22 officer and 350 soldier casualties, and the wounded soldiers returned to their homelands. Robert John Crowe, one of them, was surprised when he heard such a ridiculous claim. In 1919, after the war, the British Priest C.V. Edwards, who came to the region on duty, even found the corpses of 122 British soldiers belonging to the Norfolk battalion 800 meters behind the Turkish front line.

The Norfolk battalion did not perish in mysterious clouds, but at the tip of the heroic Turkish soldiers' bayonets.

As for those who distort this;

Theirs is not about being a tool for the British or anything like that. Since they also know the truth, what they are doing is outright treason.