Azmak Cemetery, Suvla
Gallipoli, Turkey

Pictures courtesy of Brian Budge

The cemetery is located North - East of Hill 10 and 21.1kms. from the junction Eceabat-Bigali, along a right hand rough track. Azmak Cemetery is on the South side of Azmak Dere, a watered ravine which runs South-Westward into the North side of the Salt Lake.

The eight month campaign in Gallipoli was fought by Commonwealth and French forces in an attempt to force Turkey out of the war, to relieve the deadlock of the Western Front in France and Belgium, and to open a supply route to Russia through the Dardanelles and the Black Sea. The Allies landed on the peninsula on 25-26 April 1915; the 29th Division at Cape Helles in the south and the Australian and New Zealand Corps north of Gaba Tepe on the west coast, an area soon known as Anzac. On 6 August, further troops were put ashore at Suvla, just north of Anzac, and the climax of the campaign came in early August when simultaneous assaults were launched on all three fronts. The aim of the Suvla force had been to quickly secure the sparsely held high ground surrounding the bay and salt lake, but confused landings and indecision caused fatal delays allowing the Turks to reinforce and only a few of the objectives were taken with difficulty. With Hill 10 Cemetery, Azmak recalls the northern part of the Suvla operations and the attempts to take and hold the Kiretch Tepi ridge and the high ground to the east. The cemetery was made after the Armistice when graves were brought in from small cemeteries and isolated sites in the area. Among those cemeteries concentrated into Azmac were 5th Norfolk, under the foothills of Teke Tepe; Oxford Circus; Kidney Hill and Jephson's Post, from Major J N Jephson, Royal Munster Fusiliers, who led the assault which took the place and was mortally wounded there a week later. There are now 1,074 First World War servicemen buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 684 of the burials are unidentified, but special memorials commemorate by name a number of casualties known or believed to be buried among them. Also among the unidentified graves are those of 114 officers and men of the 1st/5th Battalion Norfolk Regiment (the Sandringham battalion) who died on 12 August 1915.

Number of Identified Casualties: 390

 

12047 Private

Joseph Connor

5th Bn. Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers

15/08/1915, aged 30.

Son of Patrick and Mary Connor; husband of Mary A. Faulds (formerly Connor, nee Brady), of 55, Soho St., Gallowgate, Glasgow.

Special Memorial 36.

 

Pictures courtesy Jim O'Kane

 

 

Captain

Charles Tanqueray Baker

5th Bn. Bedfordshire Regiment

15/08/1915

Son of Canon William Wing Carew Baker and Catherine Anne Baker of The Rectory Dunstable Bedfordshire.

Special Memorial 31.

Picture courtesy of June Byrne

 

 

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