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Audio transcript
When the great Allied fleet of British and French warships came down the Dardanelles on the morning of 18 March 1915, one of the best views of the subsequent battle between the Turkish shore batteries and the fleet would have been from the heights south of Kephes Point. The four first-line British battleships had names rich in historical association. There was the Agamemnon, recalling the warrior king who had led the Greeks against Troy; the Lord Nelson, honouring the most famous admiral in British naval history; the Queen Elizabeth, England's Queen when the Spanish Armada of 1588 met its fate at the hands of English sailors; and the Inflexible, suggesting the stubborn power of the Royal Navy, guardian of the British Empire.
At 11.30 am the warships opened fire and the noise would have been deafening, echoing around the hills of Gallipoli and the Asian shore. They had come to destroy the Turkish forts, for unless these could be put out of action the British minelayers could not operate safely to render harmless the lines of mines across the Straits which prevented the passage of the fleet. Opposing them at Kephes Point was Fort Dardanos, with Turkish guns and gunners commanded by Lieutenant Hassan. Even before 18 March the battery had received much attention from the Royal Navy, an estimated 4000 shells having been flung in its direction. Henry Morgenthau, the American Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, visited Dardanos and wrote of how the land 'for nearly half a mile about seemed to have been churned up; it looked like photographs I had seen of the battlefields in France'.
Lieutenant Hassan's battery fully engaged the Allied warships on 18 March 1918 and more than likely scored some hits. Hassan himself was killed that day and lies buried in the cemetery, the Kahramanlari Hasan-Mevsuf ÅžehitliÄŸi, down the hill behind the surviving guns of the battery. He was described by Morgenthau as 'a little fellow, with jet black hair, black eyes, extremely modest'.