Today in 1912, in New York City,

Author and historian Barbara Tuchman was born.

 

Ms. Tuchman is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is best known for her book The Guns of August (1962), a historical analysis of early World War I.  She earned her first Pulitzer in 1963.   She went on to win another Pulitzer in 1970 for Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-45, a book about the relationship between America and China during World War II. Tuchman died on February 6, 1989, in Greenwich, Connecticut.

[January 30, 1912]

Today in 1915, on the beaches near Gallilpoli

20,000 Australian and New Zealand troops evacuated from Turkey without the defending Turks on the bluffs above even realizing the evacuation was underway. 

Allied troops had begun the difficult withdrawal from the beaches and cliffs they had secured in an ill fated invasion of Turkey that British Secretary of the Admiralty Winston Churchill had envisioned as a shortcut to winning World War I. 

If things had gone according to plan, the Allies would have secured the Gallipi Peninsula and from their marched on the Turkish capital of Istanbul, effectively ending Turkish involvement in the war as a member of the Central Powers.

 

To this day, the ANZAC troops still question why they were sacrificed on the beaches of Turkey for a plan that was so obviously not well-planned or well-executed.

[December 18, 1915 ]