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Page:Ambassador Morgenthau's Story.djvu/263

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AMBASSADOR MORGENTHAU'S STORY
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that these reports were pure fiction. A small number of "red heads"—that is, non-armour-piercing projectiles useful only for fighting landing parties—had been brought from Adrianople and were reposing in Hamidié at the time of my visit, but these were small in quantity and of no value in fighting ships. I lay this stress upon Hamidié because this was the most important fortification in the Dardanelles. Throughout the whole bombardment it attracted more of the Allied fire than any other position, and it inflicted at least 60 per cent. of all the damage that was done to the attacking ships. It was Anadolu Hamidié which, in the great bombardment of March 18th, sank the Bouvet, the French battleship, and which in the course of the whole attack disabled several other units. All its officers were Germans and eighty-five per cent. of the men on duty came from the crews of the Goeben and the Breslau.

Getting into the automobile, we sped along the military road to Dardanos, passing on the way the wreck of the Mesudié. The Dardanos battery was as completely Turkish as the Hamidié was German. The guns at Dardanos were somewhat more modern than those at Hamidié—they were the Krupp model of 1905. Here also was stationed the only new battery which the Germans had established up to the time of my visit; it consisted of several guns which they had taken from the German and Turkish warships then lying in the Bosphorus. A few days before our inspection the Allied fleet had entered the Bay of Erenkeui and had submitted Dardanos to a terrific bombardment, the evidences of which I saw on every hand. The land for nearly half a mile about seemed to have been completely churned up; it looked like photographs I had