With almost the same number of soldiers as the Anzacs – 79,000 – and similar death rates – close on 10,000 – French participation in the Gallipoli campaign could not occupy a more different place in national memory. What became a foundation myth in Australia as it also did in the Turkish Republic after 1923 was eventually forgotten in France, writes historian John Horne in The Conversation.
Some of the reasons are obvious.
France was fighting for its very existence and many, including Joseph Joffre, the commander-in-chief on the western front, thought Gallipoli a side-show at best and a wasted effort at worst. It was a British conceived and led campaign, although the French were a fully-fledged expeditionary force with their own staff and command structure.
It was also a failure, and while that never prevented anyone spinning redemptive narratives about heroism and national virtue, the French had plenty more relevant episodes to use for such purposes during the Great War, from the Marne in 1914 and Verdun in 1916 to final victory in 1918.
Even regarding the “front of the Orient”, as they called it, the French saw Gallipoli merely as a curtain-raiser to the subsequent campaign in Macedonia, to which most French units from Gallipoli transferred, and which finally defeated Bulgaria in 1918, contributing to the victory over the Central Powers. Gallipoli failed to achieve any of its goals.
Other reasons for the neglect of the campaign are less obvious – and more revealing – about its actual nature.
The French conceived of the Dardanelles in part at least as a colonial campaign. This was not true of its ostensible goals – since the idea of defeating the Ottoman Empire and linking up with Russia was clearly part of a continental conflict between the major European powers.
But one consequence of success would be (as it eventually was) the partitioning of the Ottoman Middle East. The French could not afford not to take part in case the British won.
Even more tellingly, the campaign was conceived in a colonial mode.
As the “sick man of Europe” it was assumed that the Ottoman Empire would collapse at the mere demonstration of Allied naval and military might. The land campaign would be just like the expeditions that had subordinated “native” peoples to French and European authority pre-war – in Indo-China, China and Morocco.