In 1918 Britain opened an Eastern front against the Ottoman Empire
While the assault on Galipoli was the crucible in which a sense of Australian and New Zealand national identity was forged, and in which 26,000 British troops died, a less well known attack on the Ottomans was launched from the East.
General Lionel Dunsterville was despatched from India. Crossing overland through modern day Iran, the British and Punjabi troops were to defend Baku, which was a place of turmoil since the collapse after the revolution of the Russian Empire.
Faced with a Turkish force of 14,000, the Brits were forced out of Baku, but returned with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the war, months later.
The War Memorial is not popular locally. Azeris saw their Turkish ethnic kinsmen as a liberation force, and the British as occupiers. The memorial is respected and well kept and it was an interesting and surprising find which broadened my knowledge of a conflict I had presumed to be familiar with.
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