was fought between Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) and Ottoman Empire forces during the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War, between 6 and 10 August 1915. The battle was part of a diversionary attack to draw Ottoman attention away from the main assaults being conducted by British, Indian and New Zealand troops around Sari Bair, Chunuk Bair and Hill 971, which became known as the August Offensive.
At Lone Pine, the assaulting force, initially consisting of the Australian 1st Brigade, managed to capture the main trench line from the two Ottoman battalions that were defending the position in the first few hours of the fighting on 6 August. Over the next three days, the fighting continued as the Ottomans brought up reinforcements and launched numerous counterattacks in an attempt to recapture the ground they had lost. As the counterattacks intensified the ANZACs brought up two fresh battalions to reinforce their newly gained line. Finally, on 9 August the Ottomans called off any further attempts and by 10 August offensive action ceased, leaving the Allies in control of the position. Nevertheless, despite the ANZAC victory, the wider August Offensive of which the attack had been a part failed and a situation of stalemate developed around Lone Pine which lasted until the end of the campaign in December 1915 when Allied troops were evacuated from the peninsula.
Prelude
Terrain
The Lone Pine battlefield was named for a solitary Turkish pine that stood there at the start of the fighting; The tree was also known by the Anzac soldiers as the "Lonesome Pine". The battlefield was situated near the centre of the eastern line of the Australian and New Zealand trenches around Anzac Cove on a rise known as "400 Plateau" that joined "Bolton's Ridge" to the south with the ridge along the east side of "Monash Valley" to the north. Being towards the southern end of the area around Anzac Cove, the terrain in the Lone Pine region was comparatively gentle and the opposing trenches were separated some distance with a flat no-man's land intervening. |alt=A thematic map showing several ridge lines and high features]]
The main part of the Australian position at Lone Pine was centred on a feature known as "The Pimple", where a salient had developed at the point where the Australians' position was closest to the Ottoman line. To the east of the salient, opposite The Pimple, the Ottoman line extended from the head of a gully—known as "Owen's Gulley" by the Australians—south for towards the neck of Bolton's Ridge and continued south along a spur called "Sniper's Ridge". Because of the salient around The Pimple, the Ottomans had focused on developing the trenches along the flanks of the position more than the centre, At the rear of the Ottoman line, near Owen's Gully, was a depression called "The Cup" that was not visible from the Australians' position on The Pimple. Despite overflights of the area by British reconnaissance aircraft in June, the Australians were unaware of The Cup's existence, and at the time of the attack they believed this area to be flat and to consist of further trench lines. In reality it was actually a reserve area where the Ottomans had established a regimental headquarters and sited a series of bivouacs in terraces and at the time of the attack there were large numbers of reinforcements camped there.
Military situation
Prior to the battle, isolated fighting around Lone Pine had begun early in the Gallipoli campaign. At around 7:00 a.m. on the first day of the Australian and New Zealand landings at Anzac Cove, 25 April 1915, elements of the Australian force had pushed through to Lone Pine in an effort to destroy an Ottoman artillery battery that had been firing down upon the landing beach. Before the Australians could engage the battery, the Ottomans had withdrawn to a ridge to the south-west, which the Australians later dubbed "Third Ridge" (or "Gun Ridge"). Pressing further inland, troops from the 6th Battalion had attempted to reach the ridge, crossing a wide valley (later known as "Legge Valley"), but they were pushed back when an Ottoman regiment, the 27th, had launched a counterattack from the south-east towards Lone Pine at 10:00 a.m., with the objective of retaking the 400 Plateau. Rolling up the 6th Battalion, the Ottomans pushed the Australians back to Pine Ridge, a finger of land that jutted south from Lone Pine towards Gaba Tebe.
In early July 1915, while making plans for an offensive to break the deadlock that had developed around the Gallipoli Peninsula following the initial landings in April, the commander of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, Lieutenant General William Birdwood, had determined that an attack at Lone Pine could be used to divert Ottoman attention away from a main attack that would be launched by a combined force of British, Indian and New Zealand troops further north around Sari Bair, Chunuk Bair and Hill 971.