Badge and Ribbon of a Companion of The Distinguished Service Order & DSO

Hear the men and women whose lives were shaped by the First World War tell their stories of the conflict in our podcast series, Voices of the First World War. 

The Dardanelles, a narrow 60-mile-long strip of water that divides Europe from Asia, has been of great strategic significance for centuries. Carefully secured by international treaty, it was the closing of the Dardanelles that eventually brought the Ottoman Empire into the war as a German ally at the end of October 1914.