Gallipoli

Gallipoli

At the mouth of the Dardanelles lies the town of Eceabat. The car ferry to Canakkale (and Troy) leaves from here, and we came back to here to go to the Gallipoli Battlefields. The fort below is Kilitbahir Castle. The name Kilitbahir can be translated as 'lock to the sea'. The castle was built by Sultan Mehmet the Conqueror in 1452 to control the straits and secure Istanbul. In later years, the castle was extended, with towers and gun placements being added.
In 1551, Sultan Suleyman repaired the castle, which has a seven-storey keep in the form of a clover leaf in its centre.
With our Turkish guide, we boarded the bus for the Gallipoli Peninsula. The mood was quite sombre, and we listened to the guide talk about the sacredness of the site - for Australians and New Zealanders, and for Turks as well.


The Gallipoli Peninsula has been a bridgehead, a barrier and a meeting place for different cultures over the centuries. In 1973, the Republic of Turkey made the decision to show 'that no war is cause for permanent hostilities but can serve as a basis for friendships as well'. In the spirit of this, the peninsula has been designated a National Park. It covers 33,000 hectares (330 square kilometres). Our guide described it as 330 square kilometres covered in blood and bone.
At the end of the Great War, the Allies returned to the Gallipoli Peninsula and cleared the battlefields of the bodies still unburied. In the nine months of the campaign more than 36,000 Commonwealth soldiers died and Australia suffered 26,094 casualties. The 31 war cemeteries on the peninsula contain 22,000 graves, but only 9,000 of these were able to be identified.
SHRAPNEL VALLEY
Shrapnel Valley got its name in the early days after the landing. As the Turks realised that this had become the highway to the front their guns rained shrapnel shells down upon this area. These shells made a particular whistle before they burst showering those below with lethal pellets. It was said that as the shells could be heard coming soldiers passing through the valley had the chance to take cover. Confronted with such danger, men became ‘fatalists’ and thought that a particular shell had a man’s name and number on it! – ‘Until that shell arrived, it was best to let others see them going proudly rather than flinching’.
Many an Anzac was introduced to war as he moved up these valleys to the ridge. For virtually the whole of the campaign, but especially in the early weeks, further up Shrapnel Valley where it turned to the right and became Monash Valley, Turkish snipers killed or wounded hundreds of men. The Turks held the high ground at places like Dead Man’s Ridge and the Bloody Angle and were never driven from it. Stretcher-bearers, and soldiers bringing up supplies, rations and water, were in constant danger as they made their way along the valley bottom. This sniping was at its worst during the early hours of daylight when the sun was behind the Turkish marksmen. It was while doing his duty in Monash and Shrapnel valleys on 19 May 1915 that the best known Anzac of all – John Simpson - ‘The Man with the Donkey – met his death.

ANZAC COVE
Some 27,000 Australian, New Zealand, British and Indian troops were put ashore in Anzac Cove between 25 April and 1 May 1915. While the great majority of these troops were Australians and New Zealanders there were also units that aren't usually taught to us as part of the legend - the Ceylon Planter’s Rifle Corps, the Indian Mule Cart Transport, the Zion Mule Corps, the 7th Indian Mountain Artillery and about 2,500 men of the British Royal Naval Division, Chatham, Portsmouth, Nelson and Deal Battalions. All of these units fought alongside the Anzacs.

"General Birdwood asked that the Beach between the two knolls, being the original landing-place, should be known as “Anzac Cove”; and the name “Anzac”, till then the code name of the Army Corps, was gradually applied to the whole area. Day and night the Cove was full of the noises and sights of a great harbour – launches with tows moving constantly in and out, the shrill whistles of small crafts, the hoots of trawlers, the rattle of anchor-chains, the hiss of escaping steam. At either end of the Beach was the hospital – the New Zealand station at the north end, the Australian at the south. Colonels Howse and Giblin would not display the Red Cross on their station, crouched as it was among supply depots which the Turks might justifiably shell. Along the middle of the Beach were long lines of picketed mules. Even by day the strand between the growing supply stacks and the water was a crowded thoroughfare. Odd men, parties, strings of animals, jostled through it, lucky if they escaped the kick of a mule. During shell fire the casual hands would quickly disappear behind stacks of biscuit-boxes; but the working parties carried on without regarding it. [Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac]

And so we arrived at Anzac Cove. Looking down from the road onto the beach, the thoughts in my head were all about what on earth was going through those young men's minds as they landed in this inhospitable place. For those that landed, it was an absolute nightmare, and of course we know how many didn't even land. This poem was written by soldier-poet Leon Gellert, who landed on April 25th, 1915 and was evacuated in July with dysentery.

Anzac Cove

There’s a lonely stretch of hillocks
There’s a beach asleep and drear
There’s a battered broken fort beside the sea.
There are sunken trampled graves
And a little rotting pier
And winding paths that wind unceasingly.

There’s a torn and silent valley;
There’s a tiny rivulet
With some blood upon the stones beside its mouth.
There are lines of buried bones
There’s an unpaid waiting debt
There’s a sound of gentle sobbing in the south.

The success of the Turks at Gelibolu was (very simply and in a few words) the result of the poor planning and arrogance of the Allies, and the inspirational leadership of the Turks by Mustafa Kemal. For the first time, Turks were fighting for their homeland. During the Battle of the Landing, Kemal has been credited with one of the most famous orders issued to Turkish troops during the whole campaign – ‘I don’t order you to attack, I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die other troops and commanders can take our place’. After the war, Kemal went on to be become the first President of the Turkish Republic in October 1923. He became known as Atatürk, meaning father of Turks, for his modernisation of the country after centuries of Ottoman rule.

more photos at http://picasaweb.google.com.au/sue.thomson/Gallipoli