Lest We Forget

A peninsula in the Aegean sea was the site of a major First World War battlefront. Richard Trillo recounts the story of the ANZACs’ ill-fated Gallipoli campaign.

After Britain entered what was to be World War I, in August 1914, the Australian government pledged to help the old country “...to the last man, and the last shilling”. Recruiting for an expeditionary force started in earnest, and in New Zealand and Australia there was an enthusiastic rush to join the forces. The resulting troops were sent to Egypt where they were formed into the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps – ANZAC.

While the troops were training in Cairo, the British High Command formulated a plan to take the strategic and narrow strait of Dardanelles, separating the Gallipoli Peninsula in Europe from Asian Turkey and allowing access to the Sea of Marmara and the Black Sea, in order to open up supply lines to their Russian allies and subject the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople (as Istanbul was then called), to naval bombardment. With Constantinople taken, the Germans would be outflanked and face an eastern front.

Before the war, the Ottomans had been ambiguous in their dealings with Britain and Germany but the Brits had taken the initiative and cancelled two warships ordered by Turkey, arousing strong anti-British sentiment in Constantinople.

Following poorly planned allied naval efforts to batter the Turkish land defences on the peninsula, which led to serious losses of vessels and crew, early in April 1915, British and French forces gathered in Mudros harbour, on the Greek island of Lemnos, itching to “give the Turks hell”.

The British planned to land at Cape Helles at the toe of the peninsula, while the French would feint at objectives on the southern side of the straits and the ANZACs would conduct a surprise landing near Kabatepe on the western side of the peninsula. Early on the morning of 25 April, the ANZAC transports were towed towards the landing beach by steamboats. Each soldier carried 200 rounds of ammunition, three days’ rations, a quart of water, a sheet and a greatcoat.

They began landing before dawn on an inhospitable shore, devoid of fresh water or shelter, and bearing no resemblance to what had been expected. In fact, they were in the wrong place, and had been incorrectly landed about 2km north of the intended location (now called Anzac Cove). On that morning, the towering cliffs of Ari Burnu lay ahead of them. Opposition fire, which started as a few intermittent rifle cracks, rose in a crescendo, described as resembling an Australian bushfire.

Soon there was carnage on the beaches. The intended ANZAC front was meant to advance 3km inland, but at the end of the first day of fighting the ANZACs had advanced barely 700m, to the top of Second Ridge. Counterattacks were launched by the Turks at the beginning of May and though the assaults battered them for three days the ANZAC lines held.

After the furious fighting of the landing and counterattacks, both sides dug in and trench warfare followed, interspersed with attack and counterattack, usually with bloody results.

The supply line to the ANZAC front, a tortuous path exposed to enemy fire, became known as Shrapnel Gully – bullets went up the line and the wounded and dead came down. On the night of 18 May, 42,000 Turkish troops launched a counterattack on the besieged ANZACs so intense that a truce had to be arranged to bury the bodies on both sides – the Turks having suffered some 10,000 casualties and the allies around 500.

There was only one successful Australian attack during the Gallipoli campaign, a diversionary assault that took place on a plateau called Lone Pine, where Turkish and ANZAC troops were dug into trenches, facing each other across a 200m front, just 100m apart. The ANZACs extended tunnels from their trench line to within 40m of the Turkish trenches. Late on 6 August, a furious bombardment commenced on the well-protected Turkish trenches, taking the Turks completely by surprise. The ANZACs, bayonets fixed, were all over them in minutes, half the troops through the tunnel, half over the top.

Reinforcements were rushed in before the Turks counterattacked, which they continued to do for three more days, with hand grenades used by both sides, sometimes lobbed back and forth before exploding. But the ANZACs held their position in the body-strewn maze of abandoned Turkish trenches, having made a gain of a few hundred yards of blitzed dust. The ferocity of the fighting at Lone Pine is reflected in the fact that seven Victoria Crosses were awarded to the ANZACs and more than 2200 men were killed. But the battle was anything but decisive for the Gallipoli campaign as a whole – in fact it had made almost no difference to the allies’ fortunes in attacks in other parts of the peninsula.

When the allies accepted that their August offensives were fruitless, plans were laid to evacuate the peninsula, although it took smuggled reports by the likes of journalist Keith Murdoch (father of Rupert) to alert the British, Australian and New Zealand public to the true situation. In December 1915, extra jetties were prepared at Anzac Cove and more than 20,000 men were taken off on 18 and 19 December, the last two nights of the evacuation.

The final account of Gallipoli? 180,000 allied and 220,000 Turkish lives lost, and as many as half a million men wounded. The allied forces, and particularly the ANZACs, had been let down by poor strategy and a weak command: they severely underestimated Turkish grit and morale; and they had too few troops.

One major historical consequence of Gallipoli was the creation of modern Turkey. One of the Turkish army commanders, Mustafa Kemal, was utterly determined in his defence of the Turkish nation from the allied assault and later rose through the ranks to become Kemal Pasha. After the end of the war and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, Kemal eventually became the founder of modern, secular Turkey, and took the name Kemal Ataturk.

His chivalrous tribute to the fallen on both sides is engraved on the Turkish memorial at Anzac Cove: “Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours... you the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well.”

TURKEY'S HISTORICAL & GEOLOGICAL SITES

Apart from the relatively recent Gallipoli cemeteries and memorials, which are especially of interest to anyone with family connections to the campaign, western Turkey is rich in ancient and historical sites, often in close proximity to landscapes and beaches of great beauty. All of the following are on Kumuka itineraries, and if you’re not sure, just ask one of our staff or agents:

• Gallipoli The hilly peninsula of the same name is very busy on ANZAC day (25 April) with a dawn service and thousands of visitors, but you can visit at any time, and many Aussies and Kiwis devote a day to walking around some of the numerous cemeteries and the key historical areas, including: North Beach (where the famous ANZAC commemorative site is located), Ari Burnu cemetery, at the unintended landing location; Anzac Cove, the intended landing place and main supply route throughout the campaign; the steep, but these days rather pretty, Shrapnel Valley; and, up beyond the pines, the austere Australian memorial at Lone Pine on top of the plateau. A little further north stands the lone soldier of the Turkish Memorial and the main New Zealand cemetery of Walker’s Ridge.

• Troy The legendary ancient city, the Trojan capital, described in Homer’s book Iliad, was excavated in the 19th century and is now one of western Turkey’s premier archaeological sites. It’s a complex site, on nine levels, each successive layer of building corresponding to a more recent era, from 3000BC to 100BC. It’s a fascinating place to wander, though heavily exploited by the locals – complete with a reconstructed Trojan horse used as an adventure playground feature.

• Ephesus These ruins, further south along the coast, near Kusadasi, are a popular stop on our Turkey tours. Ephesus was an ancient Greek city of Asia minor, later a Roman colonial capital and one of the largest cities of its time with as many as half a million inhabitants. Look out for the 24,000-seater amphitheatre and the (now dry) harbour. You can also see important early Christian ruins here. If you’re here at the right time of year, you may witness camel-wrestling at nearby Selçuk.

• Pamukkale, which means “castle of cotton” in Turkish, isn’t a ruin, but at first glance you could mistake it for one. Until recent controls were put in, this extraordinary UNESCO world heritage geological site was itself in danger of being ruined by the huge numbers of visitors stomping all over it and the facilities built around it. Pamukkale is like a frozen waterfall, rising more than 100m above the plain at the head of the Menderes valley, and created from chalk deposited by a powerful hot spring from the hills. It’s a remarkable place and you can swim in the warm, mineral-rich water.

KUMUKA’S TURKEY

Every year, Kumuka offers trips to Turkey specifically to coincide with the 25 April Anzac Day memorial service at Gallipoli. Whether you go for Anzac Day or at any other time of year, you can opt for this simple, moving visit on its own, or extend the trip to a week or more in order to take in more of this large and intriguing country – part Med/European, part Middle East/Asian – including more time in Istanbul for markets and the awesome Blue Mosque. If you have plenty of time, why not keep on trucking, down to Jordan and the Red Sea, or as far as the Nile in Egypt, with fantastic excursions like a gulet cruise and a visit to Petra included in the price?




 

Published 22nd Apr 2010

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