'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Well, a new sense of Canadian nationhood (at least for English-speaking Canadians) is also associated with a huge WWI bloodbath.

That war didn't make sense even at the time, but those who sacrificed so much had to believe that it had some meaning.

It's spelled "Aussies".

The reason is that, as far as war is concerned, us Australians remember our fallen countryman in preference to celebrating victory.

We also like taking the piss out of the Poms, so any opportunity to question their leadership skills is a welcome one.

Supporting the underdog is a national pasttime.

And, most importantly of all, it was the first time that we came together as a nation. Indeed, Gallipoli happened only 14 years after the nation of Australia was born.

Perhaps you might care to think again about the word 'whitefolk'. A significant number of Maori took part in the Gallipoli campaign as frontline soldiers and probably don't need to be excised from history by JWN.

I can only answer as a kiwi. Gallipoli was the first military campaign that contained distinct Australian and New Zealand army corps. Both these countries (as others)indeed suffered appaling casualties in appaling and pretty hopeless conditions. The campaign has long been seen in New Zealand as a British lead folly, (this was clearly repeated in the NZ Air Vice Marshalls speech at Gallipoli yesterday). For decades the ANZAC service was mainly in lieu of a funeral service for the fallen thoughout NZ towns and cities. Now 90 years and the personal mourning has passed, travel is cheaper and young New Zealanders undertake a pilgrimage the battleground to remember the courage of all the soldiers involved, most of whom believed they were doing what was best for their country. Its simply too big a relative loss for us as a country to overlook, and for us it is still a sombre occasion. NZ as a country only has about 160 short years of european settled history, and in that context this was a major international event; even though a tragic fiasco, in which our people made great sacrifices. Thankfully there were no issues of civilian losses or any atrocities by either the ANZACs or the gallant and very well lead Turkish army at Gallipoli. Fortunately the modern NZ army is able to focus on peacekeeping and reconstruction work under the auspices of the UN. I dont know if that helps explain, we in New Zealand certainly have no future designs on Turkey or anywhere else muslim or not but I can't of course speak for John Howard the Ozzie PM.

Helena,

As an expat who lives in Melbourne, Australia, I just wanted to focus on your question.

It is a matter very similar to why people in America support Veterans Day, and Memorial Day, etc..., it is to honor the bravery of their fallen fighting men, and it is a valid, important holiday here in Australia.

I have written to you personally in the past, and by my chosen screen name alone, may have accidently started the tie to the Land of Oz, (being from Kansas City), to Australia, and our vocabulary, apologies to Jason Hutchens.

I also want to point out to you that the warmongering prime minister of Australia is just a bootlicker of GWB, and in fact, the Iraq war is fairly unpopular here in Australia. Also just to point out a few "down under" facts:

The current Australian Prime Minister has pulled big lies out of his hat to win the last two elections by playing the fear/racist card in the first, and promised not to increase/send any more troops to Iraq in the last election, a promise which he recently broke. I think the Aussies here now realize we are in this up to our a$$es with bu$hco.

So if anything can be said, it is that all western leaders who have gotten into bed with GWB on Iraq, all have successfully used the LCS system of government to bluff their way back into office.

For those unfamiliar with the LCS system, it stands for Lie, Cheat, and Steal.

I think your question is misguided, basically Helena. Sorry.

Helena I can certainly understand your confusion. There are many of us here in the antipodes who share your sentiments. Michael Leunig, a prominent Australian cartoonist expresses what many of us feel about the day. Apologies for pasting in full but a link would require you to register to acces:

"Lest we forget the ultimate price of warfare"
April 23, 2005

We should remember the civilian toll of war and the danger of militarism, writes Michael Leunig.
"I hate it when they say, 'He gave his life for his country'. They don't die for the honour and glory of their country. We kill them."
- Rear-AdmiralGene R. LaRocque

We live in a national culture that glamorises soldiers, yet the sight of a military uniform with its obvious connotations of morbidity and violence provokes in me the question: "What sort of person is attracted to the killing professions?" Army recruiting advertisements beg the same question.
The raising of this query in public will bring hostile responses as well as the inevitable, "If it wasn't for soldiers you wouldn't have the liberty to ask that question", as if I owe my ration of happiness, sanity or spiritual health to militarism.
It seems to me, however, that human rights have historically been considerably established by those who were not soldiers and who indeed, in many instances, had to face the terror and repression of state military force in their various campaigns for social justice. It could be said, for instance that it was the troopers who fought against the cause of freedom at the Eureka stockade in Ballarat and slaughtered those who sought liberty and justice. Soldiers mostly follow orders, they have "a job to do" regardless of whether they are rescuing civilians or shooting them. Where the Prime Minister sees courage, decency and goodness in professional soldiers - all those "best and finest" qualities - I cannot help but also see the possibility of perversity, emotional sickness and a latent murderous impulse. The innocent question won't go away: "What sort of person volunteers to devote their life to the skills of destruction and the business of hunting, trapping and slaughtering humans?"

Anzac Day brings this question strongly to mind because I am asked each year to remember the soldiers who fought and to spare a thought for them, which I always do, but that's where the trouble starts because before too long questions arise and I try to imagine what sort of men would volunteer to invade a far-off land and perpetrate such murderous violence against its inhabitants. The mind can travel a long way in a minute's silence. Inevitably I then start to think and wonder about the forgotten men who on conscience and principle refused to take part in this monumental violence (where is their monument?), which then leads to a yearning for an Australia that would honour and remember the most horrible and sad truth of all: the civilian victims of war. In the grisly light of the fact that Australian soldiers so recently took part in the invasion of Iraq, which involved the killing of more than 100,000 civilians, and lost not one soldier in the process, it feels somehow obscene, bizarre and shameful to be commemorating, yet again, Australia's part in the invasion of Turkey in 1915. More than ever it feels to me that soldiers have been honoured more than enough and civilian victims have been honoured far too little. In the commemoration of war, as in war itself, civilians don't ultimately matter. The failure to prioritise the remembrance of civilian victims is a reinforcement of the military right to abuse or obliterate them with impunity in times of war.
As for the men who refused the way of violence, there appears to be little cultural recognition or consciousness of those who rejected jingoism and the call to homicide, but who served their country well for an entire lifetime in creative, constructive and unglorified ways that are immeasurable. Like so many other groups and other types, it is possible that they have been cold-shouldered out of the official, heroic version of the national story. Yet their lives and their efforts may have contributed more to what is valuable in the Australian identity than we care to contemplate, and the legacy of Gallipoli and war may have much to do with what is dysfunctional, tragic and ugly in our society. It is not just the examples of courage and sacrifice that we take from war but the trauma also, which permeates insidiously into successive generations.
We now know of, and can statistically track, the Vietnam Morbidity Syndrome, a mysterious psychological condition that has seriously plagued children of Vietnam veterans and which indeed may have dire consequences for grandchildren and beyond. And even more surreptitious are the myriad ghosts of war, which return from the battles, banalities and atrocities and attach themselves to the civil situation, entering destructively into the living culture of the nation. This inevitable, postwar militarist invasion of the homeland demands much reparation and imposes hugely on civil society, domestic life and the new generation. Grim authoritarianism, paranoia, guilt, fundamentalism, hostility, bitter or brutal outlooks and a difficulty with Eros, beauty and the feminine are all aftermath qualities that insinuate or assert themselves into family and institutional life with profound consequences. The remnant tones and gestures of war become normalised and the character of society is rewired. The violent, frightened mentality and fetishism of war, the domineering impulse, and the addiction to the "evil other" forever corrupt, disfigure and limit the societies that wage and prosecute the violent solution. A nation may win a war but its people can't get away with it.
Many Australians who served in war felt the degrading effects of militarism and upon returning home renounced it. In the 1950s it was commonly known that many men refused to march on Anzac Day, refused to join the RSL and threw their medals away. It was a conscientious and dignified position but one hears little of these men or this phenomenon any more; it doesn't suit the current, government ideology about warfare: the violent new jingoism crafted and cultivated by those who mainly have never heard a shot fired in anger and never will. Not only have they reshaped the slopes of Gallipoli for their convenience, they have reshaped the story of war to suit their purposes. The late life testimonies of veterans tell us that the horror and sorrow of war is not confined to the battlefields but can unfold in one's mind over a lifetime, yet these many stories are politely ignored or cruelly assigned to the "doddery old man who's gone a bit vague" category or buried with the owner. The bard Eric Bogle is now denounced for expressing in song the poignant wisdom so many veterans have pleaded for us to understand. Yet The Band Played Waltzing Matilda is held dear and touches deeply because it is utterly truthful and no amount of fashionable hostility, fatuous insult or boycott can ever diminish the strength or integrity of this great song.
Yet what the leaders would have us believe about old soldiers, and what old soldiers believe about leaders can be two fascinatingly different things.
Recently, a friend who is a Vietnam veteran, offered to me in a low, menacing and theatrical growl, his view on the Prime Minister's anti-terror piety and his fawning soldier-groupie antics: "Mr Howard, WE ARE the effing murderers you are so frightened of."
Soldiers can quickly tire of patriotism and piety in the globalised world. Many become mercenaries now and sell their souls to the highest bidder as hit-men; which may tell us something about what it takes to be a soldier. Iraq is crawling with these lapsed "best and finest" people. No doubt many of those innocent young ADF people in uniform, photographed with the leering, beer-juggling Prime Minister, may in time see the light, take to his private enterprise ideas and move on to the big bucks - to hell with the medals and to hell with the cosy car parks of Gallipoli. At the end of the day, as Socrates said: "All wars are fought for money."
Michael Leunig is an Age cartoonist.

It's curious that this event wasn't even mentionned in the European news. The news these days are full with the remembering of the Armenian genocide by the Turks.

Personnally, I see no problems with a veteran day, which can be turned in a day for pacifism, remembering how many human lifes were uselessly lost. But why fly to Turkey ? Are American flying to Vietnam for veteran days ?

Helena
Give us a fair go, mate.
Anzac Day in NZ and Australia began as small gatherings of "returned" men from WWI who got together to remember their fallen comrades - their many many fallen comrades, both countries in their colonial enthusiasm suffered appallingly high casualty rates in that futile conflict.
The day became increasingly militarised, especially after WW2 during which again both countries suffered disproportionately high casualties, although perhaps this time in a more justifiable cause.
But today it is essentially an occasion to memorialise the horror of war - perhaps more so in NZ, a less bellicose nation than Australia is today. Perhaps you will realise what it means to our young people when you come to NZ and discover that it is quite literally impossible to see an armed person on our streets - and that includes the Police. It just can’t happen, I’ve lived in our largest city for 40 years and never seen a gun.
(There’s guns here, but only on farms and out with the hunters - and no-one is licensed to own handguns or automatic weapons.)
Those 20,000 young Kiwis and Aussies at Gallipoli are overwhelmingly calm, gentle, peaceful, and they are there because their grandfathers died, or thought they were dying, so that we could live this way.
Don’t you sneer at us, mate.

Perhaps I should add a footnote. A British war correspondent at Gallipoli famously described the ANZAC soldier as "the bravest thing God ever made."
Maybe that's also what those Antipodean youngsters are remembering - that their ancestors in two World Wars established standards of courage, of fortitude in adversity, that they will always have to live up to. And usually they do.
What's wrong with that?

Helena

I think you make a good point here . But like in the US the importance of ANZAC day cannot be separated from the consolidation of right wing political language in Australia . What John Howard has done over the last few years is to make days such as ANZAC a means of claming for the conservative politics a Australian nationalism of a highly militaristic sort. What exactly is the nation that is being celebrated ? It worries me that such large number of young people would fall for this nationalistic set pieces . But there in a nut shell is why conservative politics dominates here in Australia and in the US. People who fail to see the political context of this miss the point .

Kanish

Helena,

While I think your inquiry into Gallipoli's meaning, uses, and misuses is important some of your post's characterizations range from inaccurate to offensive.

The confrontation at Gallipoli was not between states but empires. In 1915 Australia and New Zealand were dominions of the British Empire, Commonwealths but not independent states. What you call "Turkey" did not exist, the Allied forces were opposed at Gallipoli by the Ottoman Empire. As you are reminded by previous respondents these were, in fact, multinational forces reflecting the diversity of their empires. It was not just "whitefolk" who went on behalf of the British Empire, Allied forces at Gallipoli included Maori, Indians, Zambians, and Seneglese. On the Ottoman side there were not just Turks, but Arabs, Chechens, and Bosnians. If you visit Gallipoli today you will see as many different shades of people visiting their dead ancestors as there were fighting nearly a century ago.

The Gallipoli site is not just special for Albion's seed, but also for the country that hosts the battlefield. While the ANZAC were cruelly dispatched on a fatal fool's errand by English officers, the Ottoman commander was originally denied reenforcements to oppose the Allied landing despite the peninsula's strategic importance. That commander admonished his soldiers, "I am not asking you to fight for your country, I am asking you to die for your country." Fight and die they did, in greater numbers than the Allied forces. In this confrontation between the Allies and the Ottomans not only did a founding myth for Australia and New Zealand emerge, but also for the Ottoman commander, Kamal Mustafa Ataturk, and the Republic of Turkey as well. No wonder then that Ataturk demanded that the remains of the Allied dead be treated with respect. It remains an extraordinary place to this day, until recently you might find that your elderly tour guide was a veteran of the battle. I cannot convey here the deep emotions I saw expressed when veterans of opposing armies met in their old age and walked together across the battlefield, showing each other where they were and recollecting what they were doing. The remilitarization of Australian politics surely has something to do with the fuss made over Gallipoli this year, but so does that fact that as of 2002 there are no more veterans on either side to take these walks together.

That the Gallipoli monument you saw in England growing up was apparently unfinished is indifference typical of what "colonials" expect of Britain's memory for the sacrifices made on behalf of the Empire. I am relieved that your post was written and not submitted as streaming audio - your English accent reading some of your words would rub many of us more raw. Like "john" admonished you in an earlier post, "don’t you sneer at us, mate."

I'm surprised that despite your vast knowledge of and years living in the Eastern Mediterranean that you have apparently never visited Gallipoli. Given your research agenda and travel plans this summer, I think it would be wise for you to take a detour and see for yourself.

Wow.. I'm amazed at the high number of Aussies and NZ reactions to Helena's entry.
I'm even more surprised to read that this battle and costly defeat is seen as a foundation myth both by Australia and NZ, especially since both armies were still fighting for the British empire. Isn't it about time to imagine a better foundation myth ?
I personnally see no point in emphasizing the courage of young men in any battle, especially when it lead to the killing of so many humans, especially other ethnic groups (maori etc.. )

Helena,

the Kiwi's and Aussies remember, (celibrate is a questionable word in this context), Gallipoli for the same reasons that Canadians remember Vimy, Passendale and Dieppe.

We remember the naivety of those first entering the War, their bravery and courage, and how their lives were utterly wasted on the follies of Empire.

It was Nationalism, driven by the honor, sacrifice and follies of the war that was a major driving force behind the break up of the Empire and the formation of the Commonwealth,

And it was the events of the Great War, the follies, the waste, the sacrifice, the bravery, the wounded, that reverberated though our societies, reinforced by the losses of the Second World War that has driven much of the pacifism of our societies.

Locally, we have a ghost town, the Wallachin that people stop and remember. An apple growing farm community of 120 families, that turned the desert into orchards with 30 miles of wooden flumes,…. Dried up like desert dust after almost all the men were killed or wounded in the Great War, still barren with the scraggly ghosts of apple trees standing memorial to lost lives, lost opportunities, lost hope and wasted effort.

Helena
Please delete if now outdated. I posted this a few days ago on an Iraqi Blog, talking about the upcoming ANZAC ceremonies. It may give you yet another perspective.
In reference to a documentary programme:
Another high point was an old "digger" pointing out that most of the ANZAC casualties were ultimately caused not by Turkish fire, they were just defending their country, but by the incompetence of British politicians and Generals. (Specifically, Winston Churchill - he also managed to wipe out a lot of Kiwis in WW2 with his unsound decisions.)
Interesting, because the high point of the NZ year in 2005 is going to be the Tour by the British Lions Rugby team, the first for 13 years. They will be accompanied by the notorious "Barmy Army," 20,000 rabid British rugby supporters, determined to "drink the pubs dry" in every town, to the delight of the tourist and hotel trade. And of the NZ fans, who will do their best to help. "There will be no hooliganism - this is Rugby not Soccer - and the grounds will ring to the English rugby anthem:
Swing lowwwwwww, sweet char-iiiot,
Comin’ for to carry me hooooomme ...
I’m no great Rugby fan, but I find the idea of such intense rivalry on the field being matched by even more intense friendship and camaraderie off the field rather moving. How can the world become more like this? Somehow it takes me back to that girl GI calling out to you, "we want to be your friends." How did it all go so wrong?
(The last referring to the Iraqi blogger’s first encounter with US troops.)
Of course, you probably don’t like Rugby either.

Oh my! I am so glad so many of the blog's Antipodean readers (sorry anyone, if you think that's a slur but I do notice someone else using it... ) took time out to express themselves (yourselves) and inform me of your view of what all this was about. I have certainly learned a lot-- from all of you, as well as from Michael Leunig. Thanks for posting that thoughtful piece there, Lloyd.

I guess I can understand that "nations" need founding myths... especially nations that are essentially colonial constructions like the one I happen to live in here in Virginia. Founding myths of constructed nations always need to have a strong "liberationist" component-- whether it's the Pilgrims fleeing Old-World intolerance here in the US (the same Pilgrims who went on, many of them, to become famously intolerant in their own colonies here as well as to engage in massive expropriation and extermination of the native peoples), or whether it's the ANZAC experience in WW1 for y'all, or the liberationist component of Zionism, or the Afrikaners' story of having survived the English-run concentration camps of the Anglo-Boer wars...

Here in the US, though, we don't exactly embrace Custer's Last Stand as part of any "heroic" foundation myth... I guess though that the content of Antipodean remembrance of Gallipoli is slightly different from that since-- by the accounts of several commenters here-- it had/has a strongly anti-"Pom" overtone to it.

(And what's wrong with my accent anyway? You don't know how or even whether I talk...)

Well, judging by the lively differences among Antipodean commenters here, the past is still very much debated among y'all. As Faulkner said, "The past is not over. It's not even past."

I am looking forward, in NZ, to encountering what I'm led to believe is a distinctly different and "better" kind of interaction there than here between the whitefolks and the indigenes. In my main post, I made no reference to the racial makeup of the NZ forces fighting at Gallipoli, not having any info at hand about that. I did make reference to the people visiting there yesterday being "whitefolk" because that was the way they looked to me in all the photos I saw. If anyone has any numbers on the proportion of Maoris among the visitors, do please illuminate me.

Is any of you a Maori? Can any of you tell me whether Maoris tend to view "Anzac Day" in the same way as most whitefolk Kiwis?

At this point I'll confess that though I'd heard of "Anzac Day" vaguely before I'd never actually figured out that it was all about Gallipoli.

More I could write. Maybe another post. On this comments board I am certainly not the only person who's gone over the commenting guidelines on length. But every so often it's good just to have a long discussion like this one.

I certainly appreciate the fact of the difference between the government policies and the general trends in opinion between New Zealanders and Australians... (Do the Kiwis come out looking more like Canadians in this, if you get my drift: generally more gentle, thoughtful, and pro-UN?)

And yes, the Armenian dimension of WW1 certainly deserves more consideration.

Just one point before you get here - I suggest that you not use that expression "whitefolk." I've never heard it before and somehow it sounds vaguely insulting, though I'm sure it's not meant to be. NZers of Caucasian origin usually refer to themselves as "European," or better still and equally commonly as "Pakeha," which is the Maori name for them. Cheers.

Oh yeah, and you asked a question. You will find a degree or element of racial or cultural tension here, arising from issues in the colonial past: but we're working hard on them.
Meanwhile, the most revered military formation in NZ's martial history (such as it is) is the WW2 Maori Battalion, of legendary fighting prowess.
The survivors are getting on now, but yes, they march on every Marae (roughly, meeting place) on Anzac day. Maori ceremonial input, often including a haka, or war-dance, is more or less mandatory on any national ceremonial occasion. It's all a bit confusing, n'est ce pas?

"A kiwi race ramble"

Following on from John's accurate point about the elite NZ Maori battalions role in our military history there have been growing concerns expressed in the media here about the dominance of macho militarism in modern maori culture, its links to right-wing religious fundamentalism, crime, especially domestic and gang violence.

In the Arts and social sciences both Maori and Pakeha figures have expressed concerns about just how "staunch" maori (especially the male) role models have become, and are working to resolve this through debate of tradtional gender roles and new forms of existing traditions such as the "peace" haka, which is designed as a greeting or welcome as opposed to the usual warlike "challenge" haka form-which for example would not now be appropriate to perform at Gallipoli.

I think for some pakeha/"whities" like me our foundation (of New Zealand) myths would be of the english settling fairly peacefully and by negotiation, then breaking that treaty repeatedly, then Maori replying by starting a war or two in which they frequently prevailed; although not finally.

Since then we Pakeha have gradually had to redress our transgessions one by one under that same original foundation treaty with Maori. Pakeha and Maori have entangled each other in a cultural exchange based primarily on broken promises, shame, endless litgation, and a series of galant imperial military disasters, but with the general intent to make things right eventually and live in peace together well enough in these isolated little islands. Not much of a mythological base then, going by the definitions found above. We were, to be honest a bit annoyed that the Turks refused to be liberated in 1915 but we have since forgiven them. Perhaps if we had known about the Armenian genocide but we didn't...

Anyway Helena this all probably stops us taking ourselves too seriously at "the bottom of down under" I suppose. You'll notice that when you get here-but watch out for the haka-and please if you are passing Canada bring maple syrup, or anything nice from our many friends in the EU!

In what sense was this did ANZAC day lead to a nationaism that caused an empire to break up apart? Australia and New Zealand ended up in Gallipoli because of the bonds of empire not nationalism .

In the 1980s Anzac day drew less and less people and was in terminal decline . Over the last decade there has been a concerted effort to reinvent the myth of ANZAC as way of shoring up a highly exclusionary notions of nationalism . Howard has railed against a what he calls a black arm band view of history . In 1999 he sought to include in a constitutional preamble the concept of mateship which directly derives from the ANZAC legend as way of reasserting a conservative form of identity politics steeped in what Miriam Dixon refers to as ‘the anglo-celtic core culture’.

This return to the past echoes in the pervasiveness of the idea of ‘community’ in contemporary policy discourse; ‘community’ understood in terms of the staking and manipulation of cultural boundaries Howard’s political program does not repudiate ‘identity politics’ as he claims, but rather reconstitutes a conservative politics of identity consistent with both neo liberal economic policies and a increasingly ‘securitized’ global order. . Howard has not failed to link ANZAC day to the Iraq invasion .

See also http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/drawingboard/digest/0303/jayasuriya.html

I

Kanish I apprecaite your analysis of Howards position but in NZ unlike Australia there is no link whatsoever proposed between the Iraq invasion and occupation and the failed Gallipoli landings in 1915. Our PM never gave credance to the silly Iraq WMD arguments. A clear majority of NZers have, like our PM, found it quite impossible from the outset to treat operation "enduring oil" with anything but alarm and disdain. We have no soliders in Iraq (but I think we now have 50 token army engineers in UN approved reconstruction work so Bush will still let us ship our beef to Nebraska).

NZ like Australia clearly also has rapidly growing crowds of young people attending the Gallipoli service. I am sure the NZ approach to Gallipoli is with black arm bands firmly on as of course it should be, and I dont see how the 25th April "vibe" here could be considered exclusionary. But perhaps this matched growth in attendance still hints there is more now in common between the youth of both countries than exists between our older generations-if so its a potentially disturbing nexus-with some link to the passing of all those actually involved in the campaign-and one I don't feel I fully understand as yet. Sorry I'll stop posting now:)

Canada had the same "coming of age" experience at Vimy Ridge during WWI, i.e. their own commanders led their own troops to a decisive victory (although casualties were high). In the historical scheme of nationhood, Vimy Ridge is a highpoint of Canadian history. As an ex-pat American, I only learned this after arriving here.

Helena it may amuse you to know that some of my distant relatives, members of a Beiruti contingent of the Ottoman army, served in Gallipoli. I still vividly remember the description of the battle by one Maternal Great uncle of mine. In the fog of memory, fiction and fact snuggly intermingle. Thus he spoke of 36 allied frigates that move forward to fire, while another 36 move back to refit (questionable numbers and naval tactics but nice symmetry). One thing is certain, the casualty figures on the Ottoman side were appalling. Most members of the Beiruti contingent never came back home. Another thing is certain, the fateful events of 1915 still haunt us all: Turks, Arabs and Armenians as well as Brits, French Anzacs

I was always kind of interested in Gallipoli because of genealogical research I had done on family members who served in the Royal Naval Division in WWI, including the Dardanelles campaign. But the most interesting treatment of the subject I ever saw was an article that al-Jazeera ran about last year's commemorations. It was a bit of an eye-opener for me because it didn't focus on the ANZAC/UK/French losses that were all I'd heard about, but talked about the Turkish perspective. Apparently, the Turkish troops that fought off the initial invasion of the peninsular and kept the Allies penned into tight beachheads weren't Turks at all, but members of the Turkish 29th(??? - don't quote me, I'm doing this from memory) Division which was manned largely by Arab conscripts from Palestine and was effectively wiped out in resisting the landings. Virtually all of them are buried today anonymously as "an unknown Turkish soldier".

For a lot of people in the UK and former Dominions, Gallipoli is the epitome of the huge and pointless loss of life Europeans suffered in the Great War. When you add into the mix the fact that the heroic (from the Turkish perspective) defenders who fought off the Allied invasion were fighting under a foreign flag and about to get royally screwed in the war's aftermath, the whole campaign just seems terribly poignant.

Helena,

I’m not an Australian, a New Zealander, or a Turk, but I’ve studied the Gallipoli campaign in detail and visited the battlefield several times, walking the lines with a map, compass and history books. I once participated in a joint historical staff study with other NATO officers assigned to LANDSOUTHEAST HQ in Izmir.

As a preface to this post, I’ll say there are two views of history: analytical review and popular legend. This post attempts to address the popular legends of Gallipoli.

It’s important to understand the topography of the Gallipoli peninsula. It’s a long, narrow peninsula, broken up by steep hills and deep, curving ravines. British troops landed on the toe of the peninsula at Cape Helles, and ANZAC landed at ANZAC Cove, on the western shores below Gaba Tepe. The ANZAC troops had particularly difficult terrain to contend with.

Often, the trench lines were less then 20 meters apart, especially at the critical slopes below Achi Baba and Mal Tepe, and at Hill 971. The only way to keep those positions was to keep the trenches packed full of troops. As a consequence, the fighting became intensely personal - especially between Turks and ANZACs.

After the initial April 1915 landings, the Allies were stalemated, confined to narrow coastal strips at Cape Helles and ANZAC Cove. In May, the Allies launched a major offensive against the Turkish positions. At Cape Helles, the attack failed. The ANZACs briefly occupied Mal Tepe, but a Turkish counterattack drove them back to their original positions. In the narrow no-man’s-land between the trenches, lay thousands of wounded and dead Turkish and Allies soldiers. The soldiers in the trenches could see, hear, and smell the dead and wounded.

Two days after the failed attack, the Allied and Turkish commanders arranged a truce to recover the dead and wounded. The terms of the truce were extremely restrictive, and permitted only a few officers and insufficient stretcher-parties to enter no-man’s-land. As a result, the recovery effort was a fiasco. In the ANZAC sector, both ANZAC and Turkish troops spontaneously dropped their weapons and left their trenches to help to recover the dead and succor the wounded. There was a great deal of fraternization between Turks and ANZACs and the Allied high command was horrified, fearing the ANZACs wouldn’t attack aggressively in future battle.

They needn’t have worried. ANZACs and Turks continued to fight like tigers when ordered, but a mutual respect developed between them at the lowest level. I once read a contemporary account of an angry British staff officer who, while inspecting Australian troops in a forward trench, discovered the Aussies had thrown away their gas-masks. “We don’t need them,” an Australian NCO replied. “Johnny Turk fights clean.” Between skirmishes, both sides often traded rations and tobacco (the trenches were within throwing distance) but continued to deliver deadly fire if an enemy poked his head above a parapet. After most engagements, junior Turkish and ANZAC officers usually arranged an informal truce to recover wounded and dead soldiers, defying superior orders on both sides. Both Turks and ANZACs, at the lowest levels, developed a deep respect for each other both as soldiers and men, and there was little mutual demonization. To paraphrase that Aussie NCO, both sides viewed Gallipoli as a “clean fight.”

As other posters have observed, there’s also a strong element of nationalism in the legend of Gallipoli. For the ANZACs, it was the first time the troops of their new nations were tested in battle, and the people back home were intensely interested in the performance of their soldiers. Keith Murdoch, an Australian journalist (and father of Rupert Murdoch) briefly visited Australian troops at ANZAC Cove. He wrote several dispatches for his Australian newspaper, savaging British leadership and praising the ANZACs. The British authorities in London censored his initial dispatches, but after he returned Australia, he published his dispatches, provoking a huge scandal involving both his alleged misuse of ANZAC troops and British censorship.

On the Turkish side, Gallipoli also became a popular legend. During the defense of Gallipoli, led by the charismatic founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal, Turkish troops fought brilliantly. After the initial landings, Kemal - then an obscure Turkish colonel - was exercising his regiment on a rifle range near Eceobat on the eastern side of the peninsula, opposite ANZAC Cove. On hearing that Allied troops had landed near Gaba Tepe, Kemal gathered ammunition and led his regiment on a night forced-march over the steep spine of peninsular hills and launched a dawn attack against the ANZAC positions.

According to Turkish legend, Kemal addressed his assembled troops before dawn. “I don’t ask you to defend,” he said. “I ask you to attack and die. Your sacrifice will gain time for other regiments to arrive and drive the invaders into the sea.” Kemal deployed his regiment, crawled out in front of the ANZAC forward positions and as the sun rose, he stood, raised his sword and gave the signal to attack. His dawn attack stopped the ANZAC advance toward Eceobat. Many of his regiment perished, but they bought the time Kemal needed to bring up reserves. Kemal survived and later led the Turkish defenses at Mal Tepe and Suvla Bay. Today, you can find an extremely popular brand of Turkish cigarettes called Mal Tepe, named in honor of the Turkish defense of Gallipoli and Mustafa Kemal. (Take my advice: Don’t smoke ‘em.)

The Allies withdrew from the Gallipoli in 1916 in a superb deception operation. (Here’s the tactical question you should consider: How do you disengage tens of thousands of troops in direct contact with the enemy, night-march them to the rear and evacuate them across a beach before dawn without your opponent figuring out your intentions?) At Gallopili, the ANZACs did it - twice. As a former American army officer who once served as a Division deception officer, I stand and salute the proud bastards who planned and executed those operations, and I lend my personal support to the Gallipoli legend, although I realize critical analysis leads me to conclude the Allied Gallipoli campaign was a colossal fuck-up.

After the war, the Imperial War Graves Commission (now the Commonwealth War Graves Commission) returned to the battlefield to recover the dead. They recovered the remains of about 27,000 Allied soldiers, but only identified only 9,000. The Commission built 31 cemeteries at Gallipoli, with 21 cemeteries in the ANZAC sector. The Allied cemeteries were laid out at critical defensive points in the trench lines whose names had already become part of the Gallipoli legend: Quinn’s Post, Lone Pine, Hill 60, Twelve Tree Copse and Chunuk Bair.

Until the late 1980s, the Gallipoli battlefield was a Turkish military restricted area, but I met many Australian tourists whose grandfathers had fought at Gallipoli while I stayed at a seedy Turkish hotel in Gelibolu in 1984 on my first visit to the battlefield.

The Turks never monumented the battlefield and made no effort to recover their dead until the early 1990s. Turkish farmers cleared the fields at Cape Helles for planting, but the high ground at Chunuk Bair, Mal Tepe and above ANZAC Cove remains strewn with unexploded ordnance.

At Cape Helles, the Turks constructed a large park and museum overlooking the approaches to the Dardanelles. They built large monuments dedicated to the soldiers who fought at Gallipoli, with inscriptions in Turkish and English. On one of those monuments, there is this quotation, extracted from a 1934 speech Mustafa Kemal (now President of the modern Turkish Republic and known as Ataturk) gave and addressed to the countrymen of his former opponents:

“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives... You are now lying in the soul of a friendly country, therefore rest in peace. There is no differences 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 far away countries wipe away your tears. Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."

YD

For anyone who wants to read a primer on the Gallipoli campaign, I'd recommend the book "Gallipoli" by Alan Moorehead.

YD

Oops, I forgot a footnote to my first post.

"Mehemet" is the nickname Turks give to their private soldiers, similar to "Tommy" or "GI Joe."

It's a reference to Mehmet the Conquerer, the Ottoman sultan who took Constantinople.

My dad has spoken of a relative who *ran away* from Gallipoli. He was a conscript. The Christians of Lebanon still swore over those Turks when I was a kid in the 70s - my cousins told me that they would come to a village, find out who the smartest boys were, and kidnap them for the army. The families would never see them again. This cousin who ran away was greeted as if arisen from the dead.

I'll ask my dad more about him.

By the way, family legend has it that my grandfather fought the Turks on the barricades of Sidon at the collapse of the Ottoman empire.

Yankeedoodle... that was a brilliantly well-written and insightful comment. On behalf of us all I express our thanks for your sharing it.

Helena has added a further post about this subject, but it seems to be impossible to add comments to it. I’m not clear if this is intended, so can I chuck in a few more thoughts here just to add to her confusion.
1) The appalling Mr Howard is in a sense correct when he attributes to the ANZAC soldier’s experience the legacy of "a questioning eye towards authority." In 1916 Australia held a referendum on the introduction of conscription - it was defeated by the votes of the soldiers overseas, who took the attitude that "you can’t force a man to come and do this."
This scepticism is reflected in the WW2 story of the British General who visited Kiwi positions in the desert, and complained to their commander that the troops did not salute officers as they should. "No," agreed Freyburg, "but if you wave at them, they’ll usually wave back."
The soldiers of both countries acquired a very healthy contempt for any form of "bullshit," and this attitude largely persists in their nations today - one reason perhaps, among others to do with political structures, why there is nothing "Presidential" about political leadership. A change of Government is accompanied by a quick photo on the steps of Parliament, and then down to work. The idea of a massively expensive Inaugural ceremony for an individual leader would definitely be regarded as total and utter "bullshit."
2) It is important to remember that ANZAC Day, though focused on Gallipoli, was a commemoration of all war casualties - the troops of both countries fought on for three more years in France after Gallipoli, and suffered many more times their Gallipoli casualties in that slaughterhouse. As a NZ historian has recently pointed out, the greatest disaster in NZ history was not the Napier earthquake, or the Mt Erebus plane crash, it was one obscure day in 1917 at "Passiondale" in France, when 640 Kiwi troops died in a British-ordered attack. To put this in perspective, for a population then of less than a million, it would be roughly equivalent to 200,000 present-day Americans being wiped out in one morning. Do the maths for 17000 killed. As the historian says, the angel of death passed over the land, and the war "took stone" in the form of monuments in every town, bearing the names of the dead.
We can perhaps look back superciliously on the misguided imperial loyalism which led to this, if we want to. But I don’t think we can just forget it.

Regarding:

A young (and rash) Winston Churchill was the Secretary of the Navy. He insisted on launching the operation against the advice of most of the professional military and naval thinkers. (H'mmm.)

It's interesting to read David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace to understand that it was much more complex than blaming Churchill. It's true that at that time Churchill was blamed with the Gallipoli failure, but in Fromkin's book you'll find a different point of view.

Regarding, Aussies and Kiwis in western Turkey... they mainly go to have fun, get drunk, sing some patriotic songs, visit Gallipoli and start travelling thru Europe. Usually they know nothing more than some fellas died a long time ago. Talking with them about the WWI is depressing, 'we were so big and goodlooking warriors in this depressed part of the world'. So many dead people and nobody learnt nothing.

Roger.

After initially deciding not to weigh in on this argument because so many other have already I now can't resist but to give my own two cents worth.

As an Australian who both has visited Gallipoli (and found it a very moving and solemn place)and had an ancestor who died there in August 1915 I think the event is worth commemmorating, although what it means to me is probably different from what it means to those of the flag-waving ilk.

I have this view not out of any sense of jingoism or glorification but purely as a recognition that the years 1914-1918 were a pretty traumatic one for Australia at the time. For a country like Australia of just a few million in 1914 to suffer 60,000 dead and 250,000 wounded in four years of horror reflects this.

If it makes sense, I say this as someone who thought our participation in that war was unnecessary but nevertheless it did effect the Australian psyche and its part of our history.

What struck me was the enormous amount of soldiers who died there that were extremely young, in their late teens or early twenties, and it made me reflect on how war is a travesty, as much as I was moved by seeing so many graves.

For me Gallipoli is a solemn event, not the trashy flag-waving sentimentality that John Howard and our irritating foreign minister is trying to turn it into.

But perhaps the best part of my visit to Gallipoli was reading a monument which has the following words from Ataturk, the general of the Ottoman forces at Gallipoli and later the founder of the modern Turkish republic:

“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 to us between the ‘Johnnies’ and the ‘Mehmets,’ where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. . . You, the mothers, who sent your sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”

I'm half-Australian. We remember Gallipoli because it is an enduring symbol of the exploitation of Australians and New Zealanders by selfish, rash, thoughtless, chauvinist British politicians and military leaders.

The saying goes: "The British sipped tea on the beach" while the ANZACS were slaughtered in no man's land. The British knew it was a thoughtless, hopeless suicide mission. They just didn't care. ANZACs were exploitable.

When Howard notes that Gallipoli forged Australian character and compelled the Australian spirit to question authority, he refers to the Australian understanding of their exploitation and corresponding distrust of British leadership, not the militaristic valiance of those who courageously died for nothing.

Hi,

I'm an American and I didn't much about Galliopoli other than the Pogues' version of Waltzing Matilda.

I just wanted to say this thread is great.

I had not posted on Helena’s Blog before this, but it’s very addictive. If people are still interested in this Gallipoli business, could I add a subjective and emotional overtone.
I recently attended a dinner party hosted by an American lady who has married a Kiwi. They live in a restored colonial villa from the early 1900’s. At one point a joke came up involving the old British music hall song "Its a Long Way to Tipperary," and the proverbial shiver went down my spine. I explained to my hostess that in the 1910’s and 1920’s, the main family evening amusement would have been singing around the piano, and that there was a very high probability that her living room timbers contained echoes of a family singing that while they mourned for a son, quite possibly several sons, lost in Gallipoli or France. She went a bit thoughtful for a minute, then thanked me for changing slightly her feelings about her home, and her new country. The Maori of NZ have a very strong sense of their past, much of it handed down by oral tradition. It’s not a bad idea.
Its a long way to Tipperary
Its a long way to go
Its a long way to Tipperary
To the sweetest girl I know
Goodbye Piccadilly
Farewell Leicester Square
Its a long long way to Tipperary
But my heart’s right there.

Great thread:

John; Tipperary was a brothel in Piccadilly.

I love poetry:

POPPIES OF WAR
Cairo Cemetery, Gallipoli Day. 1918

In these hushed glades the holy cross keeps guard,
Above the graves where heroes sleeping lie.
Dear sons of far off homes are resting here,
Beneath the radiant blue of Egypt's sky.

Verdure, swift-growing, casts a tender veil
Over the warm brown earth that folds them deep,
Down the long lines between each simple cross
In splendour bloom the poppy flowers of sleep,

Scarlet and glowing, emblems of youths blood
Shed for the Empire, careless of the price:
"Flowers of oblivion"once - now evermore
Flowers of Remembrance of their sacrifice.

E.M.Warnock

dsdsdsd

qqwwwwwwwwwwwww

Another first-rate book about Gallipoli:

Gallipoli 1915, by Tim Travers.
Better than Moorehead because Travers devotes much more attention to the Turkish side.