"I don’t order you to fight, I order you to die."
In April 1915, with these ominous words to his troops, the previously unknown Ottoman lieutenant colonel Mustafa Kemal launched his country's desperate defence of the Gallipolli Peninsula from invasion by British, French, and Commonwealth forces. In the next nine and a half months, 130,000 troops from both sides would obey his order and perish as the invasion was repelled; from the ashes of this senseless, pointless slaughter would rise three nations: Australia, New Zealand, and of course Turkey, led by former lieutenant colonel Mustafa Kemal, renamed Atatürk and accorded a godlike status that endures even to the present day.
Visiting the war graves of the Gallipolli Peninsula is seemingly a rite of passage for all Australians and New Zealanders, who come in their thousands each year; the Commonwealth War Graves Commission reports that the cemeteries from what is known ın Britain as the "Dardanelles Campaign" are the most visited of all the war memorials that venerable organisation maintain worldwide. As I wandered among the simple white headstones that dot the well-kept lawns, surrounded by unusually subdued Antipodean youths in their trademark board shorts and wife-beater vests, I couldn't but feel a certain incredulity at this amazing fact. Perhaps equally worthy of incredulity: this was the first time I'd ever seen an Australian male cry. Strewth mate.
Apart of course from the not inconsiderable distance involved ın travelling to Turkey to pay respects to long-dead ancestors from a now almost forgotten conflict, the fact of the matter is that actually very few Australia New Zealand Army Corps (Anzac) troops perished at Gallipolli. The two nations' combined losses numbered scarcely 11,000, figures dwarfed by the British, French, and above all Turkish deaths in the same campaign. While a large number by the surgical standards of modern warfare, 11,000 deaths in nearly ten months of fighting was pitifully small for the Great War; over on the Western Front the British and French were busily losing troops with such efficiency that 11,000 dead would have represented a quiet morning.
To my mind it reflects great credit on the Australians that they make the journey in such numbers. By the same token it is a fairly damning indictment of modern Britain that the only citizens of our once-proud nation who make the much shorter pilgrimage to the war graves of France and Belgium are strange beardy men who drink real ale, live with their mothers, and build airfix aeroplanes at weekends. I myself visited some years ago on a schooltrip, led by my history teachers: strange beardy men who drink real ale, live with their mothers, and build airfix aeroplanes at weekends.
Despite the statistics, Gallipolli holds an almost mythical significance for Australians and New Zealanders - the start of the campaign is commemorated annually on Anzac Day - and is widely regarded as the founding myth of both countries. In truth it's not really difficult to see why. The realisation that the motherland held its colonies in such low regard was signalled loud and clear by the botched operation - with the kind of logic I previously thought only possible from Monty Python, the British commanders opted to land the hapless Anzacs at the foot of near-vertical cliffs, reasoning that the Turks would never expect an attack in such an inherently foolhardy location. You just couldn't make this stuff up. Luckily for future generations, the man publicly "credited" with responsibility for the Dardanelles debacle, the British First Lord of the Admiralty, one Winston S. Churchill, was to prove a little more strategically adept in later years.
Of the numerous Australians makıng the pilgrimage on the same day as me, the consensus opinion seemed to agree with the words on one headstone I saw: "They never fail who die ın a great cause". Unfortunately for Antipodean pride, however, our melancholy Turkish guıde was unequivocal in his refusal to offer solace to the memory of the fallen: "Turks, Aussies, Kiwis, Brits - they all died for nothing. What a waste". (He was right of course, apart from the overall futility of the First World War, little more than a family feud between the bickering cousins who ruled Britain, Germany and Russia, the Turkish theatre of the war was especially pointless. Gallipolli did not succumb to the Allies, but the Ottoman Empire would eventually fall anyway, not to the might of the full Allied onslaught in Turkey, but to a ragtag bunch of Bedouin led by a semi-deranged homosexual in white robes on a camel in Mesopotamia. We shall return to the incomparable T.E. Lawrence in a couple of months.)
As the modern day invaders from Down Under, rather more successful than their predecessors ninety years ago, came to terms with the rather uncomfortable and unexpected news that 150,000 young lives, among them many of their forefathers, had been sacrificed on the altar of Churchill's vanity, I gained some comfort from the knowledge that we live in a much more civilised age today, when brave young men would never be sent to foreign fields to perish in senseless conflicts with no purpose save the egotistcal aggrandisement of foolish politicians.
Dulce et decorum est, pro patria mori.
