Gallipoli

Today is a day that I have been waiting to happen for many years, notably since a trip to the War Memorial in Canberra when I visited my friend Brooke. On that day I saw displays for all of the wars that Australia had been involved in, but when I arrived at the Gallipoli section, I teared up and felt a very strong sense of attachment to it. Not because any of my relatives had fought in it, but because it was a war that seemed to build the Australian character. It was the first war that Australia had decided to go to since Federation, as Australia’s involvement in all previous wars had been decreed by the Monarchy of the British Empire. It is where the name ‘Digger’ comes from, and shows the tenacity of Australians not giving up the fight and keeping on keeping on, which was again revealed in the Battle of Tobruk in World War 2, when the German tanks were bearing down on them and they didn’t flee. After Tobruk, Rommel himself believed Australians to be possessed, as no other army’s infantry had stood and fought without tank support against him.
Of course, there’s a fine line between tenacity and insanity, but I suppose where you fall depends on whether you’re on the winning or losing side.

Our original plans for accommodation in Gallipoli had been to stay in Cannakale (Shanakalay) at the Anzac Hotel. We thought it was appropriate at the time, but in Istanbul we learnt of the Crowded House hostel, which had an extra benefit to doing our tour. They knew a local that goes snorkeling every morning off Anzac Cove, who takes out tourists that want to do the same. We thought this would be an amazing experience, and so changed our plans to suit.

We started our morning early, having breakfast and arriving in the lobby just before 9am. There we met Emin, a quiet but friendly man, who took us in his car and drove us the 20 minutes to arrive at Anzac Cove. While we were heading in, he pointed out a few little spots, but said that he would leave the explanations of these areas to the tour guide that would take us around later in the day.
Arriving at the beach, Lapzang, Doolittle and I were amazed at how beautiful the beach was. This was where a major war was fought and half a million people died? we thought. Looking inland from the beach road, we could see very steep hills leading up, and couldn’t fathom people charging up them, under fire from the enemy, and taking these hills within half an hour.
Emin took our snorkeling equipment and flippers out of his car, and walked us to the beach. It was a rocky beach, with lots of large rocks leading into the first 10 metres of the water. In the past he had cleared a narrow path through the rocks, as there were many sea urchins there that would sting unwary feet, which I’m sure many tourists would have. We made it through his path, put on our flippers and masks, and started to swim out.
About 50 metres from the shore, he stopped and told us that below us were the remains of an intelligence ship that had been sunk by the Allies. It had been used as a tide breaker and means of helping the Anzacs get onto land – a ship full of men would pull up beside it, and the soldiers would run across the deck onto a bridge which connected it to the shore.
Emin left us to snorkel at our leisure.
I looked under the water and was blown away by the view of the spine and ribs of a ship that had been sitting on the bottom of the ocean for almost a century. Most of the panels were gone from the vessel, so it almost resembled the stereo-typical image of an elephants or woolly mammoth skeleton, only inverted. Having been sitting on the bottom of the ocean, sea grass had grown over portions of the boat, and other plants had grown there as well that resembled uncurling white roses, waving in the current as a real rose would in the wind. If it hadn’t been under the water, the whole image would have resembled a memorial, which bushes interspersed in the ship, and flowers left as a token for the dead.
This was definitely one of the most profound and beautiful moments of my life.
There were fish in the water, too – hundreds of them that had made a home of the wreck, and weren’t afraid of us joining them there at all. They would swim past, and then come around and start to swim in the same direction as us, as though they were our underwater tour guides.
The memory of this morning will be etched in my mind for the rest of my life, and I only wish I had had a water proof camera to be able to share these images with you all upon my return.
After passing over the boat, we headed back to shore, where we met up with Emin again. He told us to go snorkeling along the edge of the rocks, to see if we could find any ‘war relics’. Lapzang swam left, and Doolittle and I swam right.
We swam over the rocks, looking for bullets that were lying on the ocean floor, but while doing so I was captivated by all of the life that was there. Urchins and fish by the thousands, a stunty forest of sea grass and those plants that looked like roses. Once again, the fish escorted us on our search.
I had been swimming for about 15 minutes, and hadn’t seen any ‘war relics’, and decided to cut my losses and head back to the path through the rocks. Almost immediately, something grabbed my eye in the colour that I had been looking for, that very pale almost fluorescent turquoise that some metals go when they rust. I reached down and found a complete unfired shell. Stoked, I high-tailed it back, seeing that both Lapzang and Doolittle were on the shore. I joined them and showed off my single bullet, and Lapzang turned around and showed off his haul of 15 bullets. Emin came over and looked at Lapzang’s bullets. “The ones that have been fired – they are the bullets of heroes.”
Emin took us for an apple tea at this point, and we discovered that he had been in the Turkish navy for 25 years, had retired and now spent every morning snorkeling, some mornings taking tourists out like us. He told us that he had a huge collection of relics from the battle there, and that after a storm lots of new things washed up. His most recent joy was a cap badge from a New Zealand soldier, and he said you could still make out the unit that the soldier was from.

We headed back to our hotel for a shower and refresher – it was still only 11am by this point, and I’d already been blown away by this fantastic day.

We headed down to the front of the hotel and met our tour guide, Bulent (Bull-Ant) or Bill if you couldn’t remember that. This guy was the best tour guide currently operating, with 12 years of experience, an interview in the Lonely Planet, and being the go-to guy for anybody that wanted to write a book about Gallipoli. He had a list of big-name guests he’d taken on his tours as long as his arm – Tracey Grimshaw, Mark Webber, Kim Beaseley… the list went on.
Our tour had 8 people on it… all Aussies.
We headed to the Gallipoli site and went into the museum, where there were a number of photos and displays about the soldiers there. One of the main things that I was struck by was two photos, one of the Aussies in their trenches, the other of the Turks in theirs. The only difference between the young men in these photos was that the lads in the Turkish trenches had moustaches. They also had things in this museum that we probably wouldn’t get in Oz – a shoe with the foot still in it, and a skull with a bullet hole in the top. ‘The skull of a martyr’ was the sign on the card next to it.
Unfortunately, this was the point that my camera decided to pack it in and not have enough charge to take any more photos, and Lapzang and Doolittle had left their cameras back in the hotel. Sigh. That meant that I will be unable to share photos of the day from this point, although I will certainly take the sights with me in my memories.
We headed to the cemetery that had a tomb for Simpson, but not his donkey, although the donkey was posthumously awarded a medal for bravery. Funny that.
We continued on to Anzac Cove, where we had been earlier in the day, and to Brighton Beach, the original planned location for the landing of the Anzac troops. Bulent told us of the mistaken landing spot, and commented on the fact that it was unknown whether it was an accidental landing there or planned by the general. Either way, lots of Aussies were probably saved by this gaffe, as they would have run into a huge force of Turkish troops had they landed at the correct spot.
We traveled on to Lone Pine which is an amazing spot, sporting a large monument to the troops that fell there. The Lone Pine that is currently standing there is from seeds that a soldier took with him. The original fell down during the fighting, and this soldier picked up one of the pine cones, carrying it with him when he was redeployed into France, fighting in the war there, before being sent home. He planted the seeds back in Australia, and in the 1960s the Turkish government heard of this tree, and took a pine cone to plant another tree on the top of the mountain where Lone Pine originally stood.
After this point, we headed to a spot that had several monuments to the Turkish soldiers that fell in the war, which was great to see. These monuments were recently built, since the Turkish people questioned why they didn’t have anything to memorialize their own troops that fell in the battle.
We finally arrived at The Nek, the highest point on the Gallipoli peninsula that the New Zealand troops took and held for 2 days just before being pulled back. There was a large monument there for Ataturk, the general of the Turkish troops, which explained how he had been hit in the breast by a piece of shrapnel in the final battle. The piece of shrapnel was stopped by his pocket watch at 5am in the morning, but he fought on with his troops, knowing that if word got out that he was injured the whole battle might fall apart. Had he been killed by that shrapnel, the world may well have been a different place. The Allies may have been able to win the battle at Gallipoli (since Turkish morale was quite low as they had lost the previous 4 wars that they had been involved in) and move in on Constantinople, land troops, and remove Turkey from being allied to the Germans. On the other hand, had he been killed, Turkey probably wouldn’t have been formed as a country, and remained part of the Ottoman Empire, which Turkey succeeded from in 1923. One man can have a huge difference in how the world plays out. Definitely somebody to look into if you enjoy world history.
After The Nek, we headed back to our hostel, had a shower, and kicked around for a bit. I ended up crossing the river that runs past Eceabat to Cannakale and had a few drinks with a few of the people that had been on our tour. This was quite a nice way to end the day, and I arrived back in Eceabat about 1.30am, ready to head to bed after a massive and thought provoking day.