Gallipoli

"What are your legs?"

"Steel Springs!"

"What are they gonna do?"

"Hurl me down the track!"

"How fast can you run?"

"As fast as a leopard!"

"Then RUN!"

Thank you Mel Gibson and Mark Lee for immortalising the story of Gallipoli.

Since watching this movie I've wondered about Gallipoli and the appalling stories that go with it, so we travelled for 5 hours (one way) from Istanbul to get some questions answered.

This was Adem, our tour guide who knew WAY too much for his young 30 years!  He could tell you names and dates and even rattle off exact conversations that happened between Australian and Turkish generals and soldiers in WW1!  

He took the time to show us this map at Brighton Beach, the place next to Anzac Cove where the Allied Forces were meant to land..... about 500 metres away from the actual place they did land - Anzac Cove.  Showing us the map really helped us to understand what the hell happened back then.  He went into great depth about every detail of the war and at certain points we thought that he was going to go through each day blow by blow.  

We know that 500,000 people in total died, 8,700 of those being Australians.
What a waste of life!
The whole day was quite sombre.

The whole coast line is so beautiful here its hard to imagine such atrocities.

This boat is looking over the side to a ship that sank nearly 100 years ago.  Apparently it's a great diving spot.

It just wouldn't have felt right if we didn't at least dip our feet in the waters of Anzac Cove..... and of course, pick a stone for the collection.

The Beach Cemetery where lots of Australians were buried.

Lone Pine Cemetery 
This was the site of a very bloody battle and where lots of people were killed.  Our guide went into some fairly gruesome details here and this is also where I had had my fill of horrid stories.  You can only take so much!

James Martin, whose name is listed on the right hand picture above was only 14 when he enlisted under a false indentity and is known now as the Boy Soldier.  Can you imagine 14 year old boys today picking up a rifle and being willing to head to an unknown land to more than likely be killed?  

The lone tree in the middle has been replaced 3 times.  It keeps either burning down or dying!

This is Huseyin Kacmaz lived until he was 110 years old.  He fought in 5 major battles in his life, including Gallipoli and this statue of him and his grand daughter was placed at the Turkish Cemetery to celebrate his life.

Chenuk Bair

This was where we saw tunnels and trenches that have been boarded up and reinforced.  The soldiers used to dig out the trenches to chest height then they would dig tunnels and make new trenches closer to the enemy and they'd keep going with this process until they were pretty much on top of each other.

The Nek

This shows the remains of the trenches dug out by Allied Diggers 100 years ago.  It is actually quite a beautiful place if you don't know what occurred here!

Ataturk
The Turkish people just love him!

He was an excellent soldier and became Turkey's first President.  There are statues of him all over the country.

All in all a fantastic day.  It really makes you think about what we have 100 years after all these poor kids died for absolutely nothing!

The Turkish people we spoke to all have a similar "shake you head in dismay" feeling about the whole Gallipoli campaign as they lost even more soliders than the Allied's did....

War....... what is it good for?

Absolutely nothing!

Say it again.