2 – Australians and New Zealanders at Gallipoli
For all the significance of Vimy Ridge to Canadians, it might well be trumped by the enduring story of Gallipoli. The Dardanelles Campaign – as Gallipoli is also known – is part of the founding myths of three countries, with Australia, New Zealand and Turkey all drawing integral parts of their national identities from the battle. In contrast to Vimy Ridge, however, it is not the glory and the successes of the battle that have given Gallipoli its significance, rather the needlessness and futility of the slaughter that ensued in this small corner of the Ottoman Empire in 1915.
The story of Gallipoli cannot be told without starting with the contributions of Commonwealth soldiers, as they were central to the initial plan of the British. Some historians claim to this day that the British high command that ordered the offensive in the Dardanelles sent the troops from the dominions into a death trap to which they would never have sent their own native countrymen. While that may debated – the ability of First World War British generals to massacre British troops should never be underestimated – the significance of the battle to those who fought from the Commonwealth nations cannot be underestimated.
The particulars of the Gallipoli Campaign can be split into two periods: a short, bloody battle followed by a protracted trench engagement. The Dardanelles peninsula was crucial to any hope of Britain opening a naval route to their Russian allies via the Bosphorus Strait, as well as opening an Eastern Front that could distract from the struggles in Western Europe. An initial naval attack was thwarted by sea mines and a land invasion followed.
Allied forces were able to form a beachhead on Ottoman soil, but lacked reinforcements and, unable to advance, dug trenches. The trench battles would last for eight months before the Allies withdrew. Ammunition supplies gradually ran low, illness ravaged the Allied camps and constant fighting sapped morale. The casualties were so bad that both sides declared a brief truce in order to clear the No Man’s Land of the dead. As songwriter Eric Bogle put it:
And the band played “Waltzing Matilda”
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again.
Australia lost 8,709 men at Gallipoli, over 10% of their whole losses in the war, while nearly 3000 New Zealanders were killed, some 20% of their whole strength in the battle. Alongside them, a further 1358 Indians lost their lives and an innumerable number of Irish fighting within the British forces. These numbers are just the military deaths too, and do not factor in the thousands more who succumbed to the rampant disease that blighted the entrenchment period of the battle.
On the other side, the Ottoman Empire, soon to become Turkey, lost 56,000. Mustafa Kemal, who commanded the Ottoman forces at Gallipoli, became a national hero after the battle and eventually lead a movement that proclaimed Turkish independence in 1923. Gallipoli is seen as the moment at which a distinctly Turkish identity, as opposed to an Ottoman one, was forged.
The so-called “Anzac Spirit” that was to be found among the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) has been co-opted into the idea of what it means to be Australian: ideas of courage and indefatigability, of looking out for your mates and maintaining a good humour, of flouting authority and ruthless egalitarianism. Whether these characteristics are true of those who fought at Anzac Cove or not, the way that they have been subsumed into the national founding myth is very real. The centrality of Gallipoli to Australian national identity is summed up by their national poet, Banjo Paterson, who wrote these words in reaction to the battle in 1915:
“The mettle that a race can show
Is proved with shot and steel,
And now we know what nations know
And feel what nations feel.”