Tales from Tawa: ANZAC Day
…Of the 8,556 New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli, 7,573 were either killed or wounded. In a small country, whose population was just over one million at the time, few families were not affected by the casualty list. My own grandfather was wounded at the landing and spent the rest of his with a lung full of shrapnel as a result. My husband’s grandfather was killed by a sniper three months into the campaign, his remains lying there in an unmarked grave to this day…
Eve-Marie Wilson tells of a futile loss of lives in a World War One campaign – a loss still remembered every April in New Zealand and Australia on ANZAC Day.
Some nations have a national holiday to commemorate great historical battles in which their troops were victorious. In New Zealand we prefer to remember a World War I campaign that was a was a costly failure for the Allies, an important victory for the Turks and which had no significant effect on the out come of the war. In fact the whole campaign was a fiasco from woe to go.
The 25th of April each year which has come to be called ANZAC Day, marks the anniversary of the landing of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) on the shores of Gallipoli, Turkey, eight months into the war.
The idea was to open the Dardanelles Strait to allied troops allowing them to threaten Constantinople in the hope Germany’s ally, the Ottoman Empire would surrender.
The strategy was doomed from the outset. There was little time to practice the landings, the Turkish fighting qualities were severely underestimated, and allied troops were ill equipped, especially in ammunition, for the initially envisaged garrison role.
The landing plan, delayed two days because of weather conditions, was thrown into disarray from the outset. The ANZAC troops were confronted with almost inaccessible terrain to negotiate as a result of being mistakenly landed 2 kilometres north of the planned landing place. As result whole units became lost, split up and intermixed. Their situation was compounded by a well organized Turkish infantry and artillery battery vigorously defending their territory. About one in five of the 3000 New Zealanders who landed on the first day became casualties. It was not until the next day that the Turks were finally driven back allowing units of the Royal Navy and a French division to come ashore.
The situation continued to deteriorate. An Australian backup division landed four hours behind schedule and a column of British and Indian troops landed during the night, both became lost in the darkness.
On the first night of the landing the situation looked so perilous evacuation was recommended, but because of the danger of doing so those in charge could only urge the Anzacs to dig in.
Although less horrific than the Western Front, the death toll and conditions borne by the troops of the eight month Gallipoli campaign were appalling. The New Zealand, Australian, British, Indian and French troops involved put up with almost unbearable physical discomfort. Searing heat, a shortage of water, inadequate food supply and swarms of flies buzzing around unburied corpses in no mans land, caused disease to flourish in men constantly facing the psychological pressure of fighting enemy often only metres away plus the ever present hazard of snipers.
Of the 8,556 New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli, 7,573 were either killed or wounded. In a small country, whose population was just over one million at the time, few families were not affected by the casualty list. My own grandfather was wounded at the landing and spent the rest of his with a lung full of shrapnel as a result. My husband’s grandfather was killed by a sniper three months into the campaign, his remains lying there in an unmarked grave to this day.
So why do we choose to celebrate a military campaign which was mismanaged from the outset, which did nothing to advance the war effort and in which we were clearly out classed? Because the Gallipoli campaign marked a turning point New Zealand’s history. It marked the moment New Zealand began to see itself as a nation with its own identity and a pride in the international contribution it could make
Since the first anniversary of the landing held in 1916, in remembrance of the 2,721 New Zealand soldiers who died in Gallipoli, ANZAC Day has evolved to become a day of commemoration for all those who have died in the service of their country and to honour returned service men and women.
ANZAC Day holds equal significance in Australia as it does in New Zealand. The ANZAC forces at Gallipoli distinguished themselves with courage and skill that established a mutual respect and close bond between the two countries - a bond which has resulted in the term ANZAC becoming a lasting label for trans-Tasman cooperation.
