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A six hour coach ride from Istanbul brought us to Eceabat on the shore of the Dardanelles, just a few kilometres from the World War I battlefield of Gallipoli. We joined a small tour group to see the latter. Bill the Turk (real name Bulant) was our Guide for the afternoon; he was a history enthusiast and what he didn’t know about the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 probably isn’t worth knowing.
He took us to many of the significant Australian sights, from the initial landing points of Ari Burnu and Anzac Cove, to the Australian and New Zealander cemeteries that dot the area, and to places where some of the 300 km of trenches dug by the Australian “Diggers” still cut across the stony hill slopes that became the final resting place for 10,000 of them. But these are just a small proportion of the total dead of 140,000 (including 90,000 Turks) buried in the 30 or so cemeteries scattered across the Gallipoli peninsula, now an historical national park.
With such a huge loss on the Turkish side, this area remains important to Turkish people too, and there were many local visitors walking around the Turkish cemeteries and memorials. Australians come here en masse each Anzac Day, with more than 10,000 gathering for the annual commemoration service at Anzac Cove. The last of the Anzac diggers died recently, but it seems, rightly, that they will not be forgotten.
By 4pm our own Gallipoli campaign was winding down and like the surviving troops of 1915, we were evacuated from the battlefield without incident, although in our case in much happier circumstances, and only as far as Eceabat where we spent a comfortable night in a waterfront hotel preparing for tomorrow’s dawn crossing of the Dardanelles, and journey on south to the ancient Roman ruins at Ephesus.
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