Today marks probablly the most significant day in the Australian calender. ANZAC day. It marks the day, at dawn on April 25th 1915, when Australian and New Zealand troops landed on a beachfront in turkey, in part of the allied offensive to knock Turkey out of the war. Through some screw up, instead of landing on relatively flat beach the soldiers were faced with sheer cliff-faces and a well ordered Turkish army, with thousands of men and hundreds of machine guns. What was supposed to be a 6 week campaign lengthened to a 9 month stalemate, where neither side did much except die. Eventually, at a cost of 18,000 lives, the allies evacuated the beach. The Gallipoli campaign has been the most famous military campaign of the Australian military, although it was defeat. The largeness of the campaign also compares with the Battle of the Somme in France in WWI, and the Kakoda trail in Papua New Guinea during WWII, both of which substantial Australian troops have been used.
In trawling through work at school, I stumbled over a poem ‘Dulce et decorum est’. I’ve published it as my front page click.
Anyway if you’re still interested, read more on the gallipoli campaign, here, or watch the movie ‘Gallipoli for a reasonable account of what happened (for movie buffs this is Mel Gibson in a VERY early role… I think right after mad max).
Peter
