Speech

·      Your Excellencies

·      Distinguished Guests

·      Ladies and gentlemen

 

It is nearly dawn and it has been a cold night for all of you here.

 

Imagine a similar night, exactly 91 years ago, when from trenches in the cliffs behind us Turkish soldiers, guarding their homeland, peered out into the gloom, out to sea. They wondered when the invasion they had been told to prepare for would start. Indeed it was almost upon them.

 

Protected by the last hour of darkness, small boats carrying hundreds of Australian soldiers, in the first wave, men of the First Australian Imperial Force, were heading straight for these beaches. If they were cold it probably didn’t concern them much, for the adrenalin would have been pumping through their veins and their minds filled with other thoughts.

 

One of them wrote, ‘we are bound for our first baptism of fire’. Others may have wondered how they would react when they first experienced the shock of battle – rifle, machine gun fire and the crump of artillery shells. Would they survive? Would they stick by their mates? Would they let Australia down in this, their first big ask of the war?

 

And it was a big ask. The Anzacs, the Australians and New Zealanders, were to land hereabouts on Gallipoli, capture the heights behind us, and then fight their way inland across the peninsula, virtually to the other side – all in one day! Further south there would be the major British landing and eventually the two forces would meet up, capture the straits of the Dardanelles, clear the minefields therein and allow the warships of the Royal Navy to sail through to Istanbul and the Black Sea unimpeded.

 

It was seen as a war winning plan which would knock Germany’s ally, Turkey, out of the war, provide support to Russia and perhaps bring the conflict itself to a more rapid conclusion.

 

At 4.30 am on the 25 April, the first boats grounded around the little point just south of here, Ari Burnu. These were West Aussies, South Australians and Queenslanders. Landing quickly behind them were Tasmanians and more Western Australians.

 

The first shock to the men in the initial assault waves was the landscape. Instead of a gentle beach with a low bank and then fairly open country beyond, they faced steep cliffs. Some men hadn’t even got out of the boats before they were shot. Others, who jumped out, found the water up to their shoulders; some drowned.

 

Men began to race up the hills with a will – yelling in exuberance, laughing, singing and cursing – and within half an hour, in the growing dawn light, a number were up on the heights behind us. It had been a tough ascent under ferocious fire, but they kept on.

This very spot at North Beach was the scene of the initial fighting. The 12th Battalion, a mixture of Tasmanians and Western Australians, came ashore at this very place, into a cacophony of sound from the crack of Turkish bullets, and the thump of artillery fire. And there were the brief periods of silence, when the wounded would call for stretcher bearers, some perhaps praying for death, others moaning with pain.

They assaulted up Walker’s Ridge, right behind us, while others attacked the southern slopes of that amazing feature which towers over this site-the Sphinx. When some of the younger, fitter men of the 12th Battalion reached the top they were amazed to find, already there, their commanding officer, Colonel Lancelot Clarke, age 57.

 

At Gallipoli, men looking for leadership were drawn to him. On the ridge the colonel coolly took command: “Steady, you fellows! Get into some sort of formation and clear the bush as you go.” Reaching the Nek, he was anxious to get information back to the covering force commander. While standing, writing in his message book, he was shot, and fell dead with the pencil in one hand and notebook in the other.

 

It was there on top of the ridges that harder fighting began, as through the morning of 25 April, the Australians and New Zealanders tried to press on inland. But they did not get far because the Turks defended ferociously. A small group of the 11^th Battalion under Captain Eric Tulloch did reach the eastern side of Battleship Hill beyond where Baby 700 Cemetery stands today.

 

From there they could see the final prize – a patch of the straits of the Dardanelles. Tulloch’s men reached this point at about 9 am and for about half an hour they engaged the Turks in a pivotal struggle. But eventually, as the Turks worked their way around the little party and without reinforcements, the Australians were forced to retire.

 

They were among only a very few Anzacs ever to see the Dardanelles, although in the heat of battle it is likely that they never even noticed this glittering prize. Badly wounded, Captain Tulloch recuperated in Australia, eventually returning to the Battalion. He was later awarded the Military Cross for bravery in France in 1918.

 

Throughout the rest of the 25^th April, the Anzacs continued to fight desperately to secure a foothold on Gallipoli. As the day wore on it became clear that the original objectives of the landing-to seize the heights and race across the peninsula-would never be achieved.

 

One of the reasons why the Anzacs were unable to win out that day, was due to the quick thinking and decisive actions of a Turkish officer who fought against Captain Tulloch on the slopes of Battleship Hill.

 

As Tulloch looked up, he saw in the distance about 700 metres away, beside a lone tree, the figure of a Turkish officer giving orders to his men. Tulloch fired at him but missed. This officer was believed to have been Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal, commanding the 19th Turkish Division; the architect of the eventual Turkish victory and destined to become the revered father of the modern Republic of Turkey.

 

For it was Kemal who quickly realised that this landing was not, as some thought it might be, a diversion, but a major attack. Although in reserve, he decided to march straight to the tactically important area of Chunuk Bair and sent his men in a series of heavy counter-attacks against the Anzacs lasting right throughout the 25^th April.

 

By nightfall, hundreds of brave Turkish soldiers lay dead on the slopes of Battleship Hill, and all around that small perimeter of Turkish land that the Anzacs, with equal determination, had held on to. It was a day in which 2000 ANZACS of the initial 16,000 landed were either killed or wounded.

 

And here, for the next eight months, both sides stayed, dug in, sometimes only a hundred metres apart and neither able to make a decisive breakthrough. And throughout those months at Quinn’s Post, the Nek, Lone Pine and Shrapnel Gully, and through the vicissitudes of heat, cold, fire, flies, disease and the general horror and stench of war at close quarters there developed between Turk and ANZAC, a mutual respect.

 

On 24 May, after a massive Turkish counter attack on the ANZAC position was heavily repulsed, a truce to bury the thousands of dead and recover the wounded was negotiated. Diggers and Turks mingled on the battle field in these sad tasks. Gifts were exchanged and a mutual recognition of each others humanity was born. From that point there existed a common respect for each other, although the fighting remained as fierce as ever. Australians would throw tins of jam across the narrow no-mans land in exchange for Turkish tobacco.

 

Snipers competing in a deadly duel would signal misses as if on a firing range. In the final withdrawal, many units left notes and gifts for the victorious Turkish soldiers. Australians’ had developed admiration for a foe who fought hard but clean, and with whom we later shared a sense of history; indeed of nationhood, based on the enduring traits of courage, sacrifice and mutual respect.

 

But it was time to leave – stalemate had been reached, and at 4am on 20 December 1915, the last Australian troops quietly withdrew from what is now the Anzac Commemorative Site.  Subterfuge measures meant that only two soldiers were wounded during this brilliantly orchestrated withdrawal.

 

Perhaps it is only from the relative safety of our time, that we can we fully comprehend the scale of what was won and lost in the hard fought battles of the Gallipoli Campaign.  We lost a campaign with 26,000 casualties, but had won for us an enduring sense of national identity based on those iconic traits of mateship, courage, nous and compassion.

 

The Turks, now our good friends, won their campaign and from it emerged the great military commander, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, destined to become founder and leader of the modern Turkish Republic.

 

Today, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, at this most moving of places, we are summoned to recall the battle sacrifices of Australian farmers and tally clerks, teachers and labourers, and to commemorate outstanding courage and strength of character in the face of incredible and sustained adversity. But in losing a campaign, they won us a greater prize – an enduring sense of national identity.

 

Let us never forget.