Gallipoli, 1915
Compassion on the battlefield
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 EVERY year on April 25, Australia and New Zealand celebrate the anniversary of Anzac Day &ndash the day that British, Australian and New Zealand troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915. The purpose of the campaign, as conceived by Churchill, was to seize the European side of the Dardanelles, allow the allied fleet to sail through the straits to Constantinople, and knock Turkey out of the Great War.
But like many of the "grand designs" of the period, it was poorly conceived, incompetently executed, and eventually frustrated — firstly by the steep terrain, and secondly by the courage and fortitude of the Turkish soldiers under the command of Mustafa Kemal. By the time the last allied troops were withdrawn, on January 9, 1916, they had suffered 213,980 casualties.
The legacy was not one of bitterness, however. In fact, in more than 25 years, I have never met a New Zealander who dislikes Turkey. "The decency and fairness with which the Turk makes war came as a pleasant surprise to the Australasians," E.C. Buley writes in A Tribute to the Turk &ndash the last chapter of Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War, which was published in London in late 1915.
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 "The testimony of the Australasians who fell into Turkish hands is now to hand and shows that they are treated with remarkable consideration." Later in the chapter, Buley quotes an Australian soldier who had an interesting story to tell about a Turkish soldier, known affectionately to the Australians as Fatty Burns, who walked into no man's land to help two wounded Australian soldiers:
"We watched him stroll over to the two men and lift up their heads and give them a drink of water each. He tried to make them comfortable, with us looking on, hardly able to believe our eyes. Then he strolled back quite unconcerned; and we
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gave him a cheer. That's not all. Just before dusk he came out again, and dragged both men over near a bit of cover, so that we could get them in when dark came. And these are the people that were supposed to be cruel!"
In his next paragraph, the Australian soldier recounts an incident that came close to fraternization: "We always had too much bully beef, and when we left the firing line we had to dispose of the surplus and leave the trench in order for those who relieved us. This time we made up our minds to chuck the beef — there were three four-pound tins of it — across to old Fatty Burns. We did, and there was a terrible hullabaloo when it landed. I suppose they thought they were some new-fangled bombs. But an hour or so later someone threw a whole lot of fine dates into the trench, and we reckoned it was Fatty. Someone said they might be poisoned, but we risked that and enjoyed them fine."
The book concludes: "Yes, the Turk has taught us to respect him for a fair and brave fighter and a dashed sight better man than the fat-faced Germans I've seen driving him against our trenches with their revolvers and the flat of their swords. He is a cunning beggar, is Bismillah; but we bear him no malice for that. It is a pity he was dragged into this scrap by those German beasts. They are the enemy we are all longing to have a cut at. But when poor old Bismillah comes charging in droves against our trenches we hardly like to shoot him down with machine-guns. As one of our chaps said: 'It hardly seems fair...' "
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ABOVE: The allied landing at Anzac Cove on April 25, 1915. The caption to the illustration on the right reads: This is one of the most remarkable photographs taken of the Dardanelles fighting, since it shows the water on the right...pitted by the spray of shrapnel bullets. Click here for Gallipoli Picture Gallery.
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HOMEPAGE
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