Could you survive the experience?
Living Conditions
Life for the New Zealand soldier on Gallipoli was tough.
Packed inside the tiny Anzac perimeter, less than 6km2, they endured extreme weather and primitive living conditions during their eight months on the peninsula. During summer ( June-August), temperatures soared, while the winter months (NovemberJanuary) brought rain, snow and bonechilling winds.
After a few months in crowded conditions on the peninsula, soldiers began to come down with dysentery and typhoid because of inadequate sanitation, unburied bodies and swarms of flies. Poor food, water shortages and exhaustion reduced the men’s resistance to disease.
“Whenever possible…a man paired off with a mate and established a ‘bivvy’…With pick and shovel a cut was made in a slope that gave protection from the bullets of the snipers, and if possible from the bursts of shrapnel. A couple of salvaged oil sheets pinned across with salvaged bayonets made a roof that would keep out the dew at night and the sun glare by day. Furnishings consisted of commandeered sandbags or old vercoats for softening the hardness of the ked floor, a cut down petrol tin for a ‘b th’ and whole one for storing water. As s on as the work was finished the flies and th lice – th permanent r sidents – took up the r abode”
Ormond urton, The Silent Division, 935 Poor food contributed to a general deterioration in the men’s health. T oops ived on a sta l di t o n db ll beef, army b scui s and am; fr s nd
-e . ation was also a problem. With up to 25,000 men packed into such a cramped space, latrines filled up fast and there was limited space for new ones. Body lice became endemic, and diseases like diarrhoea, dysentery and enteric fever (typhoid) flourished in the unsanitary conditions.
“Bully beef and biscuits. You couldn’t eat your biscuit dry. It was like chewing rock. You’d break your teeth in the biscuits if you got stuck into them. You had to soak it. For pudding we used to have biscuit soaking in water and the jam all mixed up together.” Russell Weir, Wellington Battalion, in Jane Tolerton, An Awfully Big Adventure: New Zealand World War One veterans tell their stories, 2013
The stench of the dead made living conditions even worse. Unburied corpses littered no man’s land, while others lay in shallow graves close to the dugouts of the living. In the searing heat of summer, the rotting corpses, food and body waste were the perfect breeding ground for flies and the diseases they spread. Swarms of flies tormented the men, turning simple tasks such as preparing and eating food into horrible ordeals.
Psychological pressures magnified the physical hardships. Service in the front line was always dangerous. Opposing trenches were extremely close – barely four metres apart in some places. At this range, enemy hand grenades, or ‘bombs’, caused a steady stream of casualties. Danger also lurked behind the front line. No place within the tiny perimeter was safe from enemy fire, and Ottoman shells and snipers took a toll of troops in support areas.
Medical treatment
For those wounded on Gallipoli, the wait for treatment and evacuation was often long and agonising. Medical services at Gallipoli were a shambles… the sheer scale of casualties overwhelmed the available medical resources.