Eternal flashpoints smoulder long after
Exploring origins and realities of a mortal battle far from home.
WE DROVE west from Istanbul to Gallipoli, fields of sunflowers (called moonflowers by the Turks) forming guards of honour on each side of the road for five hours. Overhead, storks gathered like squadrons, circling and waiting to form an orderly V then return to the African sun.
I’m on a busman’s holiday for five weeks having tried, unsuccessfully, to wriggle out of this column, so there’ll be postcards from warm spots, interspersed with commentary on New Zealand viewed from the wrong end of a telescope. By that I mean Godzone’s political headlines viewed from afar seem piteously petty.
Tonight I write from Assos, elsewhere it could be Messina, Albania, Montenegro, Hvar, Zadar
We sent them to slaughter, as inscribed on the New Zealand memorial, ‘From the Uttermost Ends of the Earth’ – for what gain?
then I’ll vote in Slovenia before coming home to maybe a government formed by committee?
The region we’re touring was chosen partly because I became slightly obsessed with reading about the causes of World War I then found you can’t just learn about the 1914-18 conflict in isolation. Like peeling layers from globe artichokes, you have to read about the Balkan and Crimean conflicts, go back through the Byzantine then Ottoman periods. Even study the Crusades.
Nearly one hundred years ago 2779 New Zealand soldiers came to this Gallipoli peninsular and never returned.
I had no relatives among them; nobody I knew, so there is no personal reason for my visit, just a curiosity and patriotic need. We’ve always wanted to visit, and have no wish to be part of the pomp at next year’s ceremony.
Today is quiet; no crowds. On April 25, 1915, the same evergreen shrubs – prickly and tough – covered these steep hills rising from the 12-metre beach on which our Anzacs landed. They surged up – boys, young men, so enthusiastic. But Ataturk was too good; an outstanding Ottoman colonel prepared to shoot his own superior to defend his beloved country from invasion.
Strange things happened in those trenches just metres apart, where enemies so fierce respected each other so much, but in the end we were forced to retreat.
These days I try to be a grown up and cry on the inside, but not here.
Not at Anzac Cove, reading Ataturk’s words, spoken in 1934, etched on his memorial: ‘‘Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives. You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace, after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.’’
Not when I stood on Chunuk Bair, captured by LieutenantColonel William Malone. Felled by an allied shell, Malone also refused orders to imperil his men. And the rows of white tombstones, beautifully tended; Trooper GR Seager, for instance, of the 9th Australian Light Horse, killed August 7th age 17, ‘‘He died a man and closed his life’s brief day ere it had scarce begun.’’
We sent them to slaughter, as inscribed on the New Zealand memorial, ‘‘From the Uttermost Ends of the Earth’’ – for what gain? Turkey gained a leader and hero, but what did New Zealand achieve?
Wars never really end, they keep fomenting eternal flashpoints, hence today’s horrors in Syria, Iraq, Gaza. Learning from history doesn’t seem to avoid repeating it.