Pilgrimage to site of Gallipoli battle marks centennial
GALLIPOLI, Turkey — For the first time at age 95, Bill Grayden has come to Gallipoli, where his father stormed the beach and took a bullet through his lung during the ill-fated British-led World War I invasion.
Grayden was among thousands of Australians and New Zealanders who made the pilgrimage from the southern hemisphere to this distant peninsula in Turkey. They joined world leaders at a dawn service Saturday marking exactly 100 years since the invasion, which had aimed to secure a naval route from the Mediterranean to Istanbul through the Dardanelles, and take the Ottomans out of the war.
During the emotional ceremony, Britain’s Prince Charles and the prime ministers of Australia and New Zealand spoke of the heroism of the soldiers from their countries and other Allied nations.
“For so many, the rising sun that day would be their last,” Australia’s Chief of Defense, Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, told the crowd of thousands gathered at Anzac Cove near the landing site.
That was not the case for Bill Grayden’s father Len. Five days after the landing, the elder Grayden was found wounded and nearly motionless on the field. He was evacuated to a hospital ship and ultimately survived.
Len Grayden would return to Australia to raise a family. His son Bill later served in campaigns in World War II and became a politician. He has raised 10 children of his own, and now has 44 grand- children, 20 great grandchildren and one great-great grandchild.
The Gallipoli campaign also altered the course for the countries on both sides of the trenches. The landings marked the start of a fierce battle that lasted eight months. Around 44,000 Allied troops and 86,000 Ottoman soldiers died.
The tragic fate of troops from Australia and New Zea- land is said to have inspired an identity distinct from the British. The anniversary of the start of the land campaign on April 25, known as Anzac Day, after the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps, is marked as a coming of age for both nations.
The doomed offensive came to be seen as a folly of British war planning. The decision to launch the attack nearly ended the career of Winston Churchill, who as First Lord of the Admiralty came up with the plan he thought would help bring an early end to the war.
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk used his prominence as a commander at Gallipoli, known as Canakkale to the Turks, to vault into prominence, lead Turkey’s War of Independence and ultimately found the Turkish Republic.