Ninety years ago tomorrow, one of the bloodiest blunders in military history began. At dawn, the World War I star-crossed campaign of Gallipoli will be honored.
The bloody World War I landing of Australian and New Zealand troops in Gallipoli will be remembered at a solemn dawn ceremony on Monday.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, his New Zealand counterpart Helen Clark and Britain’s Prince Charles will make the pilgrimage to the Turkish bay.
The campaign was aimed at capturing Istanbul and providing a supply line to Russia 90 years ago.
But more than 100,000, including 20,000 Irish and British, never returned home.
The site of the down service is named Anzac cove after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who landed there on 25 April 1915.
Thousands of visitors from the two countries are expected to attend the largest gathering ever at the site.
The campaign ended eight months later, when the Allied Forces abandoned the peninsula.
“To walk on the battlefields of Gallipoli is to walk on ground where so much blood was shed it has become almost sacred soil,” Helen Clark said at a ceremony to honour Turkey’s fallen troops on Sunday.
“For New Zealand as for Australia it was at Gallipoli that our young nations came of age.”
Go read for much more on the tragic campaign. I would also recommend the Mel Gibson flick of the same name.
I, for one, will mark the day with the haunting tune “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” by the Pogues.
But the band played Waltzing Matilda
As we stopped to bury our slain
We buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then we started all over again
Full lyrics can be found here.