Opening of exhibition
“Canakkale / Gallipoli 1915 – 2015 – Road from War to Peace”
Military History Museum Vienna
22 September 2015 at 7 pm
Speech by Ambassador David Stuart
Excellencies
Director of the Museum (Colonel Ortner)
Honourable members of the military
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is an honour and pleasure for me to speak to you today at the opening of the exhibition “Canakkale / Gallipoli 1915 – 2015 – Road from War to Peace”, an exhibition put together by the Embassies of Australia, New Zealand and Turkey. For the peoples of our countries, the Gallipoli campaign, known in Turkey as the Battle of Canakkale, has particular significance. I would particularly like to thank my New Zealand and Turkish colleagues and the Museum of Military History for jointly putting together the current exhibition.
This year marks 100 years since the ANZACs, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, landed on the shores of Gallipoli, Turkey in 1915. At dawn on 25 April 1915, approximately 75,000 soldiers from the Allied Forces, representing 12 countries, landed on the Gallipoli peninsula. Around 5,000 were ANZACs.
The battles that ensued were particularly fierce. Both sides suffered heavy casualties. Before the eight month long campaign finished, 2,721 New Zealand soldiers and 8,141 Australians lost their lives, and many more were seriously wounded. On the first day alone, on 25 April 1915, more than 2,000 Australians were killed or wounded.
Soldiers from across Australia served at Gallipoli at a time when our nation was still young. Gallipoli has shaped our national identity and consciousness. It was the beginning of what we call the Anzac tradition. The Anzac spirit has continuing meaning for our veterans and their families, our servicemen and women, but also for our younger generation.
On Anzac Day and with this exhibition, we also remember our enemy at Gallipoli, the Turkish soldiers who fought and gave their all for their country. They were a respected enemy at the time and are now our good friends, united by an unusual bond of respect, first forged in the trenches of Gallipoli and continuing now over one hundred years. Kemal Atatürk was a commander on the Turkish side at Gallipoli and wrote a moving tribute to the ANZACs who fought there. We continue to appreciate his words, which are also inscribed in a memorial on Anzac Parade in Canberra.
To put the Gallipoli campaign in its historic context, I would commend to you Eugene Rogan’s book, “The Fall of the Ottomans. The Great War in the Middle East”. (Basic Books, New York, 2015). It describes how the Russians pressed for a British and French offensive in the Dardanelles to relieve Turkish pressure from them in the Caucasus, following Turkey’s early gains in the East around Christmas 1914.
While circumstances in the East were to change quickly, Kitchener [Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War] warmed to the notion of a Dardanelles campaign as it would put the Allies in striking distance of Istanbul. He decided to add a major land force to the naval forces that had been deployed – so 36,000 Anzac troops were ordered to join the 10,000 strong Royal Naval Division at Moudres. France also mobilised 18,000 troops, both French and colonial.
In March 1915, following serious Allied naval reverses in the Dardanelles, the numbers were further strengthened and Kitchener committed a ground force of 75,000 to the campaign.
This was described as the “greatest seaborne landing yet attempted” (Rogan, p. 142). The planning for this ambitious, vastly multi-national enterprise was compacted into just one month.
The commander of the Ottoman Fifth Army, the German officer Otto Liman von Sanders, later recorded that those four weeks were just enough to “complete the most indispensable arrangements” (Rogan p.143). He deployed two divisions on the Asian side of the Dardanelles and three on the 60 mile-long Gallipoli peninsula, concentrated at Cape Helles, Ariburnu (later to be called Anzac Cove) and Bulair. The commander of the Turkish soldiers at Ariburnu was Colonel Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Rogan describes the Anzac Cove attack as follows:
“The first wave of Australian troops set off for the Ariburnu coast at dawn on 25 April. Their intended landing site was stretch of beach to the north of a rocky promontory known as Gaba Tepe. However the strength of the currents off the coastline meant that the landing craft drifted well off course landing a mile or more north of the landing site in a small bay – now called Anzac Cove. This meant that the landscape they faced was totally different with an extra ridge to scale to reach the high plateau” (p. 153)…..
[Once onshore] the carefully scripted battle plan began to unravel…Soldiers were separated from their commanding officers, and units got intermixed. Under fire and fired up, the Australian soldiers fell in with the nearest officer, fixed bayonets and began to charge up the first ridge of hills to drive back the Ottoman defenders…. [which gave them] a false sense of confidence as the Ottomans were already beginning to prepare to repel the invaders.” (p.154)
For all the carnage and confusion, the Anzac forces secured the central stretch of beaches in the Cove and forced the Turkish defenders from the first and second ridges overlooking them. 15,000 troops landed, with a casualty rate of 20 per cent.
This was the beginning of months of attacks and counter-attacks, of bitter trench warfare, extraordinary attempts to break through the Turkish positions on the high ridges and of formidable courage and determination on all sides. Kitchener resolved to further reinforce the invasion force. Five more divisions were sent. Some of the fiercest fighting of the whole campaign, including at Lone Pine and Nek, took place in the Allies’ August offensive. But it did not break the Turkish positions.
Field Marshall Kitchener sailed to Gallipoli determined to avoid withdrawal. As Rogan describes it:
“On 13 November the prime mover of the Dardanelles campaign finally visited the front to which he had sent so many British, French and colonial troops…He saw Gallipoli, and he understood: “the country is much more difficult than I had imagined,” Kitchener was later to write... “and the Turkish positions are natural fortresses which, if not taken by surprise at first, could be held against very serious attack by larger forces than have been engaged”.
The evacuation of Anzac and Suvla was conducted with much greater efficiency than the first landings, and completed on 20 December. The last of the Allied forces left Helles Point of 9 January 1916. The ground campaign in Gallipoli lasted 259 days.
****
This exhibition shows photographs and images provided by our three countries. Many of them will give you a sense of the topography of the campaign, and the strength of will and discipline it must have taken to fight there.
The Australian photos were provided by the Australian War Memorial (AWM) which has a large and unique collection of photographs that record the Australian experience of the campaign. Many of the photographs presented were taken by Charles Ryan. He served as a senior medical officer in the Australian Imperial Force at Gallipoli.
The photos give an overview of what life was like at Gallipoli. You will see photos of trenches, dugouts, stores of food and material, and of the men who fought so fiercely and courageously.
I would like to draw your attention to a few photos represented in the exhibition:
In one photo, you will see Australian troops and a kangaroo in front of the pyramids in Egypt. Why Egypt? The Australian forces were based there to protect the Suez Canal in the event of an Ottoman attack. When the decision was made to land in Gallipoli, the forces in Egypt were redeployed to fight in Gallipoli. Why is there a kangaroo? This was a mascot the soldiers had brought with them from home, and passed to a local zoo when they had to leave.
Another photo is of “Simpson and his donkey”. [There is a second photo of Simpson in the Turkish pictures.] Private John Simpson landed on 25 April as a stretcher bearer with the 3rd Australian Field Ambulance. He used one of the donkeys brought for carrying water to help bring the wounded to medical aid. He was killed by machine gun fire carrying two wounded men on 19 May. His story featured in later news articles and is part of the continuing image of Gallipoli for Australians.
These stories exemplify that behind every photo, many stories are hidden: stories of courage, persistence, mateship, commitment, respect for the enemy and hope.
Once again, I would like to thank Ambassador Geels, Ambassador Gögüs, Director Ortner and their colleagues for working with us on this exhibition.
Thank you.