ANZAC Cove

Sunday was the anniversary of the beginning of the Dardanelles campaign – or Gallipoli as it is commonly referred to. Being married to a kiwi and having lived for some time in Australia I am very aware of how this event profoundly influenced those countries and shaped both their sense of nationhood and their place in the “Empire” as it then was. It was also a seminal moment in the development of modern Turkey as the old Ottoman empire collapsed, and Kamel Attaturk built his record as a formidable military commander.

The place itself is an extraordinarily beautiful location. Turquoise sea and timber clad coves, but the hillsides are still cut with the remains of slit trenches and redoubts now overgrown. Yet it has that sense of place so beloved of poets that even if you were unaware of its history you would detect that momentous and significant events had taken place there. For me visiting it for the first time, more than 20 years ago now, was a very affecting experience. I was lucky to be visiting with a small group of friends most of whom were Australian and New Zealanders. Ironically I was the only the only person from the group to have any relation involved in the campaign, and I had carried my grandfathers polished steel field mirror with me on the trip. We arrived late in the eventing and slept on the beach in Anzac Cove lighting a fire and talking late into the night. Before dawn we swam out into the cove and watched the sun come up from our vantage point out in the water. The silence and beauty of it all seemed so at odds with the knowledge of the carnage noise and death that we knew had happened there. For me it was a very moving and spiritual event and one that will always remain a solemn but treasured memory. As a reminder of the impact of war and, for me, the futility and waste of conflicts such as these, it has little to equal it.

When I visit an RSA in NZ and the lights are dimmed at the moment when we pay our respect to the fallen my mind often goes back to that place, to its peacefulness, its beauty and the terrible loss of life. We will remember them and their sacrifice.