Blog category - Battlefield Tours

A Rainy Day in Istanbul – Simpson Prize 2011

19 April 2011 by Stuart Baines. 3 Comments
Battlefield Tours, Istanbul, Simpson Prize 2011

A wet day in Istanbul.
Day two of the Simpson prize tour was soggy. The rain rolled in over the city last night, the sound soothing the tired travellers whilst we tried to sleep. Unfortunately when we woke the rain had not really let up so we new we would need our trusty ponchos and water proof jackets. The rain didn’t make the city any less beautiful, in fact it seemed to make things gleam and the drops dripping from the Tulips in between showers really only made it more special.
The day started with a typically lavish meal of pastries, cured meats and cereal, all washed down with some coffee and tea to steel our bodies for the rain. We started the day at the Blue Mosque and hippodrome where we stood on the site of ancient chariot races and marvelled at the age of the Egyptian monoliths that adorn the former stadium. The students met some of the locals and spent time taking in the buildings that surround the area. As the rain grew heavier we moved inside the Blue mosque, so called because of the beautiful rich blue and white tiles that cover the walls. The mosque is still an active place of worship and not only did we learn about the ritual of prayer we also witnessed a local going through his pre prayer ritual. Our Turkish guide, Fred we call him, helped us understand some of the practice of prayer and taught us all about the traditions of the mosque and how they have evolved. Inside the Mosque the busy and growing tide of tourists all seemed to be struck by the beauty of the space, their heads tilted back looking at the painted inner dome and its blue and red ornate patterns. This did mean that many a barefoot was trodden on because it seemed that all those that didn’t have a camera over there face were wandering slowly taking in this beauty and not their surroundings. After we left the mosque into a heavier down pour we detoured back to the hotel to collect ponchos and the straight back out to Topkapi Palace
Topkapi Palace was the main residence of the sultan. It is a stunning place. Not a palace like that you may find in France or Britain it a series of buildings which range from a 2500 staff kitchen to feed the local poor to treasury, Istanbul’s first mint, military meeting rooms, a lounge for the sultans ladies even a circumcision house. One of the key exhibits in the Palace is the spoonmakers diamond, so called because legend says that it was found in a rubbish bin by a poor man who traded it for 3 wooden spoons. It is 86 carats!
My off beat interesting fact for the day didn’t revolve around Sultans, Diamond or chariots, it was actually about dogs. There seem to be many stray dogs particularly around the hippodrome, they are beautiful animals that look well fed if not a little grubby. Most of these pooches are sporting a bright orange ear tag. Apparently Turks in Istanbul like animals but don’t like them in their homes so “strays” are generally treated quite well and often fed by the locals. The local authorities even catch the dogs and give them shots, tag them so that everyone knows they have had them and then let them carry on roaming the streets.

Simpson Prize 2011

18 April 2011 by Stuart Baines. No comments
Battlefield Tours, Simpson Prize 2011

The first day in Istanbul and the excitement and adventure of being in this wonderful city has kept away the fatigue from the long flight. After settling in at the hotel we decided that we should prepare ourselves for our excursion later in trip to the Bazzar by going and getting a little taste. The excuse was fresh air. The experience is amazing and although only a taste really shows the difference in culture. The mosque near the Bazzar is interesting and was interesting to learn how the Bazzar had grown from there.

The next stop was a cruise of the Bosphorous where we marvelled at the architecture particularly the places that lined the water’s edge. It was warm in the sun and the cold wind against our faces seemed to live everyone up for the day ahead. After coming ashore it was off to the military museum which has an enormous collection that reminded us all of how short Australian European history is.

The food is amazing and there is a lot of it. I am very glad that they don’t weigh us before we get back on the plane.

Simpson Prize 2011

15 April 2011 by Stuart Baines. No comments
Battlefield Tours, Simpson Prize 2011

It is that time of year again when we draw closer to the most significant day of commemoration on the Australian calander, ANZAC Day. Two of the key places to remember the service and sacrifice of those who have served their country are the Australian War Memorial and ANZAC cove itself. These two ANZAC Day dawn services find prominent places on many Australians “to do” lists but only some will be lucky enough to tick both off their list.

The Memorial has long been a supporter of the Simpson Prize, the premier history essay writing competition for Australian secondary students in the country. Students from around the country write an essay answering a question about the ANZAC story and those lucky few winners, one from each state and territory, travel to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and then later on to Gallipoli for the ANZAC Day Dawn service. Accompanied by two teachers and guides from the Memorial, the students will spend time in Turkey understanding the people and the culture as well as walking the ground that Australians and Ottoman Turks fought over almost 100 years ago.  

As one of the two guides and the Education Manager here at the Memorial, I will be accompanying the students. I will be posting some photos, reflections and the odd story about this trip and hopefully I will be able to give you all a feel of just what this experience is like.

The flight out to Turkey is tomorrow night and I will post regularly, stay tuned…

Just a reminder that the student blog is at http://simpsonprize2011.wordpress.com/

Australian War Memorial Fromelles tour, 2010

19 February 2010 by Peter Burness. 7 Comments
Battlefield Tours,News, cemetery, ceremony, Flanders, Fromelles, Pheasant Wood

A  unique and remarkable ceremony of Australian national significance will be conducted in France on 19 July 2010.  It will be the culmination of the long search for those killed, and whose bodies were never recovered, in the disastrous Battle of Fromelles in French Flanders 94 years ago.  Now discovered, 250 bodies are finally being laid to rest in the specially constructed Fromelles Pheasant Wood Military Cemetery. 

The first burials of these Australian and British soldiers commenced on 30 January this year. After the fighting in 1916, the Germans had gathered the bodies into pits.  Now, these soldiers have been reinterred through February, one by one, with each subsequent day’s burials conducted as a formal military funeral with a bearer party and padre in attendance. 

Evidence has been taken from each of the bodies which may lead to some of them being identified.  From April permanent headstones will be placed over the graves, and it is expected that some of them will bear soldiers’ names. 

The main concluding ceremony in July will commemorate the battle, honour all those who took part, and formally mark the completion of the archaeological excavations and the reinterment of all those whose bodies which were found on the outskirts of Pheasant Wood at the edge of the small village of Fromelles.  A large attendance of dignitaries, families, locals, and public is expected. British, French and Australian media will cover the event. 

I will have the privilege of attending the ceremony accompanying a battlefield tour group arranged by the Australian War Memorial, and Boronia Travel Centre.  Anyone can join the party, and you are encouraged to sign up early by contacting the agent ph. +61 (03) 9762 2111) or the Memorial ph. +61 (02) 62434 3243). 

The occasion will have special meaning for me.  I have made the journey to the Western Front more than 20 times and have seen numerous battlefields.  But the Fromelles ceremony will be a unique event.  The war cemeteries adjoining battlefields are always deeply moving.  Sometimes I have had the honour of being in the company of veterans or those whose father or a relative fought there. Looking at the surviving evidence, after considering the battles that were waged and the lives that were lost, one also sees the immense effort that occupied a generation of workers to ensure that those killed were remembered.  The cemeteries are still meticulously maintained.  The new Pheasant Wood cemetery is a revival of that activity; it is the first Commonwealth War Graves Commission First World War cemetery constructed since the immediate post war years.  

Travelling in an Australian battlefield group is sometimes emotional, often fun, and always fulfilling.  Joining a group with a common interest and mutual sense of pride creates strong bonds.  I will accompany the group in my familiar role as historian-guide.  Our agent, the most experienced in the field, is there to provide personal attention and to ensure a high standard of accommodation, meals, and travel.  It is reassuring to know that things will go right. 

Fromelles, and the unique ceremony there, is the special focus for this tour.  However it is important to remember that this was just one of many major battles fought by the Australian Imperial Force on the Western Front.  Most were longer and in many the total casualties were higher.  Places such as Pozieres, Bullecourt, Ypres, Zonnebeke, Passchendaele, Amiens, Villers-Bretonneux, Peronne, and Mont St Quentin are among those of similar importance to Fromelles.  They too will be remembered. 

The battlefield tour runs from 5 – 22 July.  It will go to all the First World War places of major importance to Australians.  We will visit the Australian National Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux and participate in the Last Post ceremony at the historic Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres.  I will be there to provide historical background, an explanation of each place visited and to introduce you to our friends in France.  There will also be time to see Paris and go to Verdun and the famous Champagne region.

 Battle of Fromelles in brief:

Australians were thrilled by the stories of their troops’ exploits on Gallipoli in 1915. The next year, in early 1916, the Australian divisions finally joined the British army in France and Belgium.  At last they had arrived in the war’s main battle theatre.  Here, on the Western Front, they met a new form of fighting. 

At first the Australians were in a relatively quiet sector in France.  Still, there were periods of stiff fighting, shelling, and some heavy raids; by the end of June over 600 men had been killed.  But by now the British main efforts had shifted to the Somme 100 kilometres away to the south.  Resulting from heavy British losses, the Australians were soon drawn in.

While three divisions went to the Somme, the most recently arrived division, the 5^th, remained in French Flanders.  There it went into the trenches opposite the shattered village of Fromelles which sat on commanding ground behind the German front line. 

British troops had fought around Fromelles in 1915, with heavy losses, but the village would soon give its name to a fresh disaster.  On the evening of 19 July the Australian 5^th Division and the British 61^st Division attacked the Fromelles ridge in a diversionary attack intended to draw German attention from the allies’ Somme operations. 

The two divisions chosen for this battle were both new to the sector and lacked local battle experience.  The men had to assault over open fields criss-crossed with drainage ditches and in the face of heavy machine-gun and artillery fire.  Many fell, while others were overwhelmed by German counter-attacks.  The attack failed, with 5500 Australian casualties, and no ground was taken.  It was a cruel introduction to major combat, one from which the 5^th Division was a long time recovering. 

Brigadier General H.E. “Pompey” Elliott, a veteran officer who commanded the 15^th Brigade in the battle, later said:

“Practically all my best officers, the ANZAC men who helped build up my brigade, are dead.  I presume there was some plan at the back of the attack but it is difficult to know what it was”.

 Extract from: Peter Burness, ANZACs in France, 1916. (2006).

Peter Burness is Senior Historian at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra

More information:

• Peter Burness’ post from 2009 called Fromelles’s missing
•  The  Fromelles section of the Australian Army website
• Issue 44 of Wartime, the Memorial’s official magazine, contains many articles about Fromelles

Final Simpson Prize post

18 May 2009 by Andrew Gray. 5 Comments
Battlefield Tours,News, Simpson Prize 2009

The Simpson Prize students have now been back in Oz for just over two weeks  – enough time to re-adjust and reflect on our experiences.   Here are some thoughts from most of the gang.  This is the final blog entry, so thanks to those who have followed the experiences and for any year 9 or 10 students interested in applying to this year’s competition, you can see what sort of experience the winners have on their trip.

  

Istanbul evening

Megan Prouatt

After eleven days of sharing an experience, and getting to know such an awesome and unique bunch of people as the ones that attended the Simpson Prize Trip 2009, it’s sad being separated by our different states.  On top of that, I’m missing our after dinner intense games of spoons and the other card games Andrew taught us, although most of those surpassed my intelligence anyway.

read on

Students from around Australia

28 April 2009 by Andrew Gray. 7 Comments
Battlefield Tours, Simpson Prize

It’s always interesting and entertaining for me to discover the character of the young Aussies who come on the Simpson Prize trip.  Here’s a rough sketch of each one.

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Recovery and return

28 April 2009 by Andrew Gray. No comments
Battlefield Tours, Simpson Prize

The return to the hotel after our big Anzac morning was a chance to relax, catch up on sleep and do whatever we felt like.  As it was a lovely warm day, Maddy and Lauren braved the waters for another swim, others walked and talked on the beach, Varun learnt card games – Pisti and Kapti Kacti – from our bus driver, while the more senior members of the group snoozed.

The day after Anzac Day was farewell to the Kum Hotel and back to Istanbul.  We stopped at the Turkish 57th Regiment to lay a wreath, with Varun and our bus driver doing the honours.  Our wreath, in Turkish, read “The epic story of heroism and friendship started here”.  A very subdued bus trip back with some nodding off and others lost in their thoughts had us back in Istanbul, visiting Haggia Soffia (Ayasofya) before heading to the hotel.

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Anzac Day

26 April 2009 by Andrew Gray. 11 Comments
Battlefield Tours, Gallipoli, Simpson Prize

Well, by the look of all the comments we don’t have to tell you what we’ve been up to, as you’ve seen us in action on TV.  Before Lone Pine, though, we had of course been at the Dawn Service at North Beach.  We got up after midnight, dressed warmly (some with every layer they possibly could) and headed off to the site.  It was amazing to see the place full of people in sleeping bags and in the stands.  Thanks to Dept of Veterans Affairs we got some great seats, just behind the NSW Premier’s group of students.  It was at the front of the stands, close to the water so we had a great view of the commemorative site and sea with lights shooting out across it.

While it was cold waiting for dawn, Andrew assured us we were lucky that there was no cold wind like last year.  There was an interpretive program that ran on the big screens either side of the site that included interviews with people who had travelled to Gallipoli for the services and a presentation of soldiers names and details of a few Australian and New Zealand soldiers killed in the campaign – very moving.

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The frontline and the coast

25 April 2009 by Andrew Gray. 7 Comments
Battlefield Tours, Gallipoli, Simpson Prize

Today we braved the elements and walked the frontline at Anzac from Lone Pine to Walkers Ridge.  Lone Pine is the site for the main Australian service on Anzac Day so it’s full of action with seating stands, a/v equipment, catafalque party rehearsals and musicians trying to warm up.  Many of the soldiers we were to present had no known grave, so we found their names on the memorial wall and did rubbings to add to our photos and poppies, to present in other areas. read on

Cultural exchange in Helles

24 April 2009 by Andrew Gray. No comments
Battlefield Tours, Gallipoli, Simpson Prize

The day before our big night at Anzac dawned clear and sunny.  While there was still a cool breeze blowing, we were pleased to see a change in the weather.  The plan for the morning was to travel down south to Helles and visit site of some of the big battles in this area.  However, we hadn’t counted on the enthusiasm of Turkish authorities to close off roads due to memorial services at some of the sites.

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