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Hospital Tent at Rest Gully Gallipoli

02 December 2011 by Dianne Rutherford. 2 Comments
Collection,From the collection, First World War, Gallipoli, Gallipoli Mission, Heraldry, hospital

My name’s Sean Limn, and I’ve been doing work experience at the War Memorial for the past week. One of my tasks whilst at the Memorial was to research a collection item, a piece of an old tent found at Gallipoli in 1919. The tent piece was found at Rest Gully, and is from a hospital tent left during the evacuation in December 1915. The tent was left behind as part of the ruse  to prevent the Turks from realising that an evacuation was taking place.

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ANZAC Day at Gallipoli – Simpson Prize 2011

25 April 2011 by Stuart Baines. 3 Comments
Battlefield Tours,Family history, ANZAC Day, Gallipoli, Simpson Prize 2011

Well today was the day, the pinnacle of the experience and certainly a big part of why these students entered the prize.

The day started for us with a midnight wake up call. We needed to allow plenty of time to beat the traffic and certainly to get as close as we can to the service. When you consider that our hotel is the closets hotel to the dawn service and that we are only about 8 kms away, you can start to imagine how hard it is to get people into the site for this commemoration. So it was a heart starter coffee and on the bus by 1 am and the anticipation from the students was palpable. They certainly recognised the significance of what they were about to do. I think they were all excited before hand as well because despite our best advice of when to sleep, it went unheeded and they played poll and Backgammon right up until it was time to go. They are paying for it now though as most of them practically fell asleep in their lunch.

Arriving at the service we went through the usual security checks and then it was on to our reserved seating. We knew we had a long wait and we rugged up, got some sleeping bags and wore half our suitcases at once. Four hours in the cold before the service was to start so we didn’t want to be under dressed. I didn’t have a sleeping bag and Lauren lost hers somewhere (turns out it was on the bus) but Chelsea was kind enough to unzip hers and share. I think they made a psychological difference more than a physical barrier from the cold. All around the centre of the site was a sea of long coloured sleeping bags and the backpackers cocooned inside them. Oddly enough it made me crave snake lollies. The big screens showed snippets of documentaries about the campaign and the Air force band played some nice tunes. As the morning went on it grew colder and colder and activity had to happen to take our mind off it. We walked down around the food stalls and smelled the beautiful BBQ’d meats and coffee and looked at the market stalls. It was all you would probably expect, t-shirts, jackets, blankets and the food was mainly kebabs, hot chips, skewers etc. On the boards of more than one food van, under the high priced food list was a dish called “Observation”. Despite our best efforts we still don’t know what observation was and if it was tasty but it was 10 Turkish Lira and some sort of obscurely miss translated food.

The service was beautiful and very solemn. The crowd were in the spirit of the occasion and it looked to be a good size crowd. We sat at the front of the seated section and watched the dignitaries walk along next to our stand to make their entrance. All the speeches were great and as seems to be the case the last post moved many to tears. Just as the light started to gently wash over us and as quickly as it had all begun it was over and those thousands of visitors shuffled out quietly to the sound of waves lapping at the shore of the beach.

We then started our long trek up the artillery road to the Lone Pine service. This service would have special meaning for all the Simpson Prize kids as they would play and active and very important role in the service. They were to act as the wreath orderlies. What an exceptional job they did. They had been well drilled by Andrew and I and I am sure that the organisers were a little shocked, but pleasantly so, that the students knew exactly what they were doing. This ceremony kicks off mid morning and is a different kind of ceremony. IT is much more relaxed and in some ways the relaxed and more intimate commemoration touched a few of the students more than the dawn. The Fanatics were there and very well behaved and good to see their numbers still good for this important day. At the end of the service the students lay their own wreath and to me it seemed like a very fitting way to mark the end of the day and cap of their experience.

Going to the Front – Simpson Prize 2011

22 April 2011 by Stuart Baines. No comments
Battlefield Tours, Gallipoli, rugby, Simpson Prize 2011

There was just too much to tell about today so I will try and give you all a brief rundown and some of the highlights.

Today we tried to trace some of the key points on the ANZAC line. We tried to put ourselves in the shoes of those men early in the day by taking the steep climb to the top of Plugge’s Plateau. The hill is thick with dense shrubs which seem to all have sharp bits on their sharp bits. The track is well cut until you reach the cemetery on the seaward side but from there it is a case of find some semblance of a track, head towards the heights and mind the spiky bushes. Reaching the end of the plateau we were confronted with the same sight that those ANZACS were on the first morning, the Sphinx and the razor back. The razor back is the only piece of land at that height that connects the plateau with the first ridge. It stretches out maybe 120 meters and there would not be a flat piece of ground wider that the sole of my shoe. There was no way that they could get across and for the students to see that with their own eyes really gives them the understanding of what the troops must of felt when those first soldiers believed they were well on their way to their objective and then stopped at the last gasp.

We walked down to Shrapnel Valley cemetery and explored the many moving epitaphs. Some of these could move even the toughest soul to tears. Imagine standing in the shade of the Judus tree in the middle of the cemetery surrounded by chirping birds and beautiful flowers. The valley foliage of yellows, greens and purples climbs upwards all around you and a brilliant blue sky to top of the scene. You look down and see the epitaph “Tread gently on the green grass sod, a mother’s love lies here” it is hard not to be moved.

We took the time here and with the opportunity that the weather had presented to us, we decided to have a morning snack. We talked about what the men would have eaten on those first days and how they felt about the monotony of eating the same thing over and over again. We read some of the comments made by men about the rations and how they tried to jazz them up. Like everything on this trip our understanding of this campaign is about experience, so our mid morning snack was bully beef and hardtack biscuit. The hardtack was backed using the original recipe for authenticity and the bully beef was as close as we could get. One by one we all tried the biscuit and the beef and one by one we realised just how much better toast and vegemite with a cup of coffee would have been.

The afternoon was spent working our way from cemetery to cemetery from Lone Pine to Chunuk Bair. The students presented their research on a soldier and we had a small commemorative ceremony for each. Walking to each of the sites we had time to reflect on the loss of the campaign and really understand what the front line would have looked like. Stopping at the Nek was a moving experience. We sat the students down and told the story of what had happened in the tiny square of ground. We explored some of the stories of the individual men who had fought on that fateful day. Looking across the open ground from the site where the Australians would have been to the Turkish lines were it really is very clear of just how withering the fire must have been to stop every one of those hundreds of men before they could take those few dozen steps.
There was so much more to our journey today and I would encourage you to follow the student’s blog on the other site http://simpsonprize2011.wordpress.com for their perspective. No matter how many times you visit Gallipoli there is always a way that this place reminds you that this tiny peninsula and what has gone on here is incredibly powerful. Today I was able to walk into Baby 700 again and go the stone that tells visitors that Blair Inskip Swanell is somewhere in this small grassy patch on top of this hill. He was an officer, an international rugby player and a great leader. He died on the 25th of April, the first day of the campaign, leading his men to the objective of baby 700. He had said to Charles Bean the day before that “I will play this game like I play rugby, with my whole heart”. He did and he died doing so, his body left behind enemy lines as the Australians were forced from the hill. Seeing his name there on that wind swept grave yard once again moved me to tears.

Our first day in Gallipoli – Simpson Prize 2011

21 April 2011 by Stuart Baines. 2 Comments
Battlefield Tours, Gallipoli, John Simpson Kirkpatrick, Simpson Prize 2011

Leaving the lights and glitz of Istanbul behind us we made our way down to Gallipoli today. It is important for the students to get a feel and understanding for the Turkish culture and the people before they come to ANZAC cove and the battlefields. It was a fun bus ride, even though we talked about politics and religion, as we got to watch the world go by and see some of the beautiful sites along the Marmara coast line. We stopped at a service station for snacks and drinks, as you do on any good road trip, and we were surprised to learn that there was a small Zoo attached to the place. Apparently not uncommon in the area, all these petrol station stops look for the edge over their competitors and for them that edge came in the form of some chickens, guinea fowl, turkey, peacocks, two Ostriches and a Camel. It seems a novel idea to us but it must work.

Back on the bus and we were away for the final part of the road trip. We arrived at the Kum hotel for a late lunch and some of us… ok… I ate my lunch fast in my haste to get the kids to get their first taste of ANZAC. Our first stop was Beach cemetery where we got some time to look around and the weather finally cleared and the sun beamed down. We let the students absorb their surrounds before we then all came together to talk about the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and the importance of the relationship with and the generosity of the Turkish people. We stood by Simpson’s plot and explored his role in the ANZAC Story, as the name sake to the Simpson prize it had special meaning for us all. Gene, the ACT winner, talked about the epitaph that inspired him to write his essay and told us all about what he had discovered through his research. The Epitaph simply reads “Deeds not words”. Three very powerful words and they clearly resonated with Gene.

We moved down to Ari Burnu Cemetery and walked along ANZAC Cove itself. We sat and talked about the campaign and explored just how difficult that landing must have been for the men. We all truly got a sense of where we were when we hit that beach as I am sure did the young ANZACS almost 100 years ago. We had time to look around and explore and I was amazed that as I strolled along the beach I was finding parts of smashed rum jugs that have been there in the water and buried in the sand since the evacuation. On one part of the beach I found a large piece of shrapnel, as big as my forearm on another a quarter of a rum jug just sitting on the beach almost defying time to break it down and take it out to sea.

Before heading back to the hotel for dinner and backgammon, the day finished with the setting sun lighting the sphinx, and nature posing a very complex question, how can such a beautiful place have seen so much tragedy?

Discovering Private Walker: Using new technologies to catalogue old relics

19 November 2010 by Dianne Rutherford. 1 Comment
Collection,From the collection,Personal Stories, Battles, First World War, Gallipoli, Roll of Honour

There is a mess tin on display in the Gallipoli gallery that is rusted and full of holes. It was found over 90 years ago scattered with dozens of other pieces of kit around the Lone Pine position at Gallipoli in January 1919 by staff from the Australian War Records Section.

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Seven years bad luck? Making periscopes on Gallipoli

15 October 2010 by Dianne Rutherford. No comments
Collection,From the collection, First World War, Gallipoli, Technology

When the Gallipoli campaign quickly bogged down into trench warfare, there were not enough periscopes available to allow Australian and New Zealand soldiers to look over the parapets at ANZAC without being shot.

Luckily the soldiers do not appear to have been superstitious as to fill the gap improvised periscopes were made by breaking shaving mirrors or mirrors taken from transport ships and attaching them at an angle to lengths of wood.

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95th Anniversary of Gallipoli Campaign

23 April 2010 by Nicholas Schmidt. 1 Comment
ANZACS online,Collection,From the collection,New acquisitions,News,Personal Stories, Gallipoli, Private Records, Research Centre

This ANZAC Day marks the 95th anniversary of the start of the Gallipoli campaign, when tens of thousands of British, French and Dominion troops landed on the Turkish coast.

To acknowledge this anniversary, the Australian War Memorial’s Research Centre is displaying previously unseen original letters and diaries relating to the campaign. The Research Centre’s collection is a rich source of records that tells the story of Gallipoli in the words of those who experience it.

The display is titled Gallipoli Landings and reminds the visitor that few of those Australians who served on the peninsula landed in that initial wave of 1,500 men from the 3rd Infantry Brigade. Many experienced their own ‘landing’ in the hours, days and months that followed, while others, including nurses, served on the ships and islands off-shore. Despite great efforts over eight months and the loss of many lives, little progress was made. The ANZACs were evacuated in December 1915. By January 1916, the last British troops had been withdrawn from their positions at Cape Helles, and the campaign abandoned. 

The varied experiences of those who served at Gallipoli can be seen in the letters, diaries and private papers from the Memorial’s Private Records collection. The Memorial began collecting wartime letters and diaries during the 1920s and continues to collect the private records today.

 

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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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