Lone Pine Cemetery and Memorial to the missing. Lone Pine Memorial is the main Australian ...

Accession Number P03600.011
Collection type Photograph
Object type Negative
Maker Ekins, Ashley
Place made Ottoman Empire: Turkey, Dardanelles, Gallipoli
Date made c 2000
Conflict Period 2000-2009
Copyright

Item copyright: AWM Licensed copyright

Description

Lone Pine Cemetery and Memorial to the missing. Lone Pine Memorial is the main Australian memorial on Gallipoli, commemorating the 3,268 Australians and 456 New Zealanders who died in the campaign and have no known grave, and the 960 Australians and 252 New Zealanders who were buried at sea. In April 1915 a single pine tree was growing on the site and the Australians called it 'Lonesome Pine' from the title of a popular song of the day, The Trail of the Lonesome Pine. The tree was destroyed in the early fighting but seeds from a pine cone sent back to Australia from the Turkish trenches at Lone Pine, Gallipoli were used to generate the Lone Pine tree planted at the Australian War Memorial. Seeds from this tree were used to grow the present tree in the cemetery at Lone Pine. In early August Lone Pine was the site of some of the bloodiest fighting on the Peninsula during the famous bayonet attack on the Turkish trenches by the 1st Australian Infantry Brigade. On reaching the enemy's positions the Australians found the trenches covered by heavy logs; they broke into the trenches and, after fierce hand-to-hand fighting and resisting Turkish counter-attacks over several days, they captured them. Lone Pine Cemetery adjoins the memorial and is located over the original Turkish trenches and tunnels, some of which were filled in as mass graves. The cemetery contains the graves of soldiers who died over the entire campaign from the first day's fighting to the last deaths amongst the Lone Pine garrison in late November. Over 500 of the graves are unidentified.

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