Turkish notice board 'English Burying Place' from Shrapnel Gully, Gallipoli

Wooden sign made from a section of packing case. The upper edges have been rounded using a rasp. In the centre is carved arabic lettering which translates 'English burying place'. The lettering has been filled in with black ink to give the sign better visibility but this has bled into the surrounding wood. The bottom left corner of the sign is signed in ink 'E.R. Peacock'.

This sign was removed from a wire fence erected by the Turks around the Shrapnel Gully Cemetery some time after the Gallipoli campaign in 1915. Immediately after the Armistice, in November 1918, the allies occupied the Dardanelles and Constantinople. Australians and New Zealanders wished to be represented in the force landing on the Gallipoli Peninsula and men from the 7th Light Horse Regiment, under Lieutenant Colonel J D Richardson, and from the Canturbury Mounted Rifles, under Lieutenant Colonel J Findlay, landed there on 5 December 1918. They stayed there for 6 weeks, however their uniforms were too thin to cope with the Gallipoli Winter and they left in January 1919.

E R Peacock, originally from Melbourne, accompanied the group and collected this sign. He does not appear to have been a member of the military. He was in France at the time of the Armistice and aleady had documents allowing him to travel to the area. He wished the sign to be preserved as evidence that the Turks had 'cared for our dead in a becoming manner'.