The travels and musings of Matt and Heidi
Countless dead, countless! It was impossible to count. Memis Bayraktar, Turkish Soldier. On the 19th February 1915 the Royal Navy commenced a bombardment of Turkish positions along the Dardanelles straits in the hope of breaking through to Istanbul. The attack failed and the Gallipoli invasion began. The British expected the campaign to end quickly, but… Continue Reading →
“I am prepared for death and hope that God will have forgiven me all my sins.” Lieutenant Colonel William Malone, New Zealand Soldier, in a letter to his wife shortly before he was killed defending the position his battalion held on the summit of Chunuk Bair. Between the 7th and 9th August 2015 a mixed… Continue Reading →
Distance between mutual trenches is eight meters, that it, death is imminent, imminent…Those standing the first trench were constantly falling with nobody surviving, and the ones standing in the second one are replacing them.” Mustafa Kemel Ataturk. No one ever expected the Gallipoli campaign to take so long or result in so many casualties. 21,200… Continue Reading →
The flower of the youth of Victoria and Western Australia fell in that attempt. Charles Bean, Historian. The battle at the Nek was immortalised in the 1981 Australian movie ‘Gallipoli’, directed by Peter Weir. As a boy in high school this movie became standard viewing for our studies in history, but it wasn’t until I… Continue Reading →
“There is hell waiting here.” C.A. McAnulty, Australian soldier killed in action at Lone Pine. On the afternoon of August 6, 2015 Australian soldiers attacked Turkish positions at Lone Pine. They charged along 60 metres of flat, open ground under intense fire from the opposition and by 6:00pm they had captured the Turkish trenches. For… Continue Reading →
Those heroes that shed their blood And lost their lives… You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies And the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side Here in this country of ours… You, the mothers Who sent their… Continue Reading →
A good army of 50,000 men and sea power – that is the end of the Turkish menace. Winston Churchill, 1915 Late last year Heidi and I had a short break in Turkey and managed to spend a day at Gallipoli. It was a haunting experience filled with admiration for the soldiers of both sides… Continue Reading →
Today is our last day in Sydney for quite some time, so here are some miscellaneous shots we took over the last few months and one image that isn’t ours but was very poignant given it was the 100th anniversary of the landings at Gallipoli this year.
Wish You Were Here 