|
On 25 April every year
Australians commemorate Anzac Day. It is Australia's sacred
day.
What
is it Australians commemorate on Anzac Day?
Australia at war
On 25 April
1915 Australia was at war. With the Allies (Britain, France
and Russia, Italy, Japan, and the USA [from 1917]), Australia
was fighting against the Central Powers (Germany, Turkey [then
known as the Ottoman Empire], Austria-Hungary).
In
response to a request for help from Russia, which was being
battered by the Turks in the Caucasus, the Allies decided to
begin a campaign which they hoped would distract Turkey from
their attack on Russia.
The
plan was for the Allies to attack and take the Gallipoli
Peninsula, on Turkey's Aegean coast, from which point the
Allies believed they could take control of the Dardanelles - a
67 kilometre (42 mile) strait which connects the Aegean Sea
with the Sea of Marmara - and lay seige to Turkey's main city,
Istanbul (then Constantinople).
Landing at Gallipoli
As
part of the larger British Empire contingent, Australian
troops were brought in from training in Egypt to participate.
On April 25, 1915, the Australian troops landed on the
Gallipoli Peninsula.
Instead of finding the flat beach they expected, they found
they had been landed at the incorrect position and faced steep
cliffs and constant barrages of enemy fire and shelling.
Around 20,000 soldiers landed on the beach over the next two
days to face a well organised, well armed, large Turkish force
determined to defend their country - and led by Mustafa Kemal,
who later became Attaturk, the leader of modern Turkey.
Thousands of Australian men died in the hours that followed
the landing at that, the wrong beach. That beach would
eventually come to be known as Anzac Cove.
What
followed the landing at Gallipoli is a story of courage and
endurance, of death, and despair, of poor leadership from
London, and unsuccessful strategies. The Australian soldiers
and the Turks dug in - literally - digging kilometres of
trenches, and pinned down each other's forces with sniper fire
and shelling. Pinned down with their backs to the water the
Australians were unable to make much headway against the
home-country force.
A lack of success
In Britain,
the lack of success of the campaign was creating arguments
amongst the leaders of the time about whether the campaign
should be continued.
While
political leaders argued, the Australian soldiers died in
battle, from sniper fire and shelling, and those that lived
suffered from a range of ailments due to their dreadful living
conditions - typhus, lice, gangrene, lack of fresh water, poor
quality food, and poor sanitary conditions all took their
toll.
The withdrawal
Eventually
it was decided that the Allied troops would be withdrawn from
the Peninsula; the attempt to control the Dardanelles had
failed. The ANZACs were evacuated and returned to the Middle
East and the Western Front where they were involved in other
battles.
The
Gallipoli campaign was an enormous failure, a failure bought
at the cost of an enormous number of lives, and the failure
led to the resignation of senior politicians in London.
Thousands of Australian and New Zealand soldiers had died, and
thousands of other Allied troops from France and Britain also
died.
An
Anzac commemorative location
has been built at Gallipoli in conjunction with the New
Zealand government and with the approval of the Turkish
government.
|
