Cemeteries, Memorials, History and Battlefields of Gallipoli

Graveyard Index

Plugge's Plateau (pronounced "Pluggies") War Cemetery Anzac. One of 25 cemeteries or memorials that pay tribute to the Anzacs. Photo: Tim Kantar

It is hard to find a single battle or campaign that has had such a widespread significant social as well as military effect as that of the (relatively small) Gallipoli Campaign.

If fact, it's social effects were more long lasting and greater than it's military ones.

It "pushed" Australian and New Zealand into a new found national pride, it was one of the markers of the end of "gun boat diplomacy" and it helped destroy the Ottoman & British Empires. It also helped create the "new" Turkey.

The Allied Dardanelles and Gallipoli campaigns had the aim of capturing Constantinople and knocking Turkey out of the war in one fell swoop.

Some historians suggest that the failure to do so and the resulting loss of the ability to supply Russia through the Black Sea, was a contributory cause of the Russian Revolution and the following 70 years of Communist domination of Russia and then Eastern Europe.

On these terms, Gallipoli can not be considered an irresponsible sideshow! Rather it might be considered a brilliant concept, poorly executed, which failed.

Australia has only ever officially recognised (with a memorial on Anzac Avenue Canberra ACT) one enemy commander. It is Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk). New Zealand did the same. Atatürk NZ. These are probably the only memorials in the world to an enemy commander.

"THE ANZAC MECCA"

Once in every lifetime,

a pilgrimage for you and me,
To Lone Pine and to Anzac Cove,
to see Gallipoli.

It is a sacred place to us,

we from the southern lands,
and all should journey to that ground,
where we first took a stand.

You could not walk that lonely shore,

and fail to feel the pride,
that comes from being an Anzac child,
to honour those who died.

A promise I have made with God,

an oath I've sworn to me,
to make that odyssey one day,
and fulfill my destiny.