Galipoli: Tragedy in the First World War

Galipoli means “beautiful city”. When war broke out, the British decided to conquer Istanbul, and thereby facilitate the fall of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. To this end, Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, brought together British and French troops and the ANZACs – Australian & New Zealand Army Corps. To reach Istanbul it would be necessary to cross the Dardanelles Strait, heavily defended along the Galipoli peninsula by Turkish batteries. There were also Egyptian and Hindu colonial troops, and the Jewish logistics company.

Visiting Galipoli, it is easy to conclude why the Greeks called it a “beautiful city”. The seas, the bays, the hills, the beaches, the Dardanelles strait form a magnificent landscape. But make no mistake, in that paradisiacal setting the Angel of Death claimed an unknown number of victims in one year, estimated at hundreds of thousands of dead and injured. It was the first and one of the largest amphibious landings of the modern era, involving land, sea and air troops, British, French and German fleets, including new weapons such as airplanes and submarines, more than 100 naval units, many of which were destroyed. by Turkish coast artillery, and which lie to this day at the bottom of the Dardanelles. Galipoli also saw the birth of psychological warfare and electronic warfare, amid the trenches on both sides.

It was with great emotion that we visited Galipoli and its many cemeteries, where so many young souls lie, who were unable to live. Admiring the sea in front, I imagined what it would have been like when the ANZACs disembarked on that early morning of April 25, 1915, abandoning the barges that brought them to dry land, staining the waters and sands of the beach with their blood, advancing slowly over the hills and cliffs from which Turkish artillery and infantry heavily bombed the invaders. They were faced by the 57th Turkish Regiment, which lost half of its force on that day alone. The advances were small, at a huge cost in human lives on both sides, until after almost a year, the invaders had to abandon Galipoli, returning to their ships and ceding victory to the Turks. However, Galipoli was the only occasion on which the Turks defeated the Allied Powers, with the support of Kaiser Wilhelm II's German Empire, which send supplies and German Marshal Liman von Sanders for commanding Turkish troops. The Ottoman Empire would end up defeated in the Great War, followed in 1923 by the proclamation of the Turkish Republic, by Colonel Kemal Ataturk, himself commander of troops in Galipoli, a highly respected figure in Turkey.

Under the scorching sun, as we could personally feel, a glass of water was worth its weight in gold. Only the mules could carry the precious liquid on their backs to fill the iron tanks installed by the Royal Engineers, which we were able to appreciate after more than a century, logically worn and rusted by the action of time, next to the trenches that the winds and erosion were covering.

At the end of the day we visited the modern Museum, where there is a media reenactment of the combats, in various environments. Over the course of more than an hour, the audience is transferred from one scene to another, amidst the flashes of artillery fire and the booms of weapons, being able to listen to the story in several languages on headphones. At one point, the public enters the deck of a scenic ship, under the huge 381 mm naval guns, larger than those at Fort Copacabana (305), feeling the scenery oscillate, as if the ship were being shaken by the recoil of the guns and the shock waves that reverberate in deafening noise. In the end, President Ataturk, who passed away in 1938, is revived making his famous declaration of principles, after so much suffering.

Ataturk said that once the fighting was over, the guns silent, there was no longer any difference between the Mehmets and the Johnies, they were all children of the same grieving mothers. His words are engraved in gold letters at the base of his statue in front of the cemetery of the 57th Infantry Regiment, remembered to this day, in the ceremonies attended by grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the ANZACs, who, in Ataturk's words, bathed with their blood the land that belongs to the Turks.

Upon returning to Istanbul in the delegation bus, a long journey of 5 hours, we reflected on the uselessness and tragedy of war, and on the conciliatory spirit of the great statesman Ataturk, who knew how to learn a lesson from the tragedy, making peace with former enemies.


Israel Blajberg
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