this the pre-dawn view from my window this morning
Next time you're stuck in traffic just be grateful you don't work in Istanbul where a 3 hour cross city commute is not uncommon. Fortunately we didn't have to negotiate this traffic ourselves. Our local and highly skilled driver picked us up at 6am from the hotel, slightly awkwardly because he didn't speak English, as we had expected. After a couple of hours driving and when the anticipated breakfast did not materialise at 8am, MGM discretely google-mapped our trajectory to ensure we were at least going in the right direction. Soon after, when our thoughts had truncated into headlines...
"naive tourists caught in sight-seeing scam, for sale on ebay - highest bid $10"
Tony started making phone calls to the tour operator.
10 mins later ... breakfast stop. I'll never forget the look on the faces of the locals at the remote petrol station cafe, when four 'cannot-speak-a-word-of-your-language' tourists descended upon them. We collected an extremely unusual array of food and beverages which were enough to sustain us for the rest of the 4 hour journey to Eceabat, Kemalpasa (near Gallipoli). Here we met our most apologetic tour company contact and delightfully knowledgeable English-speaking guide.
First we saw a WWI open air museum, which displays a topographical map, very helpful to visualise the strategy behind the Gallipoli campaign and the success of the Turkish defence. and also to see a little of what it must have been like.
At Bomb Ridge Case no man's land between the trenches was only 8 meters wide.
On April 25th the Aussies were supposed to land here at 3am, nice and flat ... easy to manoeuvre
No one knows for sure why but they arrived in the next cove, in the pitch dark
and they had to climb up here which they were not expecting
My Grandfather and great Uncle were here, it was very moving to see it with my own eyes.
I really want this to be 'the' Lone Pine
But of course there was no vegetation left on that battlefield. The story goes that there was a lonely pine that survived the battle for a long time and which reminded the diggers of the popular at the time song "lonesome Pine". When the tree was finally obliterated diggers gathered the pine cones and the lucky ones who survived, returned home and planted them. In turn a pine cone was brought back from Australia and planted in the Lone Pine memorial, and here it is ...
the third generation lone pine
there's too many names on walls, isn't there? oh for peace for our world.
Below is Johnson's Jolly. You can still see remains of Aussie trenches 100 years on - they really were expert diggers. Imagine no trees. See the car? That's parked on no-man's land and the monument in the distance is the Turkish trenches. Aussies, being what they are hurled jokes at the Turks as well as bullets and, they all laughed. One of our commanders, Johnson was known for his sense of humour.
Humour in those dire times. I find that simply astounding.
Words attributed to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkish hero, brilliant tactician, forward thinker are memorialised here. They speak to us now and then and sum up the way the Turkish people respectfully care for our common history and our shared loss.
"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 sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well".
It was a long, emotional sombre day, another privilege for me in a life already so blessed. We travelled home through the horrendous Instanbul traffic, covering 800kms and 15 hours. I snapped this out the car window on the way, seems like an appropriate way to end this post.
