At first, I think it is my phone, the alarm set for 5:00am to wake us up, but it feels like we’ve only just fallen asleep, and we’re right. It’s the phone for the room.
At the other end of the line is a man from our travel agency, informing us to be in the lobby of the hotel at 10:30am. So the bread we had bought for an improvised breakfast on the bus would become our lunch on the bus.
Come next morning, and a man comes into the lobby to get us. After we are joined by three other people from Queensland, we drive around the main road on the shore in Istanbul, which is funnily enough named Kennedy. Rose would like to think it is named after her, but it’s probably named after JFK.
After about ten minutes, the man who came and got us announces he works in Istanbul, so he will leave us with our driver, who may know the least English in the entire country.
As we leave Istanbul, we are struck by the “suburban” landscape. No one in Turkey lives in a building of only one storey. Gated communities of numerous apartment towers, ten stories high, spring up out of the Earth, for miles and miles out of the city. These are replaced with “resort” towns on the Sea of Marmur, which might be delightful during the summer months, but look decidedly Eastern European at this moment, but I guess that is where we are.
Most of the cars on the road are later models, and the people are well dressed, but they don’t seem to care much how their homes look from the outside. Driving outside of Istanbul is less dangerous, although our minibus struggles with the hills.
Half way to our destination and we stop off at what seems to be the “Ataturk Roadstop”. Asking the driver where the toilets are doesn’t get us far, but we eventually find them. The roadstop looks more like a hospital cafeteria on the inside, and we decide against getting any food. There is another identical roadstop five kms up the road on the other side.
Eventually the terrain becomes a lot more rural, and the odd horse-drawn cart makes an appearance. Then we come across a town called Gelibilou – in the English Gallipoli.
The town is at the very entrance to the peninsula, and we have to cross the straits of the Dardenelles to get to our stopping place for the night – Cannakale.
In Cannakale, there is Anzac House, which runs our particular tour. We are invited back to the house for a film showing at 6:30pm. We check into our hotel, and struggle to find some food, eventually settling on some incredibly cheap yet filling pizza and chips.
Something is clearly happening in Cannakale, and we find that we have come into town for Naval Victory Day. On March 18, 1915, the Turks sent three Allied Battleships to the bottom of the Dardenelle Straits. Turkish flags and pictures of Ataturk hang out of almost every balcony, and small Turk warships sail up and down the straits.
The movie is an ABC documentary by Chris Masters of “The Midnight State” fame, produced in the mid 1980s and called “Gallipoli: The Fatal Shore”. While looking quite dated, it includes interviews with actual Gallipoli veterans from both sides. For this reason alone, it has great worth. After watching this documentary, along with my “bible” (Gallipoli by Les Carlyon, which along with the books comprising “The Lyndon Johnson Years” by Robert Caro, are the best non-fiction books I’ve read), I feel ready to visit the fatal shore.
In the morning we have breakfast watching the ceremony on the pier, Hundreds of Turkish sailors line the pier. The event even makes it onto CNN Turk, as we can see in the restaurant where we are having breakfast. God I miss English TV.
Our morning is a tour to Troy, and we are joined by our English speaking guide. He is a friendly faced fellow, and we make our way down to Troy after picking up the others from their much better hotel.
Troia is about half an hour from Canakkale. There is a big wooden horse, which we are told looked so old once that tourists were mistaken for thinking it was the real thing. I would have thought the metal Phillips-head screws would have given it away.
After that you enter a small museum, which informs you that there was not just one city at Troy, but nine, the new one built on top of the last one. Trojans, Greeks, Persians and Romans all fought here, and the mythology is powerful.
Unfortunately, a little like the Hagia Sophia, the place has an unfinished quality, and they are still endeavouring to find more stuff. Also, the lack of road signs and attention paid to Troy give the place a similar feel to Glenrowan: the place should be a bigger deal. Paris and Helen, Xerxes and the 300 Trojans, Achilles, Hadrian and many others all left their mark here.
On the way back we pass a small place and get some souvenirs. One of these is a book on the Gallipoli campaign, and the writer hangs around in front, willing to personally sign copies. The book contains some good colour photographs of the area, and I get a copy along with a little Trojan Horse for Deaglan. The author personally signs our copy, and soon we’re off.
Lunch is back on the other side, and we leave Canakkale for the last time. It’s a set menu at the restaurant, with the main dish fish. Rose’s vegetarian alternative is a plate of dips. As she says, it’s fine, but it is a plate of dips for lunch.
After lunch our guide gives us some preliminary information about the campaign, and then we’re off to the other side of the peninsula.
Only one problem – it is Naval Victory Day. Literally thousands of Turks have descended on the peninsula in coaches, and because the President of Turkey is here, along with many other dignitaries, the security is high. And there is only one road to the other side of the peninsula.
Us Aussies on the bus are getting restless. We have one afternoon here and we want to see all that we can. Our tour guide gets out, speaks to the troops manning what appears to be a makeshift checkpoint, and with the possible assistance of a few bank notes, we get through the checkpoint relatively quickly.
The road to the other side is a little like the rest of the Turkish roads we’ve been on: bumpy. We stop at the museum, which again is rather rudimentary. For the Turks, this campaign signifies a great victory, and the birth of a national hero, and the nation he created almost through sheer personal will. The hero is Gallipoli is the same man who is the overall father of the nation: Ataturk.
The closeness of what we are about to see makes me toey. From the car park of the museum, where local vendors sell whatever they can, one can see Chunuk Bair and the New Zealand Memorial, and also Lone Pine and the Australian Memorial.
The road ceases to be sealed as one nears Anzac Cove. The Turkish landmark nearby quotes Ataturk as reassuring the Allies that their fallen lie in friendly ground, Johhny or Mehmet is no distinction, and the fallen our Turkish sons now as well as British and Australian and New Zealand ones. Despite their victory, the Turks lost more like 2 soldiers for every dead Allied soldier.
To be honest, Anzac Cove ain’t much, but that was the problem. On a 100m stretch of beach, 15,000 Allied soliders landed. They got further the first day than they would for the rest of the campaign. They underestimated the enemy, so they landed, but once they landed, the overestimated the numbers of enemy soldiers, and therefore didn’t get far.
The 57th Regiment saw the Anzac’s off. But at the end of the day, every last man in the 57th Regiment was dead. To honour these Turkish heroes, there is still no 57th Regiment in the Turkish Army to this day.
After Anzac Cove we begin to visit the cemeteries. The first is on the beach, and they all have a consistency to them. In fact, it is the consistency of the monuments that affects you, as if someone thought that the sheer numbers, row upon row, would properly convey the gravity of what happened here. Whatever he thought, it works.
Chunuk Bair was the prize, and the Kiwis held it for two days. As a result, their memorial is there, along with an equally tall monument to Ataturk, who was hit by shrapnel above the heart at this point. His pocket watch saved him, and he presented it to his commander, Limon Von Sanders, as a gift. As a result, this relic of modern Turkish history, which gave a nation its leader, is in Germany.
We pass a stretch of road where the trenches were eight metres apart, and the Anzacs and Turks threw each other tins of Bully Beef and Cigarettes. We pass cemeteries with no more than five headstones in them.
The land is tortuous in places, and no grass grows on the ground except at the cemeteries. The trees have grown, but they were all blasted out in the first few weeks in 1915. Our guide mentions this as the last gentlemanly war, and the prevailing wind meant that the Allies did not use gas here.
The Nek and Walker’s Ridge Cemetery are too treacherous for us to get too close to. This motivates me to return, and make my own way. Up near Chunuk Bair is the Turkish Memorial and Cemetery. Hundreds of Turks are there to pay their respects on Naval Victory Day.
If there is anywhere where the Gallipoli Campaign makes sense, it is at Chunuk Bair. One can see the Aegean See on the landing side, and the Dardenelles on the other side.
Of course, it is silly to describe the Gallilpoli Campaign as foolish, as if to distinguish it from the rest of the First World War, well thought out and planned, and executed with exacting precision. The entire reason for the war, and everything that went with it, was folly, and almost everything bad that happened for the rest of the 20th Century was as a result of it.
After Chunuk Bair, we begin to make our way back. It is late, and getting cold. The ride back reunited us with our non- English speaking driver, who tries to make up with politeness what he lacks in communication.
The only interruption was our mid-way stop at the other Ataturk Roadstop, which unlike the other one, was teeming with people and roughly resembled the food court at Chadstone during the week before Christmas. The toilet was half a Turkish Lira to use, and apparently the Meatball Rolls were really good. I wasn’t game.
We got in about 10:30, and were asleep probably ten minutes later.
We’re on our way to Prague right now, as I pen this entry on the Turkish Airways flight. The big Hollywood name on the Turkish Airways promotions is Kevin Costner. It says quite a bit.
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