Gallipoli Then and Now

Gallipoli. Virtually unheard of prior to 1915, the very name of the Turkish peninsula bordering the Dardanelles – the narrow waterway linking the Mediterranean with the Black Sea – now conjures up visions of privation and hardship and death which even surpass the horrors of the trench warfare on the Western Front. The barren landscape was the backdrop to a horrific campaign between April 1915 and January 1916 in which upwards of 1000,000 men lost their lives. For the Allies it was a battle fought in vain for the invasion forces were withdrawn for no gain, but for the Turkish army, it was a marvellous victory in what they refer to as their Canakkale War. Steve Newman has visited Gallipoli several times in his study of the campaign and he spent a strenuous 10 days on the peninsula in June 1999 to take the comparisons in a temperature of over 100 degrees. The book provides a link between past and present; from one century to the next; that the deeds of those whose bones lie buried “in a foreign field” shall not be forgotten.