Cylinder
25-April-2005, 09:55 PM
Today is ANZAC day, a day set aside by Australians and New Zealanders to remember the botched landings at Gallipoli during WWI and to honor the service of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. From The Australian (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15087977%255E2702,00.html):
THEY came in darkness by coach and ferry, by mini-bus and camper-van, even on foot, the new Anzacs.
They came in tribute, they came to remember -- but above all they came in peace, 20,000 of them, the largest gathering of Australians and New Zealanders here since the daybreak onslaught against Turkish positions exactly nine decades ago.
And just after 5am, as dawn's gleam stole over the sky, touched the waves of Anzac Cove, and at last lit the peaks of Ari Burnu where once the trenches ran, an extraordinary sight met the eye.
The beachfront was revealed, filled with young people, draped in the national colours, wearing their flags like costumes; the steep sandy ridges had been occupied by a new generation of Australians, listening quietly as their political and military leaders recalled the birth of the nation's identity in the fires of war.
"Ninety years ago, the first sons of a young nation assailed these shores," proclaimed John Howard in his address at the dawn service.
The Gallipoli landings, championed by then First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, was an attempt to break the development stalemate in the trenches of Western Europe by striking at the underbelly of the Ottoman Empire. A brief history of the Gallipoli campaign can be found here (http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/Gallery/Anzac/galli-poli/).
The Gallipoli campaign, in which New Zealand made its first major effort during the First World War, had its origins in the stalemate which had developed on the Western Front by the end of 1914. Following the initial free-flowing operations, the opposing sides found themselves facing each other along a line of trenches which stretched from Switzerland to the Belgian coast. The power of the defense having already made its impact felt, statesmen in both camps were at a loss as to how to proceed. In these circumstances the need for an alternative approach was patent.
On the Allied side the search for an alternative was encouraged by the opportunities presented by superior seapower. With the German High Seas Fleet contained in the North Sea, the possibility of launching amphibious attacks on the enemy was particularly evident to the British First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. Impatient to use British naval resources, he advanced a series of proposals, among them an assault on the Dardanelles-the nearly fifty-kilometre-long strait separating the Aegean Sea from the Sea of Marmara, which at its narrowest point, the Narrows, was less than two kilometres wide. The object would be to pass a force into the Sea of Marmara and threaten the capital of Germany's ally the Ottoman Empire.
The failure of leadership cited as the cause of the failure of the campaign led to Winston Churchill's ouster to the political wilderness.
The 90th anniversary of the landings were also observed in the UK. From the BBC story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4482815.stm):
The Queen joined 2,000 people at Westminster Abbey to mark the 90th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings.
More than 100,000 soldiers, including 21,000 British and Irish, died during the eight-month World War I campaign.
Prince Charles visited the landing spot in Turkey - which had been aligned with Germany and suffered most of the mission's fatalities - on Anzac Day.
The mission's aim was to push through the Dardanelles straits and capture the Turkish capital.
THEY came in darkness by coach and ferry, by mini-bus and camper-van, even on foot, the new Anzacs.
They came in tribute, they came to remember -- but above all they came in peace, 20,000 of them, the largest gathering of Australians and New Zealanders here since the daybreak onslaught against Turkish positions exactly nine decades ago.
And just after 5am, as dawn's gleam stole over the sky, touched the waves of Anzac Cove, and at last lit the peaks of Ari Burnu where once the trenches ran, an extraordinary sight met the eye.
The beachfront was revealed, filled with young people, draped in the national colours, wearing their flags like costumes; the steep sandy ridges had been occupied by a new generation of Australians, listening quietly as their political and military leaders recalled the birth of the nation's identity in the fires of war.
"Ninety years ago, the first sons of a young nation assailed these shores," proclaimed John Howard in his address at the dawn service.
The Gallipoli landings, championed by then First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, was an attempt to break the development stalemate in the trenches of Western Europe by striking at the underbelly of the Ottoman Empire. A brief history of the Gallipoli campaign can be found here (http://www.nzhistory.net.nz/Gallery/Anzac/galli-poli/).
The Gallipoli campaign, in which New Zealand made its first major effort during the First World War, had its origins in the stalemate which had developed on the Western Front by the end of 1914. Following the initial free-flowing operations, the opposing sides found themselves facing each other along a line of trenches which stretched from Switzerland to the Belgian coast. The power of the defense having already made its impact felt, statesmen in both camps were at a loss as to how to proceed. In these circumstances the need for an alternative approach was patent.
On the Allied side the search for an alternative was encouraged by the opportunities presented by superior seapower. With the German High Seas Fleet contained in the North Sea, the possibility of launching amphibious attacks on the enemy was particularly evident to the British First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill. Impatient to use British naval resources, he advanced a series of proposals, among them an assault on the Dardanelles-the nearly fifty-kilometre-long strait separating the Aegean Sea from the Sea of Marmara, which at its narrowest point, the Narrows, was less than two kilometres wide. The object would be to pass a force into the Sea of Marmara and threaten the capital of Germany's ally the Ottoman Empire.
The failure of leadership cited as the cause of the failure of the campaign led to Winston Churchill's ouster to the political wilderness.
The 90th anniversary of the landings were also observed in the UK. From the BBC story (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4482815.stm):
The Queen joined 2,000 people at Westminster Abbey to mark the 90th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings.
More than 100,000 soldiers, including 21,000 British and Irish, died during the eight-month World War I campaign.
Prince Charles visited the landing spot in Turkey - which had been aligned with Germany and suffered most of the mission's fatalities - on Anzac Day.
The mission's aim was to push through the Dardanelles straits and capture the Turkish capital.