No Doubts About Gallipoli Poppies

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30445, 20 May 1964, Page 6

No Doubts About Gallipoli Poppies

(By A Staff Reporter)

There were definitely poppies at Gallipoli during the 1915 campaign, and they were almost certainly of the same species as the poppies of the Flanders corn fields.

(The association of poppies with Anzac Day has recently been questioned, in connexion with the inclusion of a poppy in the chosen design of a stamp to mark next year’s jubilee of the Gallipoli landings.)

The presence in Gallipoli of the two common poppies and Europe, the field poppy, and the long-headed poppy, was' confirmed by the deputy director of the Botany Division, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (Mr A. J. Healey), who quoted a 1924 paper by Dr. W. B. Ttirrill, of Kew, entitled “The Flora of the Gallipoli Penin-

sula.” The two species (Papaver rhoeas and P. dubinum respectively) were. not easily distinguishable from their flowers, and the poppy portrayed on the stamp design could be either, Mr Healy said, although it was most probably the field poppy, as this was the commoner.

Field poppies in New Zealand were often found in railway yards, one spot where they were particularly abundant being beside the ling at Rolleston, where they flowered profusely from December until about February, Mr Healy said. As for the presence of pbppy flowers on the Gallipoli battlefields, at least two firm references have been found in the files of “The Weekly Press,” confirmed and amplified in one case by a book, by an Australian war correspondent.

In a letter written home by an unidentified member of the Canterbury Infantry Battalion, and' quoted in “The Weekly Press” of October 13, 1915, the writer says, in reference to Canterbury Rugby footballers who had fought in Gallipoli: “Red Poppy Patches” .

“And when we talked of the race across the red poppy patches near Sedd-ul-Bahr, I pictured the passing rush across The Park’ in Christchurch.”

The Australian official war reporter, Major C. B. W. Bean, in his book “Gallipoli Mission,” says there were “gorgeous • poppies and daisies” at Seddel Bahr (almost certainly the same place) when he visited it in May* 1915. This was near Cape Helles at the tip of the peninsula, where a party of New Zealanders was sent from the main Anzac position for one particular assault, which was carried out on May 8, 1915. Another reference to poppies, this time in the region of the main Australian and New Zealand landings, occurs in an unsourced dispatch from Fremantle printed in the same edition of “The Weekly Press.” In the offensive launched on the evening of August 6, 1915, it says, Australian troops on the night march which opened the battle found themselves walking in grass, “an almost forgotten growth.” “In places,” says the message, “poppies brushed the soldiers’ knees, and the more romantic decorated their caps with flowers.” Captain Bean, in a map depicting this battle, labels a gully as “Poppy Valley,” but does not elaborate on the name. It could be that the reason many veterans of Gallipoli do not remember seeing poppies there is that their stay was confined to the rough hillcountry of the original Anzac position. Poppies are unlikely to be found in any numbers in such country, as in Europe they are usually a weed of corn fields.

Estates Taken.—The Indonesian Government yesterday took over the vast British rubber and tea estates of P. and T. Lands in West Java, the Agriculture Minister (Dr. Sadjarwo) announced, according to Antara News Agency. The Minister said the take-over was due to Indonesia’s confrontation against Malaysia.—Djakarta, May 19.