GALLIPOLI TO-DAY

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 81, 3 October 1923, Page 13

GALLIPOLI TO-DAY

PENSINSULA REDOLENT

OF TRAGEDY

SCENES OF NEW ZEALAND'S

SACRIFICE

The Gallipoli Peninsnla is one of the most tragic places I- know, ieciares a correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." It is so 9asy to reconstruct and envisage all the detail of those murderous landings as one sits on the pleasant cliff edge and looks at the incomparable Aegean scenery. Below, in the bays that run from Gaba Tepe to the broad sweep of Suvla, lie old tenders, broken ships, and old-en-gines of war, their fangs barely thrusting through tiie white sand. Beyond, to tho north, Sumothrace towers like a lost mountain peak to the sky, masked by the low scarps of Irabroa.. Further east on a fair day the dowOs of eastern Thrace can be discerned. White scud-. tYing clouds iipd a faultless sea contrast ■with the red loam of the Anzac cliffs.

Along ■ tile ' vidge ,tbiit runs above Brighton Beach past. Ari Burnu to the final slope above the Suvla flats is tho line of the Anzac cemeteries.- In the cove itself is another' cemetery of those who fell at the landing, with tho sea almosfc_ lapping at its massive walls. Everywhere the . cemeteries lie Yon ■ tho field of action. Lone "Pine Ravine and Shrapiiel Valley are/crowned by the graves of those who stormed their crumbling sides. Every " scarp and hill-top that was reached holds these graves, but Chana_k Bahv-the summit of the Sari Bair Ridge, which was held by British and New Zealand troops for two days, alone is gaunt and empty ; its bleak summit holds-ho dead.

The Australian, New Zealand, and British cemeteries alika lie at the site» of the engagements in which the dead fell. . From the last ridge of the Brit-. ish line above the plain of Suvla, at the narrow col just below Battleship Hill, and called by our men "The Baby," lies the last cemetery of this group. It seems to hang in mid-air above the ravine to the south of it, and the plain below it to the north. Its solid containing walls save it from falling away into the gullies. ' Within ten yards of it is a queer Turkish obelisk of plaster' and brick that commemorates the Turkish reoeeupation after our withdrawal. From this point southwards, runs the line of cemeteries past Quinn's Post and Courtney's Post, until the hills tail off: into the Kilia valley :

At the point of th&'peninsula lie the remaining cemeteries. For the principal line of entrenchments that ran across from sea to sea, from the bare north shore below ruined Krithia, to jUorto Bay, there is one main English cemetery. It lies on the western- slaves of the long rise to Achi Baba and holds a larger number of dead than any of the others. They are the fallen from ■many months of steady trench warfare. On the bluff above De< Tott's Battery are the French graves by the side of the old Greek town of Elaius, whose necropolis was laid bare by shell-fire and has since been excavated by the French.

RAN RED WITH BLOOD.

On the beach at Cape H'elles between the ruined castle'of.Seddul Bahr, whose' mighty walls show the giant splintering of immense explosions, and the more, modern battery north of it whose guns he burst, and broken is the small ceme-ierjrfoft;-thoise;'sv.-ho---felFlii tTie' HeWeglanding. Like the Anzac Cove cemetery, it lies on the seashore almost at the water-edge. ..Its size gives no indication of the looses. So many who fell were caught in the wire entanglements that were in the sea and their bodies never recovered; the whole of life narrow bay ran red with the blood of those who never reached the shore. All that was possible has been done to recover their bones,- and the little cemetery of white stone is a fitting memorial But the nameless graves are numerous. At Cape H'elles two white obelisks, erected by the French, stand out prominently on the shore at each end of the beach. One is to the honour of General, Gouraud, who lost an arm at this point, the other to the honour, of the fusiliers marins who landed at the southern, end of the beach. The' formation of the cemeteries has been a long and difficult- task: For three years our dead lay where they had fallen in ;the ravines and gullies of these inhospitable 'shores. - There was none to tend them or give them temporary burial. Only a few. small local trench cemeteries existed. Since 1918 the Graves Commission has' methodically and slowly searched the length and breadth of the peninsula., But the results of. that three years'from 1915 to 1918 is seen in 1- the large proportion of nameless graves inscribed at' best "An' Unknown Soldier", or "An Unknown Sailor. ' - . .... ■

Of all the three battle areas on Ga!hpolr Suvla Bay is at once the mostbeautiful as scenery, but the most lonely and remote. From Chanak Bair and Sari Bair the lovely curve of Ocean Beach sweeps round to Lala Baba. From there the white beach of Suvla Bay itself opens with the salt lake behind It resembles the Bay of Marathon seen from Mount Pentelieus; the colouring is the same, the background of sea and a distant coast is the same—only the history is different. Away to* tha south-east the two villages of Anafarta lie, one at tho slopes of Sari Bair th<> other on the opposite hills. Between them runs the coveted road that leads through an easy valley to the Dardan?l les- j " Had we broken through we should .at one blow have cut off the main Turkish base at Maidos and the Cennau headquarters at Yaiova and-iso-lated all the forts.

_ On-the Dardanelles, opposite Ohanalc is our present base. ;In .the next valley to the west is Maidos. Farther west still .is the great forfc of Kilid o • Was"thl's and tlle s'ster'. fort of Sultanieh opposite that was never passed or silenced by our ships. .. Now the guns of both alike He shattered on the ground, useless and broken. " All the forts were thus destroyed two years ago. HISTORIC GEOTJND. ,->? vi, tllis ia historic ground round Ohanak and Maidos. tt" was here that Aerxes built his bridge of boats, or hereabouts. Probably it crossed be-' tween Nagara Point and the shore fcelow Sestos Hill. Seatos was the great Asiatic bridgehead of the Dardanelles, and it was the last place held by . the Persians in Europe, held with a. gr;ra and bitter tenacity. Sestos would have been the first place or. the Dardanelles reached by our troops from Suvla. Opposite Maidos Abydo3 rises as a conical hill on a flat spit of- lar.d. It ivas the central point in our line 3in the times of the Chauak crisis, though we had outposts far ahead. The distance between Abydos and Sestos is greater than that 'between Kilid Bahr and Channk, but the current is swifter between the latter. Byron's house is still shown near Nagara, where he staved before his swim across to Sestos. It was in these very' waters, too, that tile power of Athens was finally .broken by the fleet of Sparta. At this Vwindy writer of the Aegean lies haif the history of the Western world. Troy. T!.--es froivi its plain, the clearest landmark to be seen from Cape Helles; east-Via-dsj across Marmora, jj 'I^oj'b latej

counterpart, Byzantium. Each held back or let through the wealth of Pontus. Each was the heart and centre of the Near East. Between them on the s^rayy 1 shores of the Thracian Chersonese lie the graves of our men, some in eight of Troy, but none in sight of those narrow waters they so valiantly strove to open. "■'.■■