GALLIPOLI LANDING

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 137, 14 June 1929, Page 3

GALLIPOLI LANDING

TWENTY-NiNTH DIVISION

THE ■ ANNUAL. DINNER

(From ".The Post's" Representative.)

■.' LONDON, 3rd May. ' On the evening of Gallipoli Day, the annual dinner.of the.29th Division, Association was held at the; Cafe Royal, Lieut.-GeneraV Sir "William presiding. .■:■ Among the company-were: Major-General Sir Granville Ryrie, High Commissioner for. Australia,. Sir' James Parr, the French Military Attache, and the Assistant French Military Attache, Admiral of the Fleet Earl Jellicoe, Admirals Sir George • Hope, Sir Roger Keyes, and Sir Richard Phillimore, Rear-Admiral C. M. Stayeley,. Ehgineer-Rear-Admiral H. Lashmbre, Captain E. Unwin, V.G., R;N., Generals Sir Walter Braithwaite, Sir lan Hamiltonj and Sir Beauvoir de Lisle, Lieut.-General Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston, M.P. (president 29th Division. Association),: Colonel B. Freyberg,-V.C.- ■

Sir lan Hamilton proposed, the principal toast, "The 29th" Division." "The landing,'»■ he said, . ..' "stands alone in my experiences; although my long'life has been chequered: by some desperate and highly-coloured' moments. A duel with a Shinwarri mullah' in the deodar forest which clothes-the Peiwar Kotal- started me off, as it';'caught the eagle eye of one no ' less 'than; little Bobs. A wild charge with the; sth Punjab Cavalry' between .: -Kabul" ... and Ghurzni, one of those rarest of-charges which really got; home, is not a. thing readily to.be forgotten. • , ' "Majuba.Hill and the death of Sir George Colley; 'the death of General Earle and his burial by;D Company of the Gordons, and a company-of the Black Watch at Eirkeban on'the Nile; the relief of Chitral; then Wagon Hill, when our Empire for a moment seemed to totter; these are some .ofy.theaa ventures which still seem to have breath in them, whenever I have leisure to dig them up, and take'a'look ; dt" them. ' THKiyE UPON TIME. "But; each time they grow fainter. In; the landing, however, ',we. -' strike something quite;different.. .'.2sth .April and the 29th Division not only defy the passage o,f. time, .but; actually 'thrive upon time.. Both in our own-minds and in the national consciousness :they live to.-day' more vividly; than; they did one year or seven years after they had made their gentries: upon the stage. V "This is all the more •strange because, from the very outset, there were forces, political' and otherwise, which were interesting' in : keeping, the. landing in shadow, while" they turned' the- limelight 'from.gallantry on .to skill, from attack ■ on- to' evasion;. from .'April,; 1915, onto January, 1916. ' • '/Only very; slowly is the complete story yof • Gallipoliyescapirig- from the clutches of the censor. However,, the baby, i.e., the. First'yblume of the Official History,, looks well, .'and its father is, I believe, as well as can bo expected. 5 .: >■. • ■'•'• .'• ■ • PRICELESS INFOBMATION. "Because the .pubiic have read' the report of the] Dardanelles Commission, they imagine they have : seen evidence. They have-not, and.yet it gives us priceless information, of a character not to be got from any-:other theatre;" There yon -get sworn testimony from a mass of witnesses (including those wio tried to wreck the enterprise), all of whose : statements were subjected to legal check and cross-examination while the campaign was fresh- in their minds." . Sir lan;added that; even as.he ■ spoke of war and adventures, he felt that he might be singing. the swan song of that side of existence altogether. He thought Bemarque 's work, ;' ' All Quiet on the Western Front,'' had' delnitely killed it, and the author deserved to .be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for the next .ten years in succession., - ''When:all this immense literature of war has been shaken Sufficiently in the sieve of tjme,/' he concluded,"there I will remain'one big," softly shining ruby atop of- the. meshes—the landings on i Gallipoli."; ''■ ■ :-