TOUR OF BATTLEFIELDS

Evening Star, Issue 22718, 4 August 1937, Page 7

TOUR OF BATTLEFIELDS

PILGRIMAGE TO GALLIPOLI AND FRANCE NEW ZEALANDERS ASKED TO JOIN New Zealand returned soldiers, relatives of the fallen, and other sections of the community are invited to join a special pilgrimage to the war graves and battlefields of Palestine, Gallipoli, France, and Belgium which is being organised in Australia. The pilgrimage is being sponsored by the _ Victorian branch of the Gallipoli Legion of Anzacs. It is proposed that the party shall leave Australia in the new Orient liner Orcades in March next year, and after a tour of the Holy Land disembark at Gallipoli about May 11, spend nearly two weeks in France, and reach London at tho .beginning of June. In announcing full details of the pilgrimage, the president of the Gallipoli Legion (Mr A. H. Puttick-Wynn) emphasised that the tour would not be confined to returned soldiers, but would he open to all sections of the community. | Particularly, he said, was the pilgrimage designed to appeal to the younger people of Australia and New Zealand. The legion felt that the tradition built up by tho Australian and New Zealand soldiers in the Great War could be kept in full vigour in the future only by an. intimate understanding of its birth. For those to whom the war was merely history the only way to gain that understanding was to see the thousands of graves in special cemeteries built by the Imperial War Graves Commission in all theatres of war.

“ Often in these days of world strife and trouble,” Mr Puttick-Wynn added, “ we wonder whether their silent witness to the desolation of war is being overlooked by the nations. A million of tho Empire’s men lost their lives directly in the four years’ war (1914-18), and probably almost as many more have died from its causes since.”

_ Special arrangements, said Mr Put-tick-Wynn. had been made with the Imperial War Graves Commission for relatives of fallen soldiers to visit graves in which they were particularly interested. Outstanding dates in the programme compiled in conjunction with Dalgety and Co. Ltd., the Orient Steamship Company, and Pickfords Travel Service were

March 23.—Leave Sydney. April 23-29.—At Cairo. Special service to be hold in Cairo Memorial Cemetery on Anzac Day. April 30-May 7.—Palestine and Syria. Apart from visits to war cemeteries, special tours of all holy places in Jerusalem and Bethlehem; motor to Damascus, crossing the Plain of Esdraelon and the territory which it is proposed to hand to the Jews in the division of Palestine, and visiting Nazareth, Tiberias, and Galilee; reemhark at Beirut on Slay 7, May 11.—Arrive Dardanelles; party will disembark at Cape Helles, the famous ill-fated landing place of British troops, and survey the battlefields from which 'British troops failed to link with the Australians and New Zealanders; motor thence to survey the Australian and New Zealand battlefields and visit all cemeteries; special ccremonv at the Australian memorial to tlm missing at Lone Pine and at the New Zaland memorial on Clumuk Bair.

May 12. 14, and 17.—At Istanbul (Constantinople), Athens, ami Naples. May 19-31.—1 n Franco; disembark at Marseilles, and after three days in

Paris, begin tour of western front from Amiens, visiting the Somme, Villers-Erettonneux, Bozieres, Beaumont, Hamel, Corbie, Proyart, and Albert, and -other battle areas. Flanders battlegrounds to be visited from Bruges, including Ypres and the famous Menin Gate. Visit also Brussels and _ , June 1-6.—London; in time for the Derby and the first test of the 1938 series. The cost of the tour, from Australia, including exchange and return fare, will be £250, and the booking agents throughout Australia and New Zealand are Dalgety and Co. Ltd. Any other inquiries should be addressed to the Honorary Organiser, Gallipoli _ Legion of Anzacs, Champion House, 57 Swanston street, Melbourne.