AT ANZAC COVE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 108, 10 May 1933, Page 11

AT ANZAC COVE

“SAME OLD GALLIPOLI” CEREMONY LAST WEEK TURKS HOIST AUSTRALIAN FLAG A simple little Anzac ceremony took place in a corner of Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, at dawn last Anzac Day. And taking part in it were a few Turks, former enemies, who paid their tribute to Australian dead as tho British and Australian flags were released over the cemetery on the beach. Lieutenant-Colonel C. E. Hughes, chief administrative officer of the Imperial War Graves Commission in the East, described the scene by radio-tele-phone from Cairo to Melbourne. He had just returned from a visit to tho Peninsula and was able to give a picture of Gallipoli as it is to-day. Colonel Hughes, who is a Tasmanian, spoke from his office, I from Melbourne, and our voices travelled by way of London (writes J. C. Waters in tho Melbourne Herald). The time synchronised with that on the Sunday morning 18 years ago, when cutters were slicing through tho dark waters of the Aegean Sea, towing boatloads of Australian soldiers to tho assault upon Gallipoli’s heights. Tho ceremony of which .he spoke took place near where the first bullets of the Turks “struck sparks from the shingle,” and at a cemetery holding 300 bodies of Diggers who fell in tho first hours of the landing. The Turks, who joined in tribute, were gardeners employed by the Graves Commission. Tho man who led was another Australian, who fought on Gallipoli, and who now is officer in charge of that war graves area. Millington by name, he lives in the age-old Turkish village of Canak Kale, and long before dawn to-day he crossed the Dardanelles to come up over Lone Pino and down to Anzac Cove. “Deathlike Silence.” “You’ll be able to picture it all right,” said Colonel Hughes. “The stretch of beach, deserted now, once packed with the throbbing activity of war; the heights, then honeycombed, with dug-outs, now overgrown again with the thorn bushes which tho diggers cursed as they climbed. At dawn, just like tho deathlike silence that swept the onrushing boats, when, just before tho landing, flares were seen and the figure of a man was silhouetted on the plateau. “I was there the other day. But for the cemeteries and the obelisks on Lone Pine and Chunuk Bair, it is the same old Gallipoli; wild, rugged and with a seeming impregnability tht is a challenge to man. It was a sunny day, just as it will be to-day, just as you aro having at home to-day and just as it was in 1915. I crushed wild thyme as I walked through the scrub. Its smell recalled the early fighting, when many Diggers shuddered involuntarily because it was associated so much with death.” The Lone Pine Flourishes. Mr. Waters asked about the young pine that was striking upward from a seed of the old tree that gave Lone Pine its name. “It’s flourishing,” Colonel Hughes said. “I can see it now, waving in the breeze among the rosemary bushes, the irises, the poppies and tho anemones that we have planted around and between the rows of 650 Diggers buried there. I stood on the steps of the memorial to the 4000 missing and looked out across it to the Aegean, bluo and peaceful, whore once rodo England’s battleships pounding the inner heights so unavailingly in efforts to dislodge tho Turk.” Colonel Hughes said that all of the 20 cemeteries on the heights and in the valleys of Anzac were cameos of beauty to-day. Relatives of tho 7000 men commemorated in memorial and gravestone would be glad to know that. He ran through a few famous battle names—first Lone Pine, then Johnston’s Gully, Quinn’s Post, Baby 700, tho Nek, where tragedy stalked so swiftly for those who took part in efforts to gain the highest ridge, Embarkation Pier. Walker’s Ridge, Shrapnel Valley and Ari Burnu. Shrapnel Valley! T remembered a plum or poach tree reaching out from the scrub and wild oats there four years ago. Colonel Hughes told me then that ir. was a relic of the Digger occupation. It was still there, a strange memorial in the wildness of Gallipoli. Peace of the Cemeteries. “Tho Australian gums wo planted a few year sago,’’ Colonel Hughes said, “are doing well, and it will not be long before they will be a conspicuous feature on sides of the sheltered ridges. The cypress trees are also coming along nicely around the walls of tho cemeteries. As I looked tho other day I could not imagine anything more beautiful than what has been done by the War Graves Commission to carry out the Empire and national ideal. I stayed there until sundown, in the peace and quietness of it all. Old memories stirred, fanned by the singing of blackbirds and the swishing of tho wings of owls flying low over Chunuk Bair.’*