My apologies for posting this early but I suspect I'm going to be too busy tomorrow.
25 April 1915.
On this day 90 years ago British Empire and French forces stormed ashore at Gallipoli in an attempt to take the Dardanelles from Turkey and allow the Royal Navy to steam to the very gates of Constantinople. On the 19th and 20th of December the troops were finally withdrawn, of the 500,000 troops landed 300,000 were casualties. Best estimates were that 250,000 Turks were killed. New Zealand suffered 7,500 casualties 2,721 of whom were killed (1 in four of the total landed). During the attack and taking of Chunuk Bair on the 8th of August and the next day, of the 760 men of the Wellington Battalion who had captured the height that morning, there came out only 70 unwounded or slightly wounded men. Even greater losses were experienced later in WWI, for instance the battle for Passchendaele when New Zealand lost 3,700 killed, 1000 on one day alone. With a total population of just 1 million, 100,000 served with greater than 60,000 casualties.
The rights and wrongs of the Gallipoli campaign are far better explained elsewhere than I can manage but this date quickly became a public "holiday" in New Zealand, in time becoming a day set aside to remember the sacrifices of those New Zealanders who fought for their country in all the wars including and subsequent to this campaign.
For those who have grown up in or visited New Zealand one of the striking things is the large number of war memorials scattered through every city, town and hamlet of our country. In my old home town of Oamaru there are two large granite monuments on the main street, one each in Weston, Ngapara, Enfield, Maheno, Herbert and Duntroon. More can be found in the countryside, not anywhere near any hamlet but simply on a back-country crossroad. Each is inscribed with 5 or 10 or 100 or more names, often with several members of the same family listed. I was once asked by a German tourist "everywhere I look there are war memorials, what was so great about the war?". The answer is of course nothing, they are not War memorials, they are tombstones, the bodies lie in the fields of Europe, their families built these here because the bodies never came home.
The 25th of April is more than any other our national day, a day in which we remember at dawn those who gave their lives for our country.
Kia Ora te Tangata Whenua o Aotearoa, Kia Ora.
"They shall not grow old,
As we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them"
25 April 1915.
On this day 90 years ago British Empire and French forces stormed ashore at Gallipoli in an attempt to take the Dardanelles from Turkey and allow the Royal Navy to steam to the very gates of Constantinople. On the 19th and 20th of December the troops were finally withdrawn, of the 500,000 troops landed 300,000 were casualties. Best estimates were that 250,000 Turks were killed. New Zealand suffered 7,500 casualties 2,721 of whom were killed (1 in four of the total landed). During the attack and taking of Chunuk Bair on the 8th of August and the next day, of the 760 men of the Wellington Battalion who had captured the height that morning, there came out only 70 unwounded or slightly wounded men. Even greater losses were experienced later in WWI, for instance the battle for Passchendaele when New Zealand lost 3,700 killed, 1000 on one day alone. With a total population of just 1 million, 100,000 served with greater than 60,000 casualties.
The rights and wrongs of the Gallipoli campaign are far better explained elsewhere than I can manage but this date quickly became a public "holiday" in New Zealand, in time becoming a day set aside to remember the sacrifices of those New Zealanders who fought for their country in all the wars including and subsequent to this campaign.
For those who have grown up in or visited New Zealand one of the striking things is the large number of war memorials scattered through every city, town and hamlet of our country. In my old home town of Oamaru there are two large granite monuments on the main street, one each in Weston, Ngapara, Enfield, Maheno, Herbert and Duntroon. More can be found in the countryside, not anywhere near any hamlet but simply on a back-country crossroad. Each is inscribed with 5 or 10 or 100 or more names, often with several members of the same family listed. I was once asked by a German tourist "everywhere I look there are war memorials, what was so great about the war?". The answer is of course nothing, they are not War memorials, they are tombstones, the bodies lie in the fields of Europe, their families built these here because the bodies never came home.
The 25th of April is more than any other our national day, a day in which we remember at dawn those who gave their lives for our country.
Kia Ora te Tangata Whenua o Aotearoa, Kia Ora.
"They shall not grow old,
As we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them,
Nor the years condemn,
At the going down of the sun
And in the morning
We will remember them"
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