NANCY Brown (CL 23/5/04) and Jim Dowling (CL 18/4/04) both express concern about how school Anzac Day commemorations may give false ideas about the situation our human family faces.
For a start, year after year, Australian children learn at school only the Anzac side of the Gallipoli story. Few realise that the Allied forces were the invaders.
In all, nearly a million men fought there and the casualties were enormous. Half a million Turks were thrown into the battle, of whom 250,000 became casualties (86,000 dead).
British and Indian casualties totalled 120,000 (more than 28,000 dead); the French suffered 47,000 casualties; Australia’s wounded numbered 27,700, of whom 8700 were killed; while New Zealand lost 7571 men (2701 killed).
Gallipoli launched the career of Mustafa Kemal, the commander of the Turkish forces. He subsequently became the first President of the newly formed Republic of Turkey and the nation’s acknowledged founding father. In the 1930s he looked for reconciliation, sending this message to Australian mothers: ‘Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives. You are now living in the soil of a friendly country, therefore rest in peace … You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears … After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well’.
This immortal pronouncement, one of the first ever by a victor, has been followed in recent years by the Turkish Government designating the whole Gallipoli peninsula as a Peace Park, so that future generations can see the terrible reality of war.
Gallipoli has served in helping shape the national culture and identity of both Australia, New Zealand and Turkey. Australia and Turkey are perhaps the only two countries in the world that have a strong friendship born out of a war, and living proof that reconciliation is possible.
DAVID M. LANGBRIDGE
Tarragindi, Qld
