Gallipoli Legend

Australia, World War One and Gallipoli – Grace Kelsall

World War One impacted Australia monumentally, scarring the nation’s history. Australia played a significant role in World War One and the Gallipoli campaign. Within these events; it has immensely shaped Australia as the nation we know of today. World War One began in 1914 from the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and ended in 1918 on November the 11th which is now recognised as a day of mourning and a time given recognition to the lives taken on the battlefield. To a prominent extent, the ANZAC legend is significant to the concept of Australian identity and nationalism through the origins of the ANZAC legend, the key events that have helped form Australia as an independent nation,

Events such as the landing at ANZAC Cove, the battle at the Nek and the Gallipoli Campaign have helped form the origin of the ANZAC legend. “The Gallipoli Campaign was a particularly significant event in history because it came at a time when Australia had only just become a federal commonwealth” (Skwirk online education, 2016, online). The Gallipoli Campaign is also known as the Dardanelles Campaign; it is remembered as an unsuccessful attempt by the Allied Powers to control the sea route from Europe to Russia. It began with a failed naval attack on the Dardanelles Straits in early 1915 and continued with a major land invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsula on April 25th (History, 2017, online). Allied forced suffered heavy casualties, making their wat back to their initial landing sites. Evacuation began in December 1915 and finished in early January 1916 (Gallipoli and the Anzacs, 2015, online). Sir Ian Hamilton, director of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force was responsible for majority of the damage at Gallipoli. Although the Gallipoli Campaign lost the lives of many soldiers “it has taught the military word extremely important lessons about combat, it’s an unfortunate experiment that’s failure led to future success” (The Gallipoli Campaign, n.d, online). There is an emotional trauma associated with Gallipoli’s past that changed the veterans it scarred forever.

Appendix

Appendix 1

Oh! you who sleep in Flanders Fields,

Sleep sweet - to rise anew!

We caught the torch you threw

And holding high, we keep the Faith

With All who died.

We cherish, too, the poppy red

That grows on fields where valor led;

It seems to signal to the skies

That blood of heroes never dies,

But lends a lustre to the red

Of the flower that blooms above the dead

In Flanders Fields.

And now the Torch and Poppy Red

We wear in honor of our dead.

Fear not that ye have died for naught;

We'll teach the lesson that ye wrought

In Flanders Fields.

- Moina Michael

Appendix 2

[I]f I had stayed at home I would never have been able to hold my head up & look any decent girl in the face . . . Surely everyone must realize that the Empire is going thro a Crisis it has never gone thro’ before and that every one is expected to do his duty now.

- Battery Sergeant Major G Ellsworth

Appendix 3

I am going to have to try for the war . . . I think I ought to go, they want all they can get and . . . I think it is the greatest opportunity for a chap to make a man of himself, those that come back from this war will be the right sort that anybody would be proud