Off Topic Gallipoli -100 years, Anzac Day

The centenary anniversary of this awful campaign during WW1 this weekend.

Happy Anzac Day to all you Aussie and Kiwi R''s.

 

apparently I got home drunk from the rsa

 

Also marked here in Canada by the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.

I found the 1981 film "Gallipoli" a very powerful and moving production.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/...1723/Gallipoli-film-review-heartbreaking.html

Canadians at Gallipoli: Royal Newfoundland Regiment honoured
Newfoundland troops were only North American soldiers at the bloody First World War battle

There are no poppies on Hill 10 in the Lancashire Landing cemetery. But there are gravestones row on row, cutting a haunting line in the Turkish meadow.

Many of those white stone markers honour some of the approximately 40 members of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment who fought and died at Gallipoli during the First World War.

It wasn't the biggest loss of life the Newfoundlanders would face in those years — and it paled beside the 46,000 mostly British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers who died in this failed attempt to control the Dardanelles Straits — but it would be a defining moment for the group and the British colonial province that later joined Canada.

The Newfoundlanders were the only North American troops at Gallipoli, fighting alongside British and ANZAC — Australian and New Zealand Army Corps — forces.

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22 soldiers from the Newfoundlanders regiment are buried in four sites including Lancashire Landing cemetery in Gallipoli, Turkey. (Commonwealth War Graves Commission)

Newfoundland wasn't a part of Canada in 1914. When the call for troops came it was its own dominion, and hundreds of young men rushed to enlist. By September 1915, more than 1,000 Newfoundlanders had landed in Gallipoli.

During those lean years, a fabric shortage had given the Newfoundlanders' uniforms a blue signature. Instead of the standard issue khaki-coloured cloth — or puttee — the fabric wrapped around their boots was blue. They quickly became known as "the Blue Puttees."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadians-at-gallipoli-royal-newfoundland-regiment-honoured-1.3046197

 

Cheers 'finglas' .............. each year seems to bring out more and more people to pay their respects.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...s-pay-respects-Anzac-Day-dawn-ceremonies.html
Sadly, the WW2 vets numbers have thinned dramatically to near single digit figures.
A whole generation of people and their wealth of knowledge is all but gone.
We will remember them.

 

I am not sure that I can say "Happy" ANZAC Day, but I can recognize the sacrifices made by the troops that were there and never went home, or went home with horrible injuries. In high school, I had a physics teacher from Newcastle NSW - the first from whom I learned anything about Gallipoli which he taught instead of pysics on ANZAC day in 1971

I am ashamed that having a Newfoundland heritage on my mother's side I was unaware until I saw the same report Kilburn referenced that the Royal Newfoundland Regiment also saw action at Gallipoli. I will have to research the Newfoundlanders that were there and check to see if any were relatives

 

My father told me that when WW2 came around, many men of his age had been told by their fathers, not to enroll in the army ( in reference to the slaughter of men at Gallipoli ) .............. so he enroll in the air force and joined Bomber Command where two out of every three never made it back home!

 

Thanks Gandy. That is the one I was trying to post.

Over 3,000 Irishmen died in Gallipoli.

 

• Australia: 18.500 wounded and missing - 7,594 killed.

• New Zealand : 5,150 wounded and missing - 2,431 killed.

• British Empire (excl. Anzac) : 198,000 wounded and missing - 22,000 killed.

• France : 23,000 wounded and missing - 27,000 killed.

• Ottoman Empire (Turkey) : 109,042 wounded and missing - 57,084 killed.

• Furthermore 1.700 Indians died in Gallipoli, plus an unknown number of Germans, Newfoundlanders and Senegalese.
  RIP to all. I think the signficance to Australia and New Zealand is the sense of national identity (they became Aussies and Kiwis as opposed to being British people living in Australia and New Zealand) that it kicked off. And in relative population terms their casualities were huge. How the hell the French managed to have more of their men killed than wounded is beyond me, I'll have to do a little reading.

 

WTF were they doing there?

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Who rattled your cage?

 

Really not cool Swords.

Anzac Day 2015: Up to 15,000 'forgotten' Indian soldiers fought alongside Anzacs

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-04-22/indias-forgotten-soldiers-who-fought-alongside-anzacs/6406086

Up to 15,000 Indians fought with allied troops at Gallipoli, but their contribution remains relatively unknown and unrecognised in Australia and their homeland, research has found.

"The average Indian is almost ignorant about Gallipoli as a campaign in World War I," retired Indian Air Force wing commander Rana Chhina said.

Historians believe almost 1,400 Indians died at Gallipoli and up to 3,500 were wounded.

Unlike many of the Australian troops, all the Indians who fought were professional soldiers.

"We had an Indian infantry brigade, the 29th Indian Infantry Brigade. We had a mountain artillery brigade and, of course, the mule transport," Mr Chhina said.

The Mule Corps comprised of 650 men and more than 1,000 mules to transport supplies to troops on the peninsula where motor transport was impossible.

Historians say the Mule Corps established themselves in an area known as Mule Gully, which came under constant sniper and machine gun fire during the day.

As a result, most transport took place at night.

"The Mule Corps were the unsung heroes of Gallipoli. If it hadn't been for them, the Anzacs and the rest wouldn't have been able to hold on in the manner that they did," Mr Chhina said.

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A sergeant major of the Indian Mule Corps at Gaba Tepe, Gallipoli, in 1915.

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Three Indian troops and a Gurkha (far right) at Walden Grove, Gallipoli Peninsula, April 25, 1915.

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An Indian Mountain Battery in action at the back of Quinn's Post at Anzac Cove.

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A group of unidentified Indian gunners near the 1st Battalion's rest camp at the foot of White's Valley, Gallipoli Peninsula.

 

The total number of New Zealand troops and nurses to serve overseas in 1914–1918, excluding those in British and other Dominion forces, was 100,444, from a population of just over a million. Forty-two percent of men of military age served in the NZEF. 16,697 New Zealanders were killed and 41,317 were wounded during the war – a 58 percent casualty rate.[1] Approximately a further thousand men died within five years of the war's end, as a result of injuries sustained, and 507 died while training in New Zealand between 1914 and 1918. New Zealand had one of the highest casualty and death rate per capita of any country involved in the war.