The Absurdity and Obscenity of Gallipoli

As we appoach the Gallipoli centenary, I have set myself the task of re – reading some of the best examples of New Zealand writing about the disastrous invasion. There are three books, Ormond E Burton's 'The Silent Division', Robin Hyde's 'Passport to Hell' and Alexander Aitken's 'Gallipoli to the Somme', all based upon first hand experiences of New Zealanders who fought in the bloody trenches of Gallipoli. I'll start with the horror and some images of the 'fallen'. Here is Private J. D. Stark (8/2142, Fifth Reinforcements, Otago Infantry Battalion) describing the bodies of the dead:

But the dead who waited in No Man's Land didn't look like dead, as the men who came to them now had thought of death. From a distance of a few yards, the bodies, lying in queer huddled attitudes, appeared to have something monstrously amiss with them. Then the burying-party, white faced, realised that twenty four hours of the Gallipoli sun had caused each boy to swell enormously – until the great threatening carcases were three times the size of a man, and their skins had the bursting blackness of grapes. It was impossible to recognise features or expression in that hideously puffed and contorted blacknessⁱ.

Letter to the Otago Early Settler's Museum

I'm a regular visitor to the Otago Settler's Museum, it's a great place for my 2 year old boy to run around in and occasionally look at the exhibits. The 'Dunedin's Great War' exhibit has been going for several months now, and over time I have managed to look at a few snippets of it when I am not busy looking after my boy. The title of the exhibit, and the central image of the small child saluting the union jack, I find highly objectionable. The emphasis on remembrance of the dead and military history, and the marginalisation of almost all other aspects of the war is not really very surprising. These more or less obvious ideological points aside, I was motivated to write a letter to the curator because of some factual innaccuracies and omissions. I think I have succeeded in being polite and reasonable sounding, while at the same time not pulling any punches:

Aitken's Lemnos: a transformative memory of the Aegean war

The words we choose to use have a huge power over our imagination. When I hear words like “Greek islands” or “the Aegean” my mind conjures up visions of beaches, olive trees and sunlight. Even though my knowledge of ancient Greece and Rome is fairly weak, I still sense the evocative and historical power of the ancient place names of the Aegean region. Islands such as Lemnos and Samothrace contain relics of a history which goes back thousands of years, and it is this very ancient history itself which allows our imaginations to wander and dream: myths of figures such as Hephaestus, the Greek god who was cast out of Olympus and fell into water near the coast of Lemnos. Jason and the argonauts also rested here, and were tempted to stay there by the women who ruled the island at the time. Further back in time the mists are even thicker and the legends more enigmatic: the ancient Lemnians worshipped a duo of deities known as the Cabeiri, subterranean figures whose history is obscure. 

Into the Trenches

I recently spent three weeks travelling on my own through Turkey. I was on my back from staying with my partner's family in Finland where we celebrated Christmas together. Money was in short supply as usual, and Europe is an expensive place to travel. Winter was unavoidable, but probably not so bad in Turkey as it would be in more northern countries.