Every April 25 thou­sands of people par­ti­cip­ate in a memorial service for those who fought at Gallipoli with Anzac. At this par­tic­u­lar loc­a­tion roughly 4,000 seats are set up for the ceremony.

If you were to turn around from facing the ocean and the Anzac sign you would see this land­scape. To the left of Chris is a rock form­a­tion the Australians nick­named the Sphinx because it some­what resembled the Sphinx in Egypt where the men trained prior to their arrival in Turkey.

This is Anzac cove which at the time of the attack during the First World War was not known as that, but since then the Turkish gov­ern­ment offi­cially changed the name to honour the sol­diers and the nine month battle. Today there is a road cutting through the middle of the hill thou­sands of Australians scrambled up in hopes of secur­ing the high points of the Gallipoli area.

This is one of the many Commonwealth War Grave cemeter­ies in Gallipoli National Historic Park for the sol­diers of Anzac. I was sur­prised to find the head­stones are a dif­fer­ent shape than all the other Commonwealth War Cemeteries I have visited in Canada, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. I am not sure why they are different.

In some areas of the bat­tle­field the Anzac and Turkish trenches were only nine meters apart. One day, around this area, an Anzac soldier was wounded. He started yelling for help. He kept yelling. Neither side wanted to risk leaving his trench in fear of getting shot. Hours passed. The wounded soldier kept yelling. Then a Turkish soldier climbed out from the safety of his trench. He picked up the wounded man and carried him to the Anzac side before return­ing back to the Turkish side. Miraculously no one fired at the Turk. In a battle where mil­lions of bullets were shot, so many that in the Gallipoli museum you can see two bullets that hit each other in the air, it is truly amazing that the two men com­mem­or­ated in this statue were not hit. The pos­sib­il­ity of two bullets hitting each other in the air is about a 1 in 160 million chance. It happened more than once. I see this Turkish mans actions as one of the rare occa­sions of what human kind could be, but unfor­tu­nately we are creatures who will never live without war.

The entrance to the the largest Turkish memorial and cemetery in the part of the Gallipoli National Park that we toured. It was very inter­est­ing to see the dif­fer­ence of the Turkish cemetery com­pared to Commonwealth War Grave cemeter­ies. The stone used to con­struct the memorial and walls is yellow painted cider blocks, the head­stones are flat, and there is an out door prayer area with provided prayer rugs.

Each Turkish sol­diers head­stone in the First World War Gallipoli cemetery has the symbol of a cresent moon which sym­bol­izes life, and the symbol of a star which sym­bol­izes death. Together they sym­bol­ize that life will con­tinue. The same symbols are fea­tured on Turkeys flag. The head­stone of the Turkish sol­diers has the name of the town he was born, his first name, his fathers first name, the year he was born and the age he died. This par­tic­u­lar soldier was from Gallipoli. His first name was Ismah. The “oglu” means, “son of”. His father’s first name was Ahmet. “Dogum”, means “born in”, and “Yasinda” means “years old”. Before 1934 Turkish people did not have sir names. This is why we only find the first name of the soldier and the first name of his father. This makes it incred­ibly hard for people today to find the graves of their rel­at­ive. Standing in one spot in the cemetery our guide pointed to five graves of dif­fer­ent sol­diers all with the same first name, Mehmet. Imagine if more than one of them was from the same city or town and around the same age.

This statue is of the oldest First World War Turkish veteran and his great-great-granddaughter. According to Turkish belief, if you see your great-great-grandchild you are going straight to heaven. He was 110 years old when he passed away. When he was 109 years old he came to the Turkish memorial and cemetery to unveil this statue of himself.

This grave belongs to young man named John who climbed up and down the rugged hills with his trusty mule, during the Gallipoli battle, retriev­ing wounded or killed sol­diers. With the help of his mule he saved the lives of some 300 sol­diers. All the sol­diers new about him weather they were allied sol­diers or Turkish sol­diers. One day, on May 19, 1915, some new Turkish recruits were on duty for their first time in the Gallipoli area. They saw John and his mule. Recognizing him as the enemy, they shot him. They didn’t know the story about John like all the seasoned vet­er­ans of the Gallipoli battlefield.

The view of the Aegean Sea from the First World War site, the Nek, one of the highest points in Gallipoli National Park.

This statue of Mustafa Kemal, more widely known as Ataturk, was erected beside the Commonwealth memorial on the highest point of the Gallipoli bat­tle­fields. Mustafa Kemal was the divi­sional com­mander for the Turks. Under his command, the Gallipoli battle which went from near dis­aster to una­quivical success. Following the war Mustafa Kemal traveled through­out Turkey gaining the support of the people and earning the name, Ataturk. Today, in every town, city, build­ing, res­taur­ant, hotel and park you can be sure to find either a statue or photo of Ataturk. One day on the bat­tle­field while Ataturk stood prob­ably very much like he is in the statue, bin­ocu­lars around his neck, he was shot. Luckily the bullet was stopped by his pocket watch. On the statue you can make out the faint shape of a pocket watch in his breast pocket. Today Ataturk’s pocket watch can be found in Berlin, because as a plea for help he mailed it to the German com­mand­ing officer as a visual of the des­per­ate times they were in.