Posted by: @waggawerewolf27

What a good day to start a history thread, to mark the hundred and tenth anniversary of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps' initial attempts to land on the marble-strewn beach of now ANZAC Cove at Gallipoli, near Istanbul, on 25/4/1915.

Can I be an absolute Aussie iconoclast and suggest that rather than making such a big deal of Australia and New Zealand's entry into the war at Gallipoli — which was an absolute bloodbath and a terrible waste of lives and was one of the worst moves of a failed campaign that achieved nothing in the long run — we could take the alternative that some people already do? 24th-25th April 1918, exactly three years later, was the Battle of Amiens in France, near the town of Villers-Bretonneux, in which the First Australian Imperial Force won a great victory, liberated the town, and actually did a lot to turn the tide of the war.

After the war, donations from school children in Victoria (Australia) were used to rebuild the school in Villers-Bretonneux, and to this day, every classroom has the inscription N'oublions jamais l'Australie — "Let us never forget Australia"! And I believe many of the streets in the rebuilt town were given Australian names too.

I remember back in 1998, my school in Melbourne sent a group of students there (from other year levels than mine) to visit that school and to perform a musical tribute to the soldiers who gave their lives to save the town, 80 years before — they gave us a performance in the school hall before they left, and I just remember it was so moving. I don't have any direct personal connection with the First World War (mercifully, it fell between generations for my immediate ancestors — too young or too old to serve), but I would love to visit Villers-Bretonneux myself some day. 

@Courtenay

Can I be an absolute Aussie iconoclast and suggest that rather than making such a big deal of Australia and New Zealand's entry into the war at Gallipoli...

Yes, I have amended the topic starter slightly, but I still needed to fill out the ANZAC initials to explain why we commemorate the 110th anniversary of ANZAC Day, today. Yes, you are completely right about Sir John Monash's splendid victory on 24-25 April, in 1918 at Villers-Bretonneux. I've even visited the town, in 2015, after I went to the ANZAC centenary at Gallipoli. But by that time, the Australian troops he had at his command had become the First Australian Imperial Force, as you, yourself have told me. What happened to the New Zealanders, by that time, I wonder? Were they sent somewhere else? Throughout WW1, the troops from both countries were acting as part of the British Army, rather than independently. This became more noticeable when after the Fall of Singapore (8-15 February 1942), John Curtin, our then Prime Minister, demanded from Churchill, the return of Australian troops en route to India, to meet the Japanese onslaught.   

On board the good ship Celestyal Crystal someone from the RAAF entertained us passengers & pilgrims by delivering three compulsory lectures, explaining how WW1 started, and why UK entered WW1 in August, in 1914 when the Germans had already breached Belgium's neutrality, invading it to bypass France's Maginot Line, I expect. The Gallipoli campaign was an ill-thought-out & ultimately futile campaign, which the War Correspondent, Keith Murdoch criticized heavily in his reports. But it was never a rout. I forget which general actually planned it, but Rupert's father who was afterwards knighted, by the way, thus was able to help initiate in December of 1915, a planned withdrawal, so successful that not even one soldier died in the retreat.

The Gallipoli troops were sent to Egypt, no longer part of the Ottoman Empire, & where the British were based. Combined with more recruits from Australia, including both of my great-uncles, they went on to the Western Front. They were mostly Victorian troops, featured in the little museum, we visited in 2015, at the back of the school in Villers Bretonneux, before the new Monash centre was built. The new troops arrived in March 2016, when one of them, married to my grandmother's eldest sister, might have learned about the 16th March birth of his son. But again, I ask: What happened to the New Zealanders, by that time, I wonder? Were they further north, perhaps?

The victorious Turkish troops, defending their territory at Gallipoli, were under the command of Kemal Ataturk. They have a great monument there, and we were told how a whole company of soldiers, as young as the ANZACS, some of them little more than children, kept fighting without surrender, even though they had run completely out of ammunition. The mutual respect earned on both sides is why the great mosque at Auburn in Sydney is called the Gallipoli Mosque.