Lone Pine Cemetery

While in Istanbul, I took a day trip out to see the battle sites of Gallipoli. The events of this campaign and the lives lost are still held in common memory in Australia and New Zealand, but I don't think too many Americans know much about what happened there.   It was an amphibious landing to try and take control of the Dardanelle Straits.  Things started to go wrong from the very first, and it turned into a long and bloody stalemate between the Allied and the Ottoman forces, led by the not yet legendary Mustafa Kemal.  After eight months of attacks, counter-attacks, trench warfare, disease, summer heat, and winter cold, the Allies evacuated their forces and the campaign was over. Throughout the entire campaign, the Allies lost around 53,000 soldiers, including 8,709 Australians and 2,721 New Zealanders.

The Lone Pine Cemetery is one of many dotting the hillside.  Here, the names of around 6,000 fallen Australian and New Zealand soldiers are remembered, written on headstones and engraved on the walls.

To the Turks, Gallipoli is known as the Battle of Canakkale, and they lost more lives than the Allied forces, with estimates between 56,000-68,000 dead.  Still, the graves and memorials of the foreigners who died on their soil are treated with the utmost respect and there is no sense of animosity in these windswept hills, only sadness and peace, strangely.  I wonder if we would treat foreign soldiers killed on our soil with the same respect?