Gallipoli: A Guide to New Zealand Battlefields and Memorials.

• Author: Ekins, Ashley
• Position: Book Review

GALLIPOLI: A Guide to New Zealand Battlefields and Memorials

Author: Ian McGibbon

Published by: Reed Publishing in association with the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, Auckland, 2004, 128pp, $19.95.

Eighty years ago, in May 1925, a group of 400 travellers from Britain, Australia and New Zealand gathered on the bare summit of Conkbayiri on the Gallipoli peninsula for the unveiling of a New Zealand memorial. This hill of 'Chunuk Bair' was the highest point gained and briefly held by New Zealand soldiers during the eight-month-long campaign. The white stone monument bears the simple epitaph: 'From the uttermost ends of the earth'.

The words are apt. No soldiers travelled further to fight on Gallipoli than the New Zealanders. Over 8500 men of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force served on the peninsula in 1915. Almost one-third of them (2721) died during the campaign; most have no known graves. Over three-quarters of the survivors were wounded, injured or ravaged by sickness and disease.

The architect of the memorial believed that few New Zealanders would ever visit this remote place and that future generations would even forget the memorial was there. For almost 70 years this forecast seemed correct. The Gallipoli battlefields relapsed into an isolated wilderness; few travellers disturbed the silence and time went by 'in an endless dream', as Alan Moorchead observed in the 1950s.

Over the past decade, however, popular interest has revived in the story of Gallipoli and increasing numbers of people are visiting the peninsula. The crowds of young Australian and New Zealand backpackers...