Produced by Tolga Örnek, Hamdi Döker and Burak Örnek

Narrated by Jeremy Irons and Sam Neill, Zafer Ergin (Turkish version)

Immensely sad, this war documentary on the 1915 Gallipoli Campaign is the most profound and comprehensive anti-war presentation I have ever seen. It should be seen by every school student in every nation, world wide. It should play in war history museums and war memorials everywhere. I dare say that if it were screened to soldiers in military academies it would both chill them and make them proud. Like the actual experience of the Gallipoli participants, it is impossible to be unmoved by the stories this film tells.

The film is unique in that it brings the ongoing personal records of participants from all sides of the conflict in a deeply humane and respectful manner. A six-year effort in the making, the photographs, diaries and letters of three Australians, two Britons, three New Zealanders and two Turkish soldiers are presented from the beginning of the campaign to its end. Interspersed with commentaries by war historians and re-enactments of shell-fire battles, trench-warfare and beach onslaughts, there is a wealth of grainy, black and white archival footage of the landings and the troops on both the Allies’ and the Turkish side. Records of rising casualties punctuate each failed engagement. It is a chronological narrative that feels relentless, bringing home the utter futility of this campaign and disgust at the high-minded, willful blindness of politicians and generals who ordered it despite wide-spread advice to the contrary.

Gallipoli was the highest grossing film in Turkish history and was the number one film in Turkey for five weeks when it was released there on March 18^th 2005, on the 90^th anniversary of the Campaign. While the re-enactments, shot in black and white, and the archival footage are not extraordinary for a war documentary, the dual-sided view of the action is. Above all, we are privileged to be read the letters of men whom we can see changing through the course of the 10-month conflict. These letters, to wives, sisters and parents are intimately revealing. The horrors seen, and the persistent courage of these ordinary soldiers, both those who did not necessarily want to fight but who nevertheless came to ‘do their bit’ for the war and for their country, as well as those who were eager to engage the enemy, are the most deeply affecting.

We come to know closely such soldiers as Australians Oliver and Joe Cumberland, writing to their sister Una. Unfailingly comforting to her back home despite relating the truth of their harrowing conditions, the strong bond between the brothers fortifies them both throughout. English seaman Joe Murray describes walking corpses, “The ghosts of Gallipoli”. Irishman Munster Fusilier Guy Nightingale, whose initial bloodthirsty zeal continually reveals to his mother the daily horrors in graphic detail and with a kind of macabre relish at not sparing her, changes gradually to terminal weariness of fighting. His change is the most marked and his nightmares continue with tragic effect long after the war ends.

Turkish commander Salahadin Adil writes home tenderly to his wife and newborn child. Lt Mujib writes of his mixed feelings of revenge and compassion at seeing “hundreds of British boys’ bodies lying on our land, whose eyes will open no more”. New Zealand soldiers George Bollinger and Walter ‘Bill’ Leadley, ‘the tallest and shortest’, go from innocent idealism to being “so tired I wished for a bullet”. Most poignant is the description by Bill Leadley of a shattered Australian soldier’s pack spilling open to reveal two tiny, pale-blue baby shoes and two white silk women’s gloves. Their countryman Lt Col Percival Fenwick is a doctor whose humane commentaries speak of his frustration at “this absent-minded war...medical supplies not there ‘yet’.” Dryly he notes, “I would very much like to live long enough to hear the explanation, but I fear I will not do so.” Trench-warfare, disease, constant shelling and piles of corpses sandbagging the trenches put an end to pre-WWI romantic notions of war.

The horrors of the trenches, related first hand in soldiers’ diaries and by historians interviewed by the filmmakers, are unspeakably vile. There are fly borne diseases, endemic dysentery, constant shellfire, a restricted diet comprising mainly bully beef and jam, constant dehydration from vomiting caused by the stench of decomposing corpses, sweltering heat in the summer and little water forcing men to suck rocks or drink urine. This is followed by the snowfalls of the coldest winter for decades. These elements of the war of attrition are finally surmounted by a savage storm which floods and washes away the trenches and drowns men too sick and weak to withstand the water’s onslaught.

Counterpointing these hellish experiences, are photographs of a pompous Winston Churchill and a stern Lord Kitchener back in England, who order repeated, ill-advised attacks, ignorant of the position and condition of the Turkish forces determined to defend their homeland despite horrendous losses.

Among the carnage are points of cordial humanity. An armistice to bury mounting piles of corpses on both sides has soldiers shaking hands with the enemy and developing a new respect for the other side. Turkish cigarettes and cans of British corned beef are thrown as gifts (with the latter returned opened, once tried) from trenches a mere five metres apart. Bonds forged in blood between ‘Johnny Turk’ and ANZACs will never fade. Despite everything, these men did not lose their humanity, as in less naïve wars since.

Commander Mustafa Kemal’s heroic leadership during this campaign led directly to his rise as first President of the Republic of Turkey, as Kemal Atatürk. Winston Churchill, stood down for his mishandling of the Dardanelles attack (though supplanted by even greater political bungling) would rise again in WWII. Aftermath stories of the soldiers we have followed throughout detail nobility in further war service on the Western Front and on to civilian life, or their deaths from wounds.

The particular power of this documentary is in its contrasting the devastatingly personal experiences of ordinary, decent soldiers on both sides, simply doing their duty, with the apparent arrogance and ignorance of distant war leaders who regard their men as cannon-fodder. The Gallipoli Campaign was “a costly mistake”. 120,000 died and nothing was gained.

And feeling that the message of this film will mean little to today’s war-mongers will do nothing to dry the tears you will shed throughout the film.

© Avril Carruthers          4^th October 2005