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Article Excerpt
Controversy over roadworks on the Gallipoli peninsula in early 2005 raised some familiar adjectives in Australia: the ground at Anzac is 'sacred', 'precious', 'of historical importance'. The words have had currency for ninety years. During the Great War, Gallipoli was variously claimed as a 'sacred spot to Australia', the 'Waterloo of Australasia', even the 'Valhalla of the Austral race'. (1) Yet in 2005 some unfamiliar words also arose: 'sacrilege' had returned to the peninsula for the first time since the 1920s. The words are important: during and after the Great War, Australians saw the sacredness of Gallipoli in exclusive terms. This was Australian--at best Australasian--holy ground. 'Sacrilege' was the domain of a heathen and marauding Turk intent on disturbing the Anzac dead. Today, however, sacrilege resides in an evolving relationship with the peninsula, at the centre of which has been a keen anxiety for the sanctity of the dead, and, more recently, for the sanctity of the legend that they represent. This article examines that evolution, from the initial denial of Turkish sovereignty and the attempts to assert the primacy of Gallipoli's Australian history, to a cautious and partial appreciation of the shared histories emanating from 1915. The events of 2005 are part of a long history of Australian anxiety over their relationship with Gallipoli, which has only transformed, rather than settled, over time.
The Allied withdrawal from Gallipoli in December 1915 revealed a profound angst among bereaved Australians as the Anzacs surrendered the graves and bodies of some eight thousand Australian dead, along with the slender territories they had held, to the Turks. The care of the dead, once the preserve of comrades, now passed to the enemy. Reaction to this dilemma emerged quickly in the press, and indeed within the ANZAC forces themselves, with a transformation of the image of the Turkish enemy. The Turk, it was asserted, could be trusted, as an 'honourable foe', to respect the graves. It was an earnest assertion, for many Australian soldiers had developed a respect for the Turks they had encountered as honest and worthy enemies. (2) Following the withdrawal, the Melbourne Argus told readers that there was 'not the slightest doubt' that the Turks now in command of the peninsula would regard the graves 'with all due reverence'. The Turks were, after all, 'chivalrous foes, and they have shown the same respect for our dead as for our living, though from different motives'. (3) Australians would nevertheless struggle to come to terms with the realisation that the dead rested not in some distant extension of Australia or England, but forever in 'alien soil'.
Despite assurances, the Turks remained not only the enemy, but followers of an alien religion. Tributes to the Turks' honour could only mask anxiety and suspicion about the sanctity of the Anzac dead, though these feelings remained largely submerged during the war, perhaps due to the stoicism that the conflict imposed on the bereaved. Scarcity of information regarding the Gallipoli graves fed latent concerns, which built as the war continued. Hostilities between British and Turkish troops ceased on 31 October 1918; less than a fortnight later the war on the Western Front would also cease. In that short space of time, however, a flood of Australian anxiety found sudden and urgent expression, fuelled as much by suspicion of the Turks as by a sense of responsibility to the dead. In federal parliament on 6 November, Senator W K Bolton, who had served at Gallipoli, and was now also president of the RSSILA, gave an impassioned speech. 'Now that hostilities with Turkey have ceased', he asserted, 'the proper care of our troops who were buried in Gallipoli, demands urgent attention'. (4) A clamour of voices in public, like Bolton's, insisted on prompt action. Just two weeks after the armistice with Turkey, W E J. Macguire of New Farm expressed the heart of anxieties in bald terms: 'The difference between our dead in France and our dead in Gallipoli', he told the Brisbane Mail, 'lies in the fact that the former are buried on friendly Christian soil, but the latter lie in a heathen, hostile country'. (5)
An Allied presence at Gallipoli was very quickly established after the armistice. The return was more than an occupation; it was a mission charged with a symbolic reworking of the Gallipoli landscape. Lieutenant Cyril Emerson Hughes, who had fought at Gallipoli, represented Australia with the first Graves Registration Unit to land. Official correspondent C E W Bean, preparing to return to Gallipoli even before the end of the war against Germany, was instructed to offer an opinion on how best to 'fulfil Australian sentiment in the permanent memorial of Australian dead there'. (6) All those arriving on Gallipoli were keenly aware that so much anxiety hinged on fears that graves had been desecrated. When fears seemed to be confirmed at Cape Helles, old prejudices quickly supplanted any rhetoric of the Turk as noble enemy. At Anzac Cove, however, Hughes reported that 'We found no signs of systematic desecration beyond the removal of the crosses. Some few of the graves had probably been tampered with, but whether by wild dogs or inhabitants, it was hard to say'. (7) Doubts persisted, however, and Hughes felt compelled to again insist that desecration had not occurred. With the rediscovery of an Anzac cemetery in 1920, Hughes reminded Australians 'that the Turks did respect our dead, and ... that systematic desecration did not take place'. (8)
Yet desecration was really only a symptom of a greater anxiety about the alien, non-Christian nature of the Gallipoli soil. Meeting Australians' great anxiety would require more than a physical presence on the peninsula. Attempts to secure an 'Anzac estate' on Gallipoli, whereby the very peninsula would become Australian, or at least British, in more than a rhetorical sense, had been popular since 1916. The idea was simply to alleviate the Turks of the sovereignty. The prospect gave Australians a sense of agency in what many considered to be a hostile environment for their dead. Australian hopes that the land would be vested in some British authority came to rest with the Imperial War Graves Commission, and, more directly, with the British delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. On this issue Australia was joined by New Zealand, whose Prime Minister William F Massey pressed the Foreign Office to include the cession of hundreds of acres of the peninsula to Britain in any treaty with Turkey. Quoting 'unanimous approval and support' in Australia and New Zealand, Massey was 'anxious about its absolute security of tenure; when that is gained the other details will not be difficult to arrange'. (9) Prime Minister Hughes asserted his aim of ensuring 'the safe-keeping of graves which, to the Australian people, are very...
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