War and Reconciliation

Yesterday I participated in an ANZAC ceremony for the first time: a moving dawn service led by Australian Ambassador Glenn Miles to commemorate the fallen of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) in the battle of Gallipoli, 1915.  This tragic battle helped forge the modern countries of Australia and New Zealand.  There was also a large British contingent, including my great-grandfather, who was killed.

At the time the First World War broke out, my great-grandfather George Adams was a professional soldier and already a veteran.  His own father had fought alongside Britain’s French and Ottoman allies in the Crimean war (we still have his Order of the Khedive, 5th class, granted by the Sultan to his allies).

Winston Churchill’s plan in 1915 was to capture Constantinople and force the surrender of Britain’s erstwhile Crimean war ally, the Ottoman Empire, now allied to Germany.  But first the well-defended Gallipoli peninsula had to be captured, to open the Dardanelles strait for the Navy. This was the scene of the largest amphibious landing of WWI, involving some 35,000 men.

The Lancashire Fusiliers landed at sunrise on 25 April 1915.  The troops were packed into boats that were rowed towards the shore in broad daylight.  As they got closer, they were caught by murderous machine-gun and sniper fire.  A hundred yards out, the men started jumping over the side to wade ashore.  Some just sank under the weight of their equipment.  Others got caught in under-water barbed-wire entanglements.

The survivors pressed on through the minefields on the beach.  The defenders were on the cliffs behind, firing down on the attackers.  Eventually a small detachment of fusiliers, including my grandfather George Adams, climbed the cliffs and cleared them of the enemy.  By dawn the next day some 700 men were dead or wounded, out of a total battalion complement of about 1000.

In honour of this feat of arms, the beach was renamed Lancashire Landing.  Six of the men who made it onto the cliffs were later awarded the Victoria Cross (VC), the highest British award for bravery.  Typically for the period, the episode was given the cheery name “six VCs before breakfast”.  My own family tradition has it that the surviving officers and men who had made it onto the cliffs drew lots to decide who should receive the honour. By that time, however, my grandfather George Adams was dead.  He was killed by a sniper’s bullet on 11 May 1915, the day he was due to go on leave.  He left behind a widow and an eight year-old son: my maternal grand-father, who would go on to join the Foreign Office.

I have not been to Lancashire Landing.  But I’m told it’s quite a scramble up the cliffs.  For George Adams, aged 42, after a long day’s fighting and under fire from above, it would have been a gruelling physical challenge.   He’s now been resting more than 100 years.

Last year I was invited, as a descendant, to attend a moving ceremony at the Cenotaph on Whitehall in London.  There were of course units of the Australian and New Zealand armed forces – and a fine show they put on too.  But there was also the band of the Turkish Air Force.  They too received applause from the crowd, although their grandfathers had fought ours.  And a young boy read, in his high, steady voice, the memorable inscription on the memorial put up by Ataturk at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, including the moving line:

“You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries: wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace, after having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”

In November, we held our own memorial service at the Commonwealth War Graves and honoured both the fallen buried there, and the Lebanese and Palestinian veterans still living, who so bravely defended these lands. It was an honour to meet men who fought like my Grandfather, with valour and determination.  But what always strikes me most at such ceremonies is how all sides come together to commemorate the losses they have suffered.

Recognising the common humanity of those on all sides in war is, I think, a key part of reconciliation but also of our own healing.  We should not ignore past tragedy and suffering- it helps define us – but we must try to deal with and face up to what has happened in the past, and come to terms with our shared history. The loss of my great-grandfather has reverberations in my family to this day.  But somehow that ceremony in London last year, with the sense of reconciliation that accompanied it, helped put those ghosts to rest.