Comment: Impact of Gallipoli visit will never leave me

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ON JUNE 11, 2010, I visited Gallipoli.

Early in the morning my partner, Alby, our friend, Sarah, and I boarded a van, along with some other tourists, and began our long drive from Istanbul to Gallipoli. From the moment we arrived at Anzac Cove and read the words of Kemel Attaturk on the monument there, I found it an emotional experience.

Even now, every time I read those words, I want to cry.

It was a very, very hot day, hotter than I'm used to. The scenery was beautiful. There were butterflies flittering around us as we walked among the graves. Not long before our visit, a group of New Zealand women had been to the graves and had left crosses made of flax on the graves of the Kiwi soldiers.

We hopped in the van and drove to the next ridge. Gallipoli is a very large battlefield; three ridges to the top of the Gallipoli peninsula. There are cemeteries in different locations all the way to the top. Some of them are where the soldiers of the Allied forces are buried. Some are the burial sites of the Turkish soldiers. We visited both. All of the cemetery sites are impressively tidy and well maintained. The words of Attaturk are true. Our sons are cared for.

We walked the sites of the trenches and listened to the guide tell us what life was like for the soldiers. How days of camaraderie and communication, where the soldiers of both sides would call out to each other and throw gifts (chocolate for the Turks and dried apricots for the Anzacs), were interspersed with days of brutal fighting.

Our guide explained how, in Turkey, a whole generation of boys were missing from their schools. Tears welled up in my eyes again. My son, at the time, was 16, and planning to be a soldier.

We went to the top ridge and saw the monument erected to honour the Kiwi soldiers who captured that ridge. It's strange, how in spite of the fact I abhor war, that I feel a desperate sense of the futility, the horror and the waste, that I long for a future where the world has put an end to war - I can still feel pride in their accomplishment.

I had not expected Gallipoli to affect me the way it did. That day is one that had an impact on me. It is a day I will always remember.

-Submitted by Rotorua Daily Post reader Vicki Arnott.