To the Dardanelles! The Entente Allies successfully capture their objective and plant their flags in this boy's 1915 war game, as they did not in life, neither in the naval campaign, nor in the invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula.
Aux Dardanelles; Victoire; Vive les AlliésLogo and number: ACA 2131Reverse:Artige - Fabricant 16, Faub. St. Denis Paris Visé Paris N. au verso. Fabrication Française - Marque A.C.A
"Our first sight of it was from the sea on the day of the landing. It looked wild country. Like some part of New Zealand really. We didn't land until three in the afternoon. Ashore, it was frightful. Terrible. I've never seen anything like that before. We followed the fighting, until we were halfway up Walker's Ridge. I saw men with all kinds of wounds. Arms off. Legs off. All we could do was bandage them up as best we could and get them back to the beach. That was our main job, getting casualties back to the beach. It was a problem sorting out the living from the dead. We looked at each man fairly closely. When they could walk there wasn't any trouble. Stretcher-bearers took away the severely wounded. All we could do was bandage them up and give morphia pills to ease their suffering. Some died on the way back to the beach. They had to sort things out back there."
Excerpt from George Skerret's account of the landing of the New Zealand Otago Battalion on Gallipoli on April 25, 1915, the first day of the Gallipoli campaign. Skerret was a member of the medical corps. The Australians landed in the morning, followed by the New Zealanders later in the day. The beach became known as Anzac Cove after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps.
Voices of Gallipoli by Maurice Shadbolt, pp. 50, 51, copyright © 1988 Maurice Shadbolt, publisher: Hodder and Stoughton, publication date: 1988
Gallipoli Campaign, The Allied invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey, 1915-04-25, 1915, April, Gallipoli invasion, Gallipoli, The Gallipoli Campaign, Gallipoli Campaign
