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Published: September 13th 2011
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Day 127-128
Although it was a great piece of quiet motorway from Volos to the Turkish border, it was a long slog, the major towns in this part of Greece are few and far between, its mainly agricultural with mountains in the distance. But on the 7th September we crossed the Turkish border our furthest country east.
With a day to spare before we entered Istanbul, we decided to visit Galipolli. It was here in 1915, that Allied Forces tried to capture and secure the Dardenelles a narrow strip of water with the aim to march on Istanbul to take Turkey out of the war and start another front against Hungary.
In the 1950’s nobody visited this sparse, but lovely piece of land that is now a National Park. Nowadays many people come to visit the Cemeteries and monuments to commemorate the Turkish, British, French, and Commonwealth fallen. There were 200.000 casulaties during the battle in 1915, after 9 months of stalemate the allies withdrew, the fallen only buried 3 years later.
As ANZAC day is enshrined in the Australian and New Zealand psyche many from those countries visit these shores, particularly on the 25th April when as many as
15000 attend the Anzac dawn service at the cove where many died.
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