Seventy-nine years ago today, OPERATION OVERLORD executed the D-Day invasion of Normandy to rescue France from Nazi occupation. The invasion on June 6th 1944 is largely considered the most important turning point of World War Two, but nineteen years earlier, in a whole other World War the Dardanelles and Gallipoli landings were a disastrous attempt at an amphibious landing which became a meatgrinder for allied forces. There is no specific day of the Gallipoli campaign which ran from February of 1915 through January of 1916 and so we often forget the whole of it.

Why use this day of victory to remind us of a failure from an earlier war? One of the major connections between the two campaigns is the famous (or infamous depending on perspective) Winston Churchill. He was a key planner in Gallipoli and has been variously believed to be against the D-Day invasion. I will leave to real historians the question of Churchill’s perspective on OPERATION OVERLORD, but I want to use this opportunity, afforded by the reminders and connections across wars, to remember the men who fight in both wars which were so deeply tied to one another.

The soldiers who fought in Normandy and WWII broadly receive rightful and consistent praise, but there are many who have fallen in former wars as well who are worthy of remembrance. Whether in victory or defeat, it is important that we remember those who fought, Americans, Brits, Aussies, Kiwis and beyond – because there is a worthiness in the struggle that inheres in both victory and defeat. So, on this day of remembered triumph, I ask that you listen closely to the spectres of former losses – to the Ghosts of Gallipoli.

Ghosts of Gallipoli

“…he that dies this year is quit for the next.”

Shakespeare

Dear Candy,

            The waves are gentle today.  Combat frightens me, but I do what I must for our family.  If all I must do is survive then I will survive, but could you still love me if I turned coward?  I haven’t seen it yet; the combat, but some veterans here tell me that it’s not so bad.  I think they lie, trying to calm me before the day actually comes.  Each man is alone here – together alone in a strange sort of closeness that borders on truly intimate connection yet dodges it at the last moment.  We care for each other and worry for one another, but each listens in silence to his own thoughts and dreams the night away with different dreams.  We are one, they keep telling us.  We are to assault the beach as one, as a unit.  I am still just me, and I still think only of you and our son and survival. Fate will tell if I am coward, hero, or dust.  I love you, Candace.  Pray for me. 

April 1915, Patrick Steele 28

Dear Sister,

            I’ve lived this long, too long amidst the carnage.  In my last letter I told you I didn’t want to die, but I did not know then what I know now.  I hadn’t yet seen the shit and grime of this war; my brothers drowning in gas, blood and fire.  I don’t know if I will make it home, but I feel kind of hollow.  We are going for another assault tomorrow, but for now we are trying to forget what we know will be tomorrow, another day of death, another trek through hell.  Maybe I will make it home, though not with the same life I had before I left.  I am diminished, but what I would give to return to Adelaide, to see you again and our mother.  I am not who I was before I left, and I fear you two will be disappointed at what I have become, what I have lost.  So as I ended my last letter I ask that you take care of our mother, but keep your prayers to yourself. I fear that God has gone deaf. 

October 2001, Peter Sullivan 108

My Dearest Molly,

            I am scared and excited. I hope that you will love me greater in my valor than you did when I was just a boy.  This war will make a man of me.  It is only a few days until we land on the shores of Gallipoli and rush the beaches to take them from the evil Turks.  We can make a difference in this war, perhaps end it more quickly this way.  We will break the Turkish lines and push through to reinforce our comrades in the rest of Europe.  My fellow soldiers are young and boisterous, I fear I will be slightly less of a gentleman when I return to you, but I am sure you can get me back in line.  You are my love and my light, Molly, I pray this letter finds you well and that I will see you again very soon.

May 1915, Scott Wyatt 18

Hey Pa,

            I sent Ma a letter separate from this one some weeks back.  You know how she worries about me.  Don’t show her this, please.  I don’t want to break her heart.  The war’s not going well, and I hate to reckon it, but I doubt I will survive the next assault.  I am stunned I have lasted this long.  Every day we rush the Turks and their fortified positions.  It’s a mad dash of sorts and bloody dangerous. There’s nothing noble or pretty about dying, no matter what for far as I can tell or far as I care to tell, and all this talk of King and Country is tripe.  Let these damn Brits have their damn King and Country. Why should I spill my blood for it? Either way, Pa, I wanted to shoot you straight. Don’t ever expect to see me again. I won’t be coming home.  Our family never did have any luck did we, Pa?  Take care of everyone.  I’m sorry I couldn’t make you proud.

January 1991, Charlie Parker 92

Hey Ma,

            It’s cold and dark and dreary as usual, not like the beaches near Townsville.  We go up again tomorrow, another run at those damn Turks.  I want to think we can take ‘em Ma, but you didn’t raise me to be that stupid.  Dying for King and Country sounds noble, right Ma? I just want to get home to some good cooking and a nice warm bed.  I might as well be sleeping at the bottom of the sea here it’s so awful.  Don’t you mind me though, I will make it through well enough.  You just keep my room made up for when I finally get to come home.  Love you, Ma.

June 1915, Charlie Parker 17

Molly,

            Again… we are assaulting the beach again. The same as yesterday and the day before, and every bloody day for the reckoning of days back as long as I can remember. The Turks will still be there.  Their gunfire will shred us up again, casting our bodies to drift with the ebbing tide.  Every evening I sleep in the damp, crushing cold darkness, and every morning I wake for another charge, another reckless assault on unassailable positions against numberless foes.  Oh but certainly there is cause for hope. Hope that some good lord out there will reverse the backwards wiring of his brain and call this whole thing off, and I will come home to you.

March 1965, Scott Wyatt 68

Dear Sister,

            We are assaulting the beachheads of Gallipoli tomorrow morning at dawn.  The beach hardly looks like one at all. Do you remember playing in the white sand near the City of Churches, when we were kids and life was simple? I… I don’t want to die.  I want to see you again, and the rest of the family too. It is my prayer that the good Lord will keep me safe amidst the battle, and hold me tightly in His hand, so that I may spare our mother the pain of my loss.  Losing Father was too much for her, and I dare say losing me might bring an end to her completely.  So, dear sister, take care of our mother.  Pray for me and God will listen. The prayers of the righteous availeth much.

July 1915, Peter Sullivan 21

Dear Candace,

            I can’t help but feel as though I have been here before, teetering on the eve of battle, my stomach trapped high in my throat. I almost think I have penned these words before, or something like them to you.  How strange, as if I had already died and had to fight again, assault the beach again, fall in battle yet again, but I am speaking nonsense. I hope this letter finds you well and that our son is safe.  I hated having to leave him and you. If I do not survive tell him how much I loved him, that I would have given all I had for him.  I sometimes fear I will not get the chance to tell him myself.  I do not know why we are here, upon these blasted shores of Gallipoli, fighting a war for the caprice of men who sit idly.  I can only hope it is over soon, and I may return to you and little Gabriel.  I hear the sound of the guns, familiar, like old friends or dogs barking their greeting, and I must go. We must go, as one to meet their guns anew, and breathe the breath of life closest to the grave, and to heaven.  With love, Candace, with love.

June 1944, Patrick Steele 58

***

Hello there,

            I don’t know who you are or by what power our words have reached you, but I must confess that which my comrades have chosen to forget.  We are all of us bunkmates in the same flat.  These old, tired bones come to rest in the same crushing embrace.  Every once in a while the wind stirs, the sea writhes and teems with storms and one of us escapes just far enough for our souls to reach the cool air above the crashing waves and no longer battle-strewn beaches.  What none of my compatriots have told you. Compatriots… they are my men. My men which I ordered into the breach again and again. My men who I could not save. They are more than comrades and friends, they are my children and my brothers. What they would not dare write in their letters, letters written on nothing but the raw material of the soul, is that we are dead.  We and the ghosts of our foes battle daily and relive the final moments of our lives. We write letters, carouse with one another, feel the pangs of hunger and thirst, the horror of our hopelessness and the love for the man next to us, and then I order them to die again. And they follow. They die. And we will keep dying until the sea’s storms wash our bones onto the shores of Gallipoli and our body-bound spirits can finally break free. Until then here we sleep, beneath the waves of the Aegean, rattling together tales of what was, what is, and what might have been. 

November 2020, An Unknown Captain

The assault on the beaches of Gallipoli took the lives of some 46,000 allied troops during WWI.  The full amount of casualties on both sides is estimated at over half a million men in just over eight months of the campaign, 120,000 of whom would join the ranks of the Ghosts of Gallipoli.