Research to reality – historian’s Gallipoli pilgrimage

Research to reality – historian’s Gallipoli pilgrimage

Prolific author and Massey University professor of war studies, Glyn Harper has written more than 20 books on New Zealanders at war and this week makes his first visit to Gallipoli.

As an historical guide for special ballot visitors marking the 100-year commemoration of the First World War campaign, the journey promises to be emotional and poignant, he says.

Professor Glyn Harper and Dr Cliff Simons (Lieutenant Colonel, New Zealand Defence Force)

He will join two other war historians as a guide on a commemorative tour from April 19 to 25 for around 100 New Zealanders with connections to Gallipoli. Organised by the House of Travel in Palmerston North, the tour will take groups to key battlefields, memorial sites and cemeteries on the Gallipoli Peninsular, including Anzac Cove, Chunuk Bair, Quinn’s Post and Lone Pine.

The trip will be a career highlight for Massey University’s project leader for the Centenary History of New Zealand and the First World War that has been run in collaboration with the New Zealand Defence Force, the Ministry for Culture and Heritage and the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association. The project will culminate in the publication of 13 new books on the history of WWI, as well as hosting lectures, conferences, media interviews and other commemorative activities.

His extensive career as a war historian means he will go to Gallipoli – declared a national park in 1973 – armed with a vast knowledge and vivid sense of what happened there.

But the prospect of actually setting foot in the place that has been such a key focus of his scholarly work from a distance – a place where so much blood was shed – will be a deeply affecting, personal experience, he expects.

The Turkish peninsula embodies a place of unimaginable carnage, suffering and sacrifice that was seen as pivotal in forging our sense of nationhood. On rugged, steep ridges, the Gallipoli campaign was launched on April 25, 2015 on a small bay known now as Anzac Cove. By the time the campaign was over in January 1916 more than 120,000 men had been killed; including 44,000 British and French soldiers, 8,500 Australian soldiers, 2779 New Zealand soldiers and over 80,000 Turkish soldiers.

“I’m not sure anyone can be fully prepared for the overpowering emotions that will be stirred up being on the soil and seeing the sites where so many died,” Professor Harper says.

While he has visited the cemeteries and battle sites of the Western Front campaigns – such as the Somme in France and Passchendaele in Belgium – he anticipates Gallipoli will evoke an especially emotional response as well as further inspiration for his research and writing.

Professor Harper says the trip to Gallipoli has been “on his list” for many years, but he has lacked the opportunity to go until now. Instead, his research projects have taken him to the Western Front and North African battle sites. And his family connections to the First World War are in France. His Welsh great uncle was awarded a military cross for rescuing a soldier from a gas attack in No Man’s Land in the Somme.

Among those taking part in next week’s Anzac tour to Gallipoli are relatives of soldiers who fought there. Many are coming with detailed stories of extraordinary courage, suffering, resilience and, in some cases, survival. Some of the stories have featured in the New Zealand Herald’s Gallipoli 100 series.

Waiheke Islanders Tony Forsyth and his sister Caroline are the grandchildren of Cuthbert Free, a much decorated career soldier who died in 1944, aged 51. He was wounded in hand-to-hand combat with a Turkish soldier at the famous Battle of Chunuk Bair in August 1915.

“He was bayoneted in the thigh but managed to grab his small dagger and stab his attacker through the heart from the back. Then he withdrew the bayonet, bandaged himself up and carried on,” says Mr Forsyth. “He was later invalided out to hospital, patched up and then sent back to the front.”

C W Free was one of the last New Zealand officers to leave the battlefield when the Anzacs withdrew, but died in South Africa of dengue fever contracted in India, where he’d lived and later returned to after serving in the Pacific during World War II.

Another link in the tour group is the grandson of the first New Zealand soldier to set foot at Anzac Cove. Murray Bowler Francis’s grandfather, Lieutenant Colonel Edmund Bowler, of Gore, led the 2nd Reinforcements from New Zealand on December 16, 1914. He was appointed a Beach Commander of Anzac Cove. Mr Francis’ wife Elizabeth is making the trip to Gallipoli to represent the family.

The tour culminates in a 36-hour commemorative gathering to remember the fallen soldiers, including a dawn ceremony at Anzac Cove, and afternoon services for New Zealand at Chunuk Bair and Australia at Lone Pine.

Professor Harper will be joined by Dr Cliff Simons (who is setting up the New Zealand Wars Study Centre for the New Zealand Defence Force), and Stephen Clarke (historian and former chief executive for the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association). They leave tomorrow to spend a week of reconnaissance walking around the battlefields of Gallipoli before the tour group arrives.

ENDS

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