Lee Speech: Dawn Service, ANZAC Cove, Gallipoli
25 April 2002 Speech
Speech At Dawn Service, ANZAC Cove,
Gallipoli
Hon Sandra Lee, leader of the ANZAC Day
official NZ delegation at Gallipoli
Nga mate haere, haere,
haere
Tatou te hunga ora tena koutou, tena koutou, tena
koutou katoa.
To the dead, farewell, farewell,
farewell
To us, the living, greetings, greetings,
greetings to us all
There is a time and a place that are
forever part of what it means to be a New Zealander.
The
place is ANZAC Cove, here on the Gallipoli peninsula. The
time is Sunday 25 April 1915.
The young New Zealand
soldiers who landed here 87 years ago came ashore late in
the morning, into a scene of carnage.
The Australians
who had landed at dawn had already taken heavy casualties.
There was confusion everywhere, men separated from their
units, officers separated from their men.
A Canterbury
soldier saw what he described as “upturned boats, gear of
all description, and dead men littering the beach....the
noise…one continuous roar of rifle and shellfire mingled
with the cries of the wounded and the dying.”
The
ambitious military plans had failed.
In small groups the
New Zealanders pressed on, through the scrub and the
gullies, up the steep cliffs above us, to support the
Australians who were already engaged in fierce combat on the
Sari Bair heights.
Most of the 600 New Zealand
casualties on 25 April came in the bitter fighting for the
hill known as Baby 700. It was, to quote one observer: “…a
soldier’s battle.
"The ground made it difficult for
commanders to control their men.
"It was impossible to
see anything ahead without standing, and to stand was to
fall victim to Turkish sniper or shrapnel fire.
"All
the New Zealand commanders forward on Baby 700 that day were
killed or wounded.”
In the end, this forward position
was lost, and the ANZACs were driven into a defensive
perimeter.
This is where the ANZAC tradition began,
on that first day of the Gallipoli ordeal.
It came down
to the way ordinary New Zealanders and Australians stood by
their mates in the face of danger.
Throughout the long
day, and throughout the bloody campaign that lay ahead,
Australians and New Zealanders fought side-by-side,
shoulder-to-shoulder.
Much has changed in 87 years. The
enthusiasm with which young New Zealanders went off into the
so-called adventure of war is thankfully a thing of the
past.
We have learned from Gallipoli, and many times
since then, that war is a cruel and heartbreaking
experience. Of the 8,566 New Zealanders who fought in the
Gallipoli campaign, 2,515 were killed in action, while
another 206 died of disease and other causes, and 4,752 were
wounded.
Almost every family in New Zealand was
affected by this tragedy.
Today, the spirit of ANZAC is
not of war but of peace.
We are gathered here on a site
that has been set aside by the Turkish government as a Peace
Park, a perpetual monument to the way former enemies have
since become firm friends.
It was Mustapha Kemal
Ataturk, the heroic leader of the Turkish defences at
Gallipoli, and later the first President of the Turkish
Republic, who best expressed this ideal, in words of
compassion and reconciliation that speak to us across the
years.
Today we remember the bravery of all the soldiers
who fought here: from New Zealand and Australia, from other
parts of what was then the British Empire, and from France;
as we also remember the Turkish soldiers who bravely
defended their homeland.
As Ataturk so movingly said,
there is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets
who now lie here together.
Out of so many individual
experiences, let me just read the words of a soldier in the
Auckland Infantry Battalion, a schoolteacher in civilian
life, who in later years summed up the tragedy of this
futile campaign:
“Yes, I still think of Gallipoli.
"You may well ask if any war is worth it.
"You may
well ask those lines of white crosses under which are buried
the finest young fellows New Zealand could produce: Was it
worth it?
"Was it worth your lives? No; No, it was
not.”
We stand in deepest respect here at Gallipoli, at
the dawning of a new day. But it is not just another day.
A few hours ago the same dawn broke in New Zealand,
and
people all over our country also stood, in silence, at
services of remembrance, wearing their commemorative red
poppies.
They stood, as we stand, to remember the loss
of so many lives, at Gallipoli, and in all the wars and
conflicts that have followed. I am honoured to wear a
commemorative red poppy given to me by the Royal New Zealand
Returned Services Association, to help mark this solemn
occasion.
We will not forget those who have laid down
their lives.
It is our legacy and our responsibility,
as today’s New Zealanders, today's Australians, today's
Turks, today's citizens of the world, to ensure that the
sacrifice of all those who have gone before us was not in
vain.
No reira, tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.