ANZAC Day service address, Chunuk Bair Chunuk Bair, Gallipoli

NZ Foreign Affairs Minister, Winston Peters address: E nga reo, e nga mana, e nga waka E nga pu korero o nga hau e wha E rau rangatira ma Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa

(To the languages, the prestige, the various canoes; To the Speakers from the four winds, And all leaders. Greetings, greetings, greetings to you all)

Earlier today we gathered at Anzac Cove to pay tribute to those who served during the Gallipoli campaign and in subsequent wars.

Here at Chunuk Bair, the highest point at which the Gallipoli campaign was fought, we pay tribute to the courage, determination and stoicism of the young New Zealand men who risked their lives for their country.

We also honour the courage of those who have served since that time on battlefields around the world.

At home today, New Zealanders will have gathered to pay their respects to those fallen soldiers whose names are carved in the memorials that dot every town in every corner of our country.

Looking around, one can see that Anzac Day remains as relevant to New Zealanders today as it was for our grandfathers or great grandfathers.

For New Zealanders, Chunuk Bair encapsulates the selfless heroism and courage in the face of overwhelming odds so often shown by our soldiers during the Gallipoli campaign. Equally it reflects the willingness of Generals far behind the frontlines to order men forward, irrespective of the toll.

After three months of bloody trench warfare, the Allies' position remained perilous. It was decided that an attack on the high ground of the Sari Bair range might break the stalemate and expose the Turkish defences.

Chunuk Bair, the dominant feature of the ridgeline, was a primary target. If it and its nearby peaks could be captured and held, the Turkish line would be forced to fall back, making a more general advance possible.

The main assault up the steep slopes and through the deep gullies of the Sari Bair range on August 6 and 7 was led by a mix of New Zealand, Australian, British and Indian forces.

The seizure of Bauchop’s Hill and Walden’s Point is described by historian Chris Pugsley as a ‘grim dour battle in the dark…all that was heard was the crack of rifles and tapping of Turkish machine guns and then, faintly in the distance, cheers from the slopes, and the flashes of the Turkish fire receding up the hills. The door was open. The foothills had been secured’.

New Zealand's assault on Chunuk Bair was then ordered. The Auckland battalion led the initial mid-morning attack. It was shot to ribbons, losing 300 men for the gain of 100 yards. The Wellington battalion, under Colonel William Malone, was told to make a second attack. Malone, in an act of supreme moral courage, refused.

He said: "My men are not going over in daylight – but they'll go over at night time and they'll take that hill … I will take the risk and any punishment … I'm not going to send them over to commit suicide".

The attack was duly delayed until nightfall and Malone was as good as his word, and by first light on 8 August, Chunuk Bair was taken.

However defending it was to prove the hard part. Exhausted and under heavy fire, the New Zealanders entrenched as best they could in the hard, stony ground and held their positions against fierce Turkish counterattacks.

After each assault there were fewer New Zealanders left. One soldier remembered:

‘Soon the ravine was full of wounded. Two hundred of us, maybe more. It was terrible. No water and no attention. Nobody could do anything. We were being shelled too as we lay there … men were all smashed up, and getting more smashed up. Bleeding away. They knew they were dying. They were brave men.’

When the New Zealanders were relieved after a night and half on Chunuk Bair, just 70 of the 760 men who had taken the ridge remained alive. Colonel Malone, who leadership is still revered today, was among the dead.

Alas the victory was brief. On 10 August, the relieving British troops were overwhelmed by a determined Turkish counterattack. It spelt the end of the Allied campaign in Gallipoli, and news of the defeat at Chunuk Bair came as a bitter blow to the New Zealanders.

There were many heroes at Chunuk Bair, among them Cyril Bassett, a signaller awarded a Victoria Cross for keeping communication lines open under intense enemy fire.

Bassett always tried to keep his Victoria Cross a secret, even from his children. He was disappointed to be the only New Zealander to get a VC at Gallipoli because, in his words, "hundreds of Victoria Crosses should have been awarded there ... All my mates ever got were wooden crosses”. Only someone who knows nothing of what happened here, and the fact that within a year New Zealand troops would face another great killing ground on the Somme in France, would ever, in a modern context, question New Zealand's commitment.

We should look at all who have served our country as heroes. And we should honour their memories by striving for a just and peaceful world, where disagreements between nations are settled by diplomacy, rather than warfare.

Let us finish by remembering the dead here, through the words of poet Francis Ledwidge, who served at Gallipoli. Then, in the lull of the midnight, gentle arms Lifted him slowly down the slopes of death, Lest he should hear again the mad alarms Of battle, dying moans, and painful breath.

ENDS

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