Why Do We Remember Gallipoli?
By Anthony Lane
If you are going to see the new Russell Crowe film, “The Water Diviner,” now is the time. Today is Anzac Day, the annual day of remembrance that honors the men of Australia and New Zealand who died at Gallipoli, in what was then the Ottoman empire and is now part of Turkey; this year, in particular, it stands out because it was exactly a century ago that the gruelling campaign began. It lasted eight and a half months, from the amphibious landings of April 25, 1915, to the final, exhausted evacuation, on January 9, 1916. During that period, the number of dead from Australia and New Zealand numbered around eleven and a half thousand, with more than twenty-five thousand wounded. Earlier today, their sacrifice was recalled in a service at Gallipoli that began, as is customary, at dawn.
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