15 May, Çanakkale
Koç Pansiyon 70TL (negotiated down from 88TL)

Amid Gallipoli’s gravestones carved with messages of pride and patriotism and promises of an afterlife, I was bemused to find one carved, Well done Ted. I can’t stop thinking about that one. A young man dead on foreign soil, congratulated in a most prosaic way as if for passing a not particularly important test. Perhaps the author was not close to him or simply inarticulate; perhaps it was a term for which Ted was well-known, or his personal request... While Charl lay on his bed, I joined a day tour of the Anzac (Australia and New Zealand) World War I campaign on the Gallipoli peninsula, listening to tales of bravery and death, and stupidity and death, and compassion and death. I saw a pine tree at the Australian cemetery. Two Australian brothers fought nearby; one was killed, one survived. The survivor found a pine cone on his brother’s body and sent it home to his grieving mother. She planted a seed and grew a tree to commemorate her dead son’s life. Many years later a seed from that commemorative tree was returned here from there and planted amongst Gallipoli’s dead.

Gallipoli graveyard

Gallipoli statue of Turkish soldier carrying wounded Allied officer

Gallipoli pine tree at Australian memorial

Gallipoli Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

Gallipoli monument to Turkish soldiers