Gallipoli trip part 1: Anzac and Suvla

Well I spent the weekend roaming around the battlefields of Gallipoli. It really does give you a far better idea of the whole battle when you visit the actual site. Trying to understand the movements of the troops and the fighting locations from maps and reading books doesn't really give you a true idea of what the troops faced.

I do recommend visiting the site if you ever have a chance to do it, and be sure to have at least two days for it. It took me around 6 hours to just go around the Anzac area alone and that was with my own car. With a bus it would probably be impossible to see even half the stuff. Of the two sites, Anzac and Helles, Anzac is far easier to visit as it has already ready made routes and far more info boards scattered around. A lot of readymade tours also as it's the main tourist attraction as most of the turkish people want to see the area where Kemal Atatürk commanded and the huge amount of Australians and New Zealanders there.

The scenery around the Anzac area is just breathtakingly beautiful with all the hills and the sea being close by. Though from the history regarding the area the comment that the terrain was fairly difficult going seems to be quite an understatement. Steep hills, nearly impenetrable bushes with sharp thorns and minimal visibility sure didn't make the job of the Anzacs any easier. Makes you wonder if anyone in the HQ ever even bothered to check what the terrain was like before planning the attack as most objectives seemed very optimistic when you saw what terrain features the troops would have had to pass in quite a short time. There were still some remnants of old trenches and bunkers in the area, but most of the "official" sights were just graveyards and memorials. But with a map it was quite easy to go see the different points of attack just to see how the battlefield looked like from the eyes of the normal soldiers.

 Waist high scrubs and rough ground everywhere, and this was the easiest terrain

 Lone Pine

 Remnants of trenches at Johnston's Jolly

"The sphinx" and the Anzac Cove landing site

View into Suvla Bay

Remnants of old bunkers at the Anzac Cove landing site

Attack route to Lone Pine

 Northern part of the Anzac landing areas