Gallipoli (2005) - full transcript
The Allied invasion of and campaign in Gallipoli, Turkey, during World War 1.
Guy Nightingale was a son
of the British Empire.
He was a noble, born
and raised in Britain.
He attended Military School
and then joined his regiment.
Much like other officers of his time
After passing through Dardanelles,
they have no idea what to do.
Only the assumption that the Turks
will surrender immediately.
Everyone hoped and counted on this.
The British boats will impress
and scare Turks so much that
when the fleet enters Istanbul
Turks will surrender immediately.
That's the British plan.
You see from their letters
it was very simple to them.
To help Britain,
to protect the British Empire
they volunteered to get into the army.
This decision was not taken through
intense consideration.
In this aspect, they are no different than
all the other thousands of Australians.
The Turkish guns are nowhere near
running out of ammunition.
The British and French can attack twice
more or they haven't got any ships left.
I don't think they really
sat down and thought about it.
The problem was the immediate
problem of landing an army.
Where that army would go
how it would fight
that was tomorrow's problem.
about what any troops will do when
they're fighting for their homeland.
they landed on a front
of about 600-800 meters
which caused a tremendous
complexity on the shore.
The boats and the troops
got mixed, all of a sudden.
and remain unscathed that day.
He was a genius in that
he could reduce the problems
And what he thought of on
that first day was onto the point:
"Whatever they may cost us
We can't lose the cliffs.
We must do whatever we can to prevent the
Australians from controlling the cliffs."
The planning and commanding
for the Second Battle of Krithia
was dreadful for the British side.
The goals were
ludicrously overambitious.
The strategy took no
attention of the number
and the state of troops
and was ridiculous.
And it completely underestimated
the Turkish troops and defenses.
The British did not have
sufficient materials
to fight both on the Western Front
and at Gallipoli.
They needed to choose one or the other
and implicitly,
they chose the Western Front.
The Western Front got the lion's
share of the men and the munitions.
So Gallipoli was always second best.
The government was not united
in terms of purpose.
And you can't win any war without unity.
This is people whose insides
are almost coming out.
This is people who have to go to
the latrines 10, 12, 14, 16 times a day.
This is people whose
backsides are red raw.
Without toilet paper.
They wipe their backside with their hands
and then look for some grass
to wipe their hands with.
That didn't stop the dysentery.
Under these conditions,
dysentery became an endemic.
And you could walk from the
ANZAC trench to the Turkish trench
and not touch the ground.
Because there were dead bodies everywhere.
They'd seen him at close hand.
Some had even shaken hands.
An interesting mutual respect grew
The ANZAC began to call Turks
"Jacko" or "Johnny Turk".
Both sides continued to fight
and kill each other
but with a little more respect.
After armistice, the letters
of the Australians stated:
"Whatever you may think
about the Turk, he's a gentleman."
There was a strange sort of
honor, from that moment on.
All the nationalities
suffered very heavy casualties.
Whether it was British, Indian,
French, Ottoman Turks
all had huge losses.
The bodies began to pile up.
The trenches began to smell
with the decomposition.
Seddülbahir was a horrible place.
For the Turks, these battles on two flanks
were the bloodiest and costliest
of all the battles in Dardanelles.
The Turkish losses here,
the lives lost certainly
account for the majority of losses out of
total during the battles on Dardanelles.
The flies went from the feces
in the drains to the food.
The flies came from the mouths
and the open wounds of the dead
to the food, into their mouths.
And the flies spread disease.
We know they had very little equipment.
We know they had very little
in the way of clothing.
A lot of clothing got swapped round.
Some men didn't have boots
they literally had bandages on their feet.
Even the horses were in poor condition.
But, strange as it seems
the morale of the Turkish army
was very good.
were close enough for both sides
to often see each other.
Somehow, they got to know each other.
The Turk was not a shadowy figure
on the eyes of the ANZAC.
The Turks got to know the ANZAC,
and the ANZAC got to know the Turks.
Messages were even exchanged.
Gifts were even exchanged.
Turkish soldiers threw
cigarettes to the Australians.
The Australians threw bully beef back.
It was returned
after it was opened and tried.
These men had seen terrible
things, and did terrible things
and will do terrible things
because they believe in their cause
they'll take away from
this experience terrible scars,
but they'll never, ever
have lost their humanity.
There's several cases of Turks and
Australians bayoneting each other
and literally both dying at the same time
so that they were, if you like,
totally linked in death
and just lying there,
impossible to separate.
When the Australians went on to France
and Belgium on the Western Front
they often compared battles to
the one in Kanlısırt.
In their letters, they wrote either
"It was as bad as Kanlısırt"
or "It was nearly as bad as Kanlısırt."
Before this had happened,
a Turkish officer
came to the end of one trench above
the Australians and called out
"Stop! Stop!"
The slaughter had become too terrible.
One of the things that always
haunts me when I go there is
why those men in the third
and fourth line left the trench.
What were they thinking?
Despite knowing that they were going
to achieve nothing and were going to die
why did they leave?
All through that day,
they exhausted each other
and it was as bloody as the
Somme and Passchendaele.
More intense, even
because it's such a tiny piece of ground.
And at the end of the day
the Turks as well as the New Zealanders
were exhausted.
because people don't seem to have grasped
the success of four Turkish battalions.
The way they held the outposts.
As the British neared,
they kept hitting and running.
It caused heavy casualties.
And then evaporated into
the night and the bushes.
Mustafa Kemal
was destined to be.
He knew what he had to do
and very well knew
the price he had to pay.
He didn't hesitate and
abandon his command.
And he succeeded.
Gallipoli was the battle where
a group of amateur soldiers faced
the realities of war for the first time.
And there was nothing glorious about it.
It was mistake, blunder, muddle,
death, and disease.
of the British Empire.
He was a noble, born
and raised in Britain.
He attended Military School
and then joined his regiment.
Much like other officers of his time
After passing through Dardanelles,
they have no idea what to do.
Only the assumption that the Turks
will surrender immediately.
Everyone hoped and counted on this.
The British boats will impress
and scare Turks so much that
when the fleet enters Istanbul
Turks will surrender immediately.
That's the British plan.
You see from their letters
it was very simple to them.
To help Britain,
to protect the British Empire
they volunteered to get into the army.
This decision was not taken through
intense consideration.
In this aspect, they are no different than
all the other thousands of Australians.
The Turkish guns are nowhere near
running out of ammunition.
The British and French can attack twice
more or they haven't got any ships left.
I don't think they really
sat down and thought about it.
The problem was the immediate
problem of landing an army.
Where that army would go
how it would fight
that was tomorrow's problem.
about what any troops will do when
they're fighting for their homeland.
they landed on a front
of about 600-800 meters
which caused a tremendous
complexity on the shore.
The boats and the troops
got mixed, all of a sudden.
and remain unscathed that day.
He was a genius in that
he could reduce the problems
And what he thought of on
that first day was onto the point:
"Whatever they may cost us
We can't lose the cliffs.
We must do whatever we can to prevent the
Australians from controlling the cliffs."
The planning and commanding
for the Second Battle of Krithia
was dreadful for the British side.
The goals were
ludicrously overambitious.
The strategy took no
attention of the number
and the state of troops
and was ridiculous.
And it completely underestimated
the Turkish troops and defenses.
The British did not have
sufficient materials
to fight both on the Western Front
and at Gallipoli.
They needed to choose one or the other
and implicitly,
they chose the Western Front.
The Western Front got the lion's
share of the men and the munitions.
So Gallipoli was always second best.
The government was not united
in terms of purpose.
And you can't win any war without unity.
This is people whose insides
are almost coming out.
This is people who have to go to
the latrines 10, 12, 14, 16 times a day.
This is people whose
backsides are red raw.
Without toilet paper.
They wipe their backside with their hands
and then look for some grass
to wipe their hands with.
That didn't stop the dysentery.
Under these conditions,
dysentery became an endemic.
And you could walk from the
ANZAC trench to the Turkish trench
and not touch the ground.
Because there were dead bodies everywhere.
They'd seen him at close hand.
Some had even shaken hands.
An interesting mutual respect grew
The ANZAC began to call Turks
"Jacko" or "Johnny Turk".
Both sides continued to fight
and kill each other
but with a little more respect.
After armistice, the letters
of the Australians stated:
"Whatever you may think
about the Turk, he's a gentleman."
There was a strange sort of
honor, from that moment on.
All the nationalities
suffered very heavy casualties.
Whether it was British, Indian,
French, Ottoman Turks
all had huge losses.
The bodies began to pile up.
The trenches began to smell
with the decomposition.
Seddülbahir was a horrible place.
For the Turks, these battles on two flanks
were the bloodiest and costliest
of all the battles in Dardanelles.
The Turkish losses here,
the lives lost certainly
account for the majority of losses out of
total during the battles on Dardanelles.
The flies went from the feces
in the drains to the food.
The flies came from the mouths
and the open wounds of the dead
to the food, into their mouths.
And the flies spread disease.
We know they had very little equipment.
We know they had very little
in the way of clothing.
A lot of clothing got swapped round.
Some men didn't have boots
they literally had bandages on their feet.
Even the horses were in poor condition.
But, strange as it seems
the morale of the Turkish army
was very good.
were close enough for both sides
to often see each other.
Somehow, they got to know each other.
The Turk was not a shadowy figure
on the eyes of the ANZAC.
The Turks got to know the ANZAC,
and the ANZAC got to know the Turks.
Messages were even exchanged.
Gifts were even exchanged.
Turkish soldiers threw
cigarettes to the Australians.
The Australians threw bully beef back.
It was returned
after it was opened and tried.
These men had seen terrible
things, and did terrible things
and will do terrible things
because they believe in their cause
they'll take away from
this experience terrible scars,
but they'll never, ever
have lost their humanity.
There's several cases of Turks and
Australians bayoneting each other
and literally both dying at the same time
so that they were, if you like,
totally linked in death
and just lying there,
impossible to separate.
When the Australians went on to France
and Belgium on the Western Front
they often compared battles to
the one in Kanlısırt.
In their letters, they wrote either
"It was as bad as Kanlısırt"
or "It was nearly as bad as Kanlısırt."
Before this had happened,
a Turkish officer
came to the end of one trench above
the Australians and called out
"Stop! Stop!"
The slaughter had become too terrible.
One of the things that always
haunts me when I go there is
why those men in the third
and fourth line left the trench.
What were they thinking?
Despite knowing that they were going
to achieve nothing and were going to die
why did they leave?
All through that day,
they exhausted each other
and it was as bloody as the
Somme and Passchendaele.
More intense, even
because it's such a tiny piece of ground.
And at the end of the day
the Turks as well as the New Zealanders
were exhausted.
because people don't seem to have grasped
the success of four Turkish battalions.
The way they held the outposts.
As the British neared,
they kept hitting and running.
It caused heavy casualties.
And then evaporated into
the night and the bushes.
Mustafa Kemal
was destined to be.
He knew what he had to do
and very well knew
the price he had to pay.
He didn't hesitate and
abandon his command.
And he succeeded.
Gallipoli was the battle where
a group of amateur soldiers faced
the realities of war for the first time.
And there was nothing glorious about it.
It was mistake, blunder, muddle,
death, and disease.