In Gallipoli's Shadow: Pilgrimage, memory, mourning and the great war

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1 Australian Historical Studies ISSN: X (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: In Gallipoli's Shadow: Pilgrimage, memory, mourning and the great war Bruce Scates To cite this article: Bruce Scates (2002) In Gallipoli's Shadow: Pilgrimage, memory, mourning and the great war, Australian Historical Studies, 33:119, 1-21, DOI: / To link to this article: Published online: 30 Sep Submit your article to this journal Article views: 1663 View related articles Citing articles: 11 View citing articles Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at Download by: [ ] Date: 16 December 2017, At: 11:24

2 In Gallipoli's Shadow Pilgrimage, Memory, Mourning and the Great War BRUCE SCATES At a time when many forecast the demise of History, pilgrimages to the cemeteries of the Great War continue to grow in size and number. This paper asks who undertakes such journeys, why they go and how they respond to these 'sacred' and historic places. Through interviews and surveys it reconstructs the emotional world of these travellers, examining the varied responses of young and old and exploring the complex intersection between personal and collective memory. It argues that pilgrimage often involves the (re)invention of ritual and that it can prompt a reappraisal of both gender and national identity. IN 1995, A woman in her sixties from Largs North, South Australia, made her way to Gallipoli. It was the first of two such 'pilgrimages', journeys that would take her from 'the awfulness and beauty' of tiny graveyards in the gullies of the Peninsula to the 'huge cemeteries' that sprawl across Flanders. Prior to leaving Australia, Jenny had often attended Anzac Day services. They were 'small suburban events' and try as she might she 'did not find them very inspiring'. But 25 April at Anzac Cove was another matter entirely: we arrived about 4 am in the dark and the lapping of the waves sent shivers up one's spine... I cried when the last post sounded, as did several of my... friends... We... stood there looking out to sea and you could almost hear the sound of battle. Jenny had read widely before she went but 'nothing prepared me for the sheer awfulness of the landscape'. And nothing prepared her for the 'terrible sacrifice' entombed in Gallipoli's cemeteries: 'to walk along and read the names + inscriptions + ages of the soldier makes one feel so sad'. Jenny stood in the graveyards overlooking the bright blue Aegean Sea and wondered how grieving mothers 'could justify the loss of their sons in far away countries'. At Quinn's post, she found the grave of her own cousin; she heard 'the "ghosts that march up and down the Gullies". I can still hear them'. Gallipoli, and then the Western Front, provoked a bewildering spectrum of emotion: 'pride' in her countrymen's 'bravery' and 'sacrifice', and 'anger at the waste of these soldiers'. She returned home appalled by the 'futility' of war, knowing thousands had died 'for what is now a piece of farmland'. And yet she had a memory she will treasure for the rest of her lifetime: 'no-one who has stood at Gallipoli or seen the huge cemeteries in Flanders can fail to be inspired'. 1 1 Questionnaire completed by Jenny N. (Largs North, South Australia); all surveys currently held in the School of History, University of New South Wales. I thank Rae Frances, Ken Inglis, Peter Cochrane, Marian Quartly and two anonymous referees for their invaluable comments on this paper.

3 2 Australian Historical Studies, 119,2002 Jenny's experience is typical of many. Over the last three years I have surveyed and interviewed some 200 Australians who have made their pilgrimage to First World War cemeteries. It is a small sample, but one which offers some insight into what is fast becoming a rite of passage for both young and old Australians. Every year thousands gather, as Jenny did, for the Dawn Service at Gallipoli; comparable numbers visit the Western Front annually. Such pilgrimages have' been made possible by what Urry calls the explosion of modern tourism. Cheap airfares have shortened the distance between Europe and Australia and (as the establishment of backpacker hostels and Vegemite Bars at Cannakale suggests) a visit to Australian war graves is now part of a recognised tourist itinerary. 2 Of course the distinction between travel, tourism and pilgrimage is bound to be (as Paul Fussell observed) 'slippery' and a host of scholars from the growing field of tourism studies have debated the difference. 3 Those I have surveyed were anxious to demarcate the time spent in 'pilgrimage' from other aspects of their journey. Visiting the graveyards of the Great War was not a matter of mere sightseeing, 'the consumption of culture' as Urry calls it. It was a journey to a sacred place and, as Jenny's experience suggests, involved an emotional ordeal that led ultimately to personal enrichment. 4 Indeed, the emotional structure of Jenny's visit, charted so carefully in her response to the survey, exposes what Ian Reader has called 'the common denominators' of all pilgrimages, be they religious or secular. The motifs have remained the same since Victor and Edith Turner's classic study: there is a sense of a 'quest', a journey 'out of the normal parameters of life [and] entry into a different other world', a visit to a landscape saturated with meaning, and a return home to an everyday world, exhausted but renewed, altered or strengthened by the experience. 5 This article will explore what this pilgrimage means to those who have undertaken it. It is intended as a contribution to a growing literature on grief and memory of the Great War; specifically I am interested in the contested culture of 2 With the exception of Inglis' pioneering study, 'Return to Gallipoli', in Anzac Remembered: Selected Writings of K.S. Inglis ed. John Lack (Melbourne: History Department, University of Melbourne, 1998), work has focused on British pilgrimage, see Tony Walter, 'War Grave Pilgrimage', in Pilgrimage in Popular Culture, eds Ian Reader and Tony Walter (London: MacMillan 1993), 63-5; D.W. Lloyd, 'Tourism, Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Great Britain, Australia and Canada, ', (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 1995) I thank Jay Winter for drawing this fine study to my attention; John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage Books, 1990), See, for example, the special issue of Annals of Tourism Research 9, no. 1 (1992), and Michael Pearson, 'Travellers, Journeys, Tourists: The Meanings of Journeys', Australian Cultural History, no. 10 (1991): 127-9; Paul Fussell, Abroad: British Literary Travelling Between the Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 38. My thanks to Lyn Dore (Tourism Studies, La Trobe University) and Michael Pearson (UNSW) for their generosity and guidance. 4 Questionnaires completed by Ian J. (Armidale, New South Wales), S.M.B. (Gisborne, Victoria). For the description of Gallipoli as 'a sacred place' for Australians see Ian M. Johnstone, 'Gallipoli and Turkey: A Three Week Tour 13 April to 9 May 1996', transcript in possession of the author; also Ken Inglis, 'Return to Gallipoli', 43-4; Urry, The Tourist Gaze, Ian Reader, 'Introduction', in Reader and Walter, Pilgrimage in Popular Culture, 8, 63; Victor and Edith Turner, Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

4 Scates: Pilgrimage, Memory, Mourning and the Great War 3 loss, bereavement and commemoration and the 'hunger for meaning' which as Eric Leed suggests is pivotal to the experience of pilgrimage. 6 My methodology owes as much to ethnography as it does to history: by close reference to the pilgrims' own accounts I seek to recapture something of their experience. This personal testimony is drawn from both a written survey and, where possible, corroborating interviews. Of course, much ink has been spilt in debating the 'dangers' of autobiographical and oral history. I refer here not just to the ethical constraints but also to what Fentress, Wickham and the Hoffmans call the 'ordering and transmission' of social and personal memory. What needs to be emphasised is that this is a study of individual perceptions of the experience of pilgrimage. I do not expect my respondents to be objective or even particularly accurate in their recall; arguably that is immaterial to the pursuit of such highly subjective and self-reflexive history. 7 But I have tried to make this survey representative, surveying the young as well as the old, rural and urban Australians and giving equal prominence to the 'voice' of men and women. 8 Such a project, to borrow Paula Hamilton's phrase, is 'an act of collaboration'. I thank all my respondents for being so frank and generous in revisiting their experience. 9 Family journeys The specific motivation behind each of these journeys varied considerably. At one level the popularity of pilgrimage has much to do with the flourishing of family 6 The most recent Australian examples include Joy Damousi, Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1999) and Ken Inglis, Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 1998); Eric Leed, The Mind of the Traveller (New York: Basic Books, 1991), The most recent (and most useful) review of this literature is to be found in Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1998); James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 41-86; Alice M. Hoffman and Howard S. Hoffman, 'Reliability and Validity in Oral History: The Case For Memory', in Memory and History: Essays on Recalling and Interpreting Experience, eds Jaclyn Jeffrey and Glenace Edwall (Lanham: University Press of America, 1994), The postal survey was devised in consultation with the War Memorial, the staff of UNSW's Community History Centre and several historians. It established a profile of the respondent (age, sex, place of origin, etc) and invited them to respond to twelve other questions. There was no set page length and respondents were free to digress on issues that concerned them. The survey was initiated in NSW in 1997 but extended, with the aid of the Australian War Memorial, to a nationwide project. The NSW History Fellowship enabled me to travel to Gallipoli in 2000 and a subsequent grant from the Department of Veteran's Affairs helped compile a bank of responses. I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of all these bodies and particular thanks are due to Graeme Beveridge, Ashley Ekins, Ian Kelly and Peter Stanley at the Memorial. These surveys and transcripts of interviews will be deposited with the Australian War Memorial on the completion of the project. I have referred to respondents by their first name and initials and place of origin to protect their anonymity. Most of the young people cited here replied to their survey via and most were either 'on the road' or based in London. For the purposes of quantification, footnotes record their home town in Australia. 9 Paula Hamilton, 'The Knife Edge: Debates about Memory and History', in Memory and History in Twentieth Century Australia, eds Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 15.

5 4 Australian Historical Studies, 119,2002 history in Australia. The same urge that leads distant descendants to scour shipping lists in search of convict ancestors leads hundreds every year to the killing fields of Gallipoli and Flanders. Most such pilgrims were in the fifty plus age bracket, almost all had retired, many had lived or fought through the Second World War and committed a large part of their savings to this journey of a lifetime. Very few were independent travellers. They 'mucked in' with either the Returned Servicemen's League, the War Memorial, or took one of several 'Battlefield Tours' now hosted by freelance military historians. For all these individuals, family history was much more than a hobby. As Davison explains, it often 'answered a widely felt need to reaffirm the importance of family relations in a society where mobility, divorce and internal conflict tend to erode them'. And a family's history was a studious undertaking. Many related what they called 'serious footslogging in the Library', charting the life of an uncle, cousin or grandparent through unit histories and the military archives. 10 These official records were really only confirmation of a family's story. The real history of pilgrimage takes place on a personal plane, pieced together with the fragments of fading diaries or letters. Pilgrims related what they called the relics of a young man's life, the photographs 'hung above the telephone' of an endlessly grieving grandmother, the medals prized by children each Anzac Day, the grim collection of personal effects ('one pipe, one belt... one damaged wristwatch'), the final letters (beginning always with 'I regret to inform you') folded carefully in a family bible. In one case a respondent in his seventies insisted that his uncle had never really left them: every Sunday the uniform that came home without him was tenderly set out on the hallway table. 'My mother's brothers... were lovingly remembered' another wrote, 'and every time a family photograph was taken, large photographs of two boys were included in the picture, held by one or other of the family'. 11 It is the stories of these 'boys' that still breathes life into such belongings. Now in his seventies, John grew up in the country outside of Orange. A cadet in the air training corps from , he never went to war, peace coming just a few days 'before I turned 18'. His uncles were not so lucky. All his long life John has lived with the story of Wesley and George, one 'dynamic, outgoing, selfconfident', 'a bushman who joined with the first recruits' and 'a deadly shot with a rifle'; the other 'a pale thin young man,... [whose] ambition was to become a parson'. Their father allowed George to enlist 'on the condition Wesley would look after him' but in Gallipoli the two were quickly separated. Wesley was sent as a sniper on an advanced sap at Steel's Bluff, where a single shell blew his body to pieces. George helped dig out poor Wes' remains 'and after that did not seem to care much what happened to him'. George was killed the following morning, 10 Graeme Davison, The Use and Abuse of Australian History (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000), 85; see also Charles Maier, 'A Surfeit of Memory? Reflections on History, Melancholy and Denial', History and Memory, no. 5 (Fall/Winter 1993): Questionnaires completed by Ross M. (Canberra ACT), Terry S. (North Sylvania NSW), John C. (Redfern NSW), John B. (Cargo NSW).

6 Scates: Pilgrimage, Memory, Mourning and the Great War 5 in the Turkish counter attack of May The final moments of his life are still recorded in a letter read and re-read by his mother. The Turks made another big attack on us, and [George] was very reckless, exposing half his body above the trench, and he got a bullet through the head. I saw his body later on with a number of others... and unlike the others there was a smile... on his face. 12 There were no smiles when John and Pamela finally found these two men 'both buried in the one grave (with six others) in Shrapnel Valley Cemetery'. 13 John's survey is instructive as to how family memory is preserved and perpetuated. His response is a collage of written and oral sources, official, personal and even anecdotal memory. It is prompted not just by archival research but also with the artefacts that even to this day are treasured. And it shows the intersection between what scholars have called private and collective memory. With diary in hand, John has charted his uncle's journey across the 'storied landscape' of the peninsula. 14 Anzac Cove, Shrapnel Gully, Quinn's post were not abstract or empty place names they resonate with meaning, with the saga of 'the Landing'. And John's response reminds us that however private pilgrimage might seem it is also a collective undertaking. The details of the survey itself and the generosity of its author, suggests that these are memories which must be passed on, they are to be held in trust, carried carefully from one generation to another. Nor was this unique to the oldest of my respondents. Though twenty years younger, John M.'s journey to Gallipoli took place within a very similar paradigm. At one level, this was (as John M. insisted) 'a personal [even private] quest', born out of his own 'curiosity' and a 'need' to find a man he had only ever imagined. As a child, I was always fascinated by the portrait of 'Harold' which occupied pride of place in my grandparents' house. He was always 'there' somehow and when I asked my grandmother about him, she spoke of him as a living person. I somehow expected that one day I would turn up and there would be Harold sitting at the table. [But] I also knew that he was dead... killed on the Gallipoli Peninsula barely two weeks after he arrived... John M. spent years researching Harold: 'he was a good rover for the Dederang Football Club,... an insufferable teaser, [a bit of a lad] who enlisted without his 12 Questionnaire completed by John B. (Cargo NSW). 13 Ibid. 14 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, edited and translated by Lewis A. Coster (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 52-3; see also the exchange prompted by David Glassberg's 'Public History and the Study of Memory', The Public Historian, 19, no. 2 (Spring 1997). I borrow the phrase 'storied' places from the nature writer Robert Finch, Writing Natural History: Dialogues with Authors (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1989), 44; for meaning invested in artefact see Sue Georgevits, 'Places of the Heart: Personal Narratives of the Past through the Objects People Keep', Oral History Association ofaustralia Journal, no. 22 (2000): 72-7.

7 6 Australian Historical Studies, 119,2002 mother's consent.' And he finally found Harold listed alongside the missing at Lone Pine: I was not prepared for the sense of loss that came with seeing his name chiselled into stone. I was surprised by an instinctive reaction to reach out and touch the letters. We were on the Peninsula for three days. Every day, I was drawn to Lone Pine and every day I placed at the foot of the panel a scarlet poppy plucked from the fields of the peninsula. 15 But the poppies were not placed there for Harold alone. Having embarked on a personal quest, John M. ended his journey in a very different way not so much as an individual but as a family member, as Harold's nephew, even as a distant descendant of that small community in Dederang. When it came to writing his name in the Visitors' Book at Lone Pine, John M. added 'Ivy always missed you'. He had carried with him the message and the memory of Harold's long dead sister. 16 Pilgrimage, as John M.'s story also suggests, is a reckoning with memory, an attempt, as one respondent put it, to finish what was barely started. John T.'s father's life was cut short by the war: gassed, wounded, deeply disturbed, the children 'didn't listen' to his stories. And now, when they 'thirst for knowledge'. Dad can no longer answer them. Many wanted to know why their grandfather had always been 'so sad and so silent'; others regretted they could 'never ask the right question'; one struggled all her life 'to make a pen sketch' of a father she could only imagine. 17 Some of my surveys read as if they were conversations, intimate, affectionate, full of an unanswered longing. The daughter of an Australian officer who survived Gallipoli and France, Winsome retraced her father's steps across the Peninsula. We stood at Ari Burnu where the landing took place, and at Anzac Cove and at Shrapnel Valley Cemetery... It was moving to read the names and ages and the inscriptions on the gravestones, expressing the sorrow, love, pride, hurt, puzzlement, despair, hope and faith of the families. As I read the names of the 13th Battalion men I wondered if they were Dad's friend, if he were with them when they died, or were buried. I wondered at his survival and of what his memories were over the years. 18 Come Anzac Day, the wonder turned to reunion. Tears came to my eyes as the Last Post sounded... I found myself saying 'I'm here for you today. Dad, and I'm here for all the family. There is so much I would like to talk about with Dad now but it's too late for that. 19 What one senses in all these accounts is a need for completion, a desire to lay to rest bodies lost to the homes they once belonged to. Ian H. walked along the 15 Questionnaire completed by John M. (Balgownie NSW). 16 Ibid. 17 Questionnaire completed by John T. (Gunnedah NSW), C.F. (Macquarie NSW), Alison D. [Tucky] (Geraldton Western Australia). 18 Questionnaire completed by Winsome P. (Bellevue Heights SA). I am indebted to Ken Inglis for putting me in touch with this remarkable respondent. 19 Ibid.

8 Scates: Pilgrimage, Memory, Mourning and the Great War 7 endless rows of tombstones looking for the uncle he was named after: 'He was the eldest of 6 children of a widowed mother and made my father promise he would not enlist but care for the family'. And he was killed on the Somme just two months before the war ended: 'Until I had seen the grave he was an ethereal name to me but now he was a person, my uncle, who I seemed to know in a real dimension. I was able to really grieve for this fine young [man] A testament of youth There was something inevitable about these 'family pilgrimages'. As Ian himself remarked the journey had been too long postponed; he could 'really grieve' in a way others before him could not. Much harder to explain is the influx of younger visitors to the cemeteries of the Great War. This is most marked in the case of Gallipoli. Ten years ago the Anzac Day ceremony there was a low key and intimate affair, but the sesquicentenary of the Gallipoli Landing and the much feted returns of First World War veterans signalled a steady rise in numbers. Most of these were young backpackers, 'flocking' to what one journalist called an 'annual migration' to the Peninsula. The opening of a new commemorative site by the Australian Prime Minister attracted 15,000 people. With a viewing audience of over a million back home, the Dawn Service has become a media extravaganza and a 'must do' for young travellers from Australia. 21 Not all had gathered there in what officials liked to call 'the solemn spirit' of commemoration. A traveller in her twenties, Kristie H. reported that Gallipoli has become 'an important part of the backpacker calendar much like running of the bulls, beerfest etc'. She herself went as 'a mark of respect' but 'lots of backpackers go to meet like minded people... Lots go just to party. Lots go to say they've been'. And getting there is certainly a lot easier than for other generations of pilgrims. Few of the young who descend on Gallipoli for those few days each year come directly from Australia. Most visit Gallipoli as part of a rambling world tour and many belong to the huge expatriate community that nestles in the heart of London (Anzac Day falls conveniently between Easter.and a Bank Holiday). 22 And some it seems are not even sure what brings them there. In the early hours of Anzac morning, I asked Kate D. what had brought her to the Dawn Service. Kate D.: it's pretty interesting er I dunno it's just very exciting to see I never get the opportunity so I may as well come over while I'm here it's so close it's good just to come and see everything and have a good week. 20 Questionnaire completed by Ian H. (Carlingford NSW). 21 I thank Ashley Ekins of the Australian War Memorial Battlefield Tours and Kenan Celik of Çannakale Onsekiz Mart Universitesi for much of this information; Peter Bowers, 'A Dawn to Remember', Australian, 23 January 2000; interview with Rachel B. (Darwin Northern Territory) Gallipoli, 25 April Questionnaire completed by Kristie H. (Strathdownie Vic.); interviews with Sylvia S. (Melbourne Vic.), Fiona W. (Gerringong NSW), Adam W. (Adelaide SA), Gallipoli, 25 April 2000.

9 8 Australian Historical Studies, 119, 2002 Scates: Did anything surprise you about Gallipoli? Kate D: Yeah we haven't been to bed yet [not] for the past three days Gallipoli was another experience, another adventure. And the Dawn Service was really only a small part of it. Aside from the ceremony on 25 April, package tours offer a visit to Troy, a boat cruise along the coast and plenty of free time in the bars of Cannakale. Tour operators invite the young to join the Anzac experience and then wind down back in Istanbul, where the fleshpots of Turkish baths and belly dancers eagerly await them. 24 One might well think that such a journey had more to do with tourism and consumption than it does with pilgrimage or history. A journalist with the Melbourne Herald Sun, John H. talked with many young travellers. Household names to one generation were total mysteries to another: 'Time and again asked "What happened here, who was Simpson, What did he do [?]".' A boy from Geelong, Luke's remarks throw serious question on the state of education in Victoria. 'To be perfectly honest, I didn't know very much about ANZAC day whatsoever, other than the fact that Essendon and Collingwood played every ANZAC day!' 25 The point is, though, that Luke found out. In a crowd of 15,000 there are bound to be some who would see the Day 'as an excuse to get drunk and walk around with a flag on your back'. But the motivation 'just to be there' at Gallipoli cannot be dismissed so easily a point acknowledged by even the most sceptical of observers. Well into his seventies, Murray had seen service in some of the bloodiest theatres of the Pacific. He was also 'the son of an Anzac' and '[s]ince I was a small boy it was my pre Anzac Day job to polish my father's medals'. In the early hours of the morning, the old veteran looked uneasily across a memorial site crammed with bodies, beer bottles and sleeping bags. Soon he found the 'solemnity' of the 'young folk' moved him as much as the ceremony. 'Only once did a young chap start to make a noise and was immediately silenced by his peers... Gallipoli [restored] my faith in the younger generation.' 26 The Peninsula was 'not just a stopover'. Many backpackers described it as 'spiritual' experience, 'as close to a sacred day as Australians ever get'. And the word pilgrimage sprang to the lips of those who surely do not often use it. Kate F. had left Newcastle fifteen months before and spent most of her time working in London. Like the young folk she travelled with, she felt compelled to go to Gallipoli. Kate F: today when we were walking around and that I just had tears in my eyes the whole time... it was really really moving and it's, it's like a Mecca basically, like a pilgrimage for Australians. 23 Interview with Kate H. (Berringer NSW). Kate's response to the site became more complex as the interview progressed. Despite the warm weather, Gallipoli gave her 'a cold feeling'. 24 Interview with Kursat Y. of C. Tour, Istanbul, 27 April Questionnaires completed by John H. (Southbank Vic.), Luke S. (Geelong Vic.). 26 Questionnaire completed by Catherine W. (Wellington NZ); interview with Rachel B. (Darwin NT) Gallipoli, 25 April 2000; questionnaire completed by Murray J. (Toowoomba Queensland).

10 Scates: Pilgrimage, Memory, Mourning and the Great War 9 Scates: Pilgrimage is a big word. Kate F: Well, look around you, there's a fair few people here and you don't get that many people outside of Australia coming together [for nothing]. I think to me it's a spiritual thing, definitely. I didn't come here to party. I came here to commemorate what they did, what they did for us... I think that's the majority of people as well. 27 'What they did for us' was a recurrent phrase in the responses to my survey. No less than for their parents and grandparents, these young pilgrims felt a sense of debt to those who had fought and died. And interestingly the sacrifice of one generation became conflated with that of another. Several said they went 'out of respect for [their] grandfather [who fought in the Second World War]' and the 'old diggers' at services back home 'who always brought a tear to my eye'. Many have seen this as a revival of patriotic fervour in a post-vietnam generation. But the young are not so easily classified. The desire to say 'thank you', even 'sorry', was often far more personal, a bridge between one generation and another, a willingness to acknowledge the importance of home perhaps when one is so far away from it. 28 And there was an overriding awareness that the terrible suffering at Gallipoli 'on both sides' was 'just pointless'. Though she went to 'pay [her] respects to [those] who gave their lives for our country', Natalie found herself full of 'anger': 'anger at the waste of young human lives... I did not feel pride in what they did, but sorrow'. 29 Young Kerry was appalled that so many epitaphs spoke of 'glory': 'I feel more sad than anything else[;] it's such a waste of life, waste of time, it's ridiculous. I just hope it never happens again'. 30 Similarly, young men expected to 'be very proud to be an Aussie that day'. What surprised them was 'the great sense of love' that 'overwhelmed' them on the Peninsula. Matt wept as he found a headstone reading 'a mother's all' in a tiny cemetery. 31 Unlike the older pilgrims who journey to Gallipoli, the vast majority of these young people know of no dose relative buried there. But that does not diminish the sense of 'belonging' at the emotional core of any pilgrimage. David was in his twenties when he set off to live in London and do the Grand Tour of many a young Australian: 'I was planning on working for the winter and then heading off in the Spring to seek fame, fortune, love lust and a suntan on the continent.' 32 But David found himself, in his 'wallaby jersey', at Gallipoli: You stand next to the memorial, above the blue... Aegean, and you hear the gentle lapping of the water onto the shore below and the place gains a voice and becomes real. You can hear the explosions, the shouts,... the accents as if you were there in It's possible to imagine the men as they climbed out of the trenches... they all lay there 27 Questionnaire completed by Barbara A. (Roseville NSW); interviews with David K. (Adelaide SA), Kate F. (Newcastle NSW), Gallipoli, 25 April Questionnaires completed by Mel M. (Brisbane Qld), Kyrsten H. (Newcastle NSW), Gabrielle C. (Sydney NSW). 29 Questionnaire completed by Natalie B. (Hawthorn Vic.) 30 Questionnaire completed by Kerry D. (Sabrina Qld). 31 Questionnaires completed by Matt C. (Narrabeen NSW), Murray F. (Gold Coast Qld). 32 Personal correspondence from David B. (Randwick NSW).

11 10 Australian Historical Studies, 119,2002 now, in row after row, much as did when they died... I found one grave for G.P. Castle of the 2nd Battalion... killed at Lone Pine sometime between August 6 and August 9. Private Castle was 25 and from New South Wales. I stood there looking at this man's grave and realised that I was 25 and from New South Wales. 33 In contrast to an older generation, the young are very much aware that these lives 'ended before they even began' could well have been their own. Young women thought of the boys they loved and journeyed with, young men imagined mates and of course themselves in some shallow grave on the Peninsula. A surprising number wrote with great tenderness of the same mothers they were so keen to escape back home in Australia, tlallipoli and the Western Front are now the destinations of many a school excursion. But they are also part of a continuum of family history; four generations ago, Alex's great-grandfather fought at Gallipoli. And the youngest of my pilgrims wondered if these 'boys' left children of their own back in Australia. Still in her teens when she visited the Somme, Sarah wept and prayed for those who died 'for no reason': 'I was not able to prepare myself for what I saw and the sight of all those graves really got to me... so many children grew up without a father.' 34 'Hanging on to history': Alex carries a wreath to the service at Lone Pine. 33 Ibid. 34 Questionnaires completed by Jacqueline M. (Dromana Vic.), Priscilla E. (Strathfield NSW), Annabel W. (Gold Coast Qld), Josh C. (no home town provided), Sarah W. (Narrabri NSW).

12 Scates: Pilgrimage, Memory, Mourning and the Great War 11 What is at issue here is not just a sense of sympathy for what one young man called 'a lost generation of Australians'. As David's evocative account suggests the young attempt to revisit their experience, they are 'witnesses' to what they called 'that defining moment of our history'. 35 The details are sometimes wanting but there can be no doubt that 'a sense of history' draws the young to Gallipoli. Partly it is because the Landing is a legend 'we've grown up with'. Visiting the site loaned an immediacy to the event: clutching cameras and water bottles, young backpackers scrambled along trench lines and ridges imagining themselves 'a part of the story'. 36 Rugged and empty, the landscape of Gallipoli accommodates their imagination: walking out on sort of the beach there was a sort of, sort of tingle down your spine you knew that was the beach where they had landed and you could see how imposing it really was looking up the cliffs... I guess you're told in sort of your history lessons... but I don't think you really appreciate it. 37 This was 'no longer a war that happened long ago!!!' 38 At another level the desire to 'find history' at Gallipoli has as much to do with the experience of expatriation as it does with childhood memories. Originally from Woy Woy, Naomi 'was one of those backpackers living in London'. It was so important to visit Gallipoli, because more than ever living out of Australia I am proud to be Australian. We visit all these place in Europe with a wealth of history, none of which... have significance to Australia. So [I had] to go to Turkey to see Gallipoli, & the battlefield where so many Australians were senselessly slaughtered... all my life [I] have heard about [it]. 39 Several complained of what they called a 'lack of tradition' back home; white Australia was such 'a new country' where 'the houses we lived in were barely a hundred years old'. Turkey, by contrast, was a land steeped in history. And not just the history of the Gallipoli campaign either. The Peninsula owes much of its attraction to an older and less clearly articulated memory. The ancient forts of the Dardenelles evoke images of distant crusades. The ruins and romance of Troy are within a day's travel. Backpackers showed me their copies of Lonely Planet travel guides, where paragraph histories of the ancient world were highlighted and annotated. They sought what Donald Home once called 'the authenticity of the past'; Gallipoli stood at the very gateway of History Questionnaire completed by James C. (New Lambton NSW); interview with Michael C. (Manly NSW) Gallipoli, 25 April Interview with Kerry D. (Sabrina Qld), Gallipoli, 25 April 2000; questionnaire completed by Sylvia H. (Echuca Vic.). 37 Interview with Michael C. (Manly NSW) Gallipoli, 25 April Questionnaire completed by Sharee R. (Merredin WA). 39 Questionnaire completed by Naomi B. (Woy Woy NSW). 40 Questionnaires completed by Anon (no home town provided), Mark F. (Brisbane Qld); Donald Horne, The Great Museum: The Representation of History (London: Pluto, 1984), 24.

13 12 Australian Historical Studies. 119, 2002 But 'hanging on' to 'our history' (my emphasis) was what most mattered to these wandering Australians. Gallipoli, as Katie pointed out, 'gives you something to tie yourself to while you are travelling overseas gives you an identity of who Australians are and what has influenced our culture... it's hard to appreciate it without having travelled'. 41 The values long associated with the campaign mateship, courage in adversity, strength and Stoicism were values the young were prepared to believe in. They provided what Ben Anderson has called a sense of 'shared history', that crucial element in the construction of 'an imagined community'. But the site also prompted 'manifold counter memories' a questioning of many of the myths that surround Gallipoli. 42 The men who fought and died in the Dardenelles did so out of imperial as much as national loyalty: a young nation's 'baptism of fire' confirmed Australia's place in the Empire. Today the Landing is remembered very differently, 'a balls up' as one young man put it and (of course) entirely the fault of the British. The complaint that 'we were led like lambs to the slaughter' was common (even expected) what is much more interesting though is the admission that we should never have been there in the first place. 43 Naomi, that proud expatriate in search of her history, believed her countrymen were sacrificed for a cause 'that had nothing to do with them'. Appalled by the loss of Turkish as well as Australian life, she would write simply 'shame' in the Lone Pine Visitors' Book. Sonya, a young officer in the Army reserve, honoured her great-grandfather who had fought at Gallipoli. But she would never have fought there. I certainly believe there are some things worth risking your life for... That I would risk my life to defend my country from a foreign invader goes without saying. But I don't think that I'd be so keen to invade a country on the other side of the world (which, let's face it, is what our soldiers were doing) to serve 'Mother England.' 44 And if it is a sense of history that takes these people to the Peninsula, one suspects it is a very different kind of history to that taught every Anzac Day. Virtually all the respondents 'had no idea' of the scale of Turkish losses prior to their visit. 'I don't ever remember being told at school. What we learnt I think was very one sided. Being in Turkey makes you realise that they were fighting for their country and in their country we were the enemy.' Questionnaires completed by Jodie F. (Mittagong NSW), Katie H. (Brunswick East Vic.). 42 See in particular questionnaire completed by Sherrin T. (Warranwood Vic.) who likened the Dawn Service to a gathering of Anzacs; Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, rev. ed. 1991); Glassberg, 'History and Memory', For a rewarding inquiry into the tension between nationalism and imperialism see Ken Inglis' classic essay, 'The Anzac Tradition', Meanjin, no. 100 (March 1965) reproduced in Lack, Anzac Remembered 18-42; questionnaires completed by Aaron H. (Narangba Qld), Anne L. (Gloucester NSW), Karen B. (Adelaide SA), John McG. (Cronulla NSW). An ardent republican angered by Howard's presence at Gallipoli, John pursued the same themes in his interview. The British treated Australians as expendable colonials and 'cannon fodder', interview with John McG. Gallipoli, 25 April Questionnaires completed by Naomi B. (Woy Woy NSW), Sonya D. (Dolans Bay NSW). 45 Questionnaire completed by Mel M. (Brisbane Qld).

14 Scates: Pilgrimage, Memory. Mourning and the Great War 13 Being in Turkey was 'an educational experience', it made them realise that there is 'more than one perspective' on the past, that history is both complex and contested. And it highlights the distinction between what David Lowenthal has called heritage and history, the former 'an exclusive myth of origin and continuance' (the stuff of 'those patriotic cliches at school'), the latter 'a critical spirit of inquiry' which refuses 'to substitute an image of the past for its reality.' 46 Nowhere was that more clearly illustrated than when young pilgrims from both countries confronted a common tragedy. The most moving experience was meeting Turkish people visiting their memorials. [Pip wrote] They would cry and pray and acknowledge their dead with such respect. We stayed one night on Chunuk Bair. Some friends and I went to watch the sun go down and... a family of Turkish people arrived. We moved out of their way so that they could take photos... but they wanted us to [stay]... One old woman took hold of my arm and was hugging me and crying... [A] young Turk... pointed to Rob and said 'You and me 80 years ago would be fighting, but now we are friends... we respect you, Anzacs'. Here were these two young men shaking hands and smiling into the camera when they could have been fighting. It made me think for what? Why did all those men die? Was it so Rob and the young Turk could stand today and be friends? I don't know. 47 'Complex and Contested': poppies and a white cross soften William Rae's grave at Villers Bretonneux. An epitaph proclaiming the pointlessness of war issues a challenge pilgrims feel bound to answer. 46 Interviews with John M. (Adelaide SA), Gallipoli, 25 April 2000, Sharona C. (Kensington, NSW), Gallipoli, 23 April 2000; David Lowenthal, Possessed by the Past: The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (New York: Free Press, 1996), 128, 102; see also the forum entitled 'Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method', American Historical Review 102, no. 5 (December 1997). 47 Questionnaires completed by James P. (Penh WA), Philippa C. (Coogee NSW).

15 14 Australian Historical Studies, 119,2002 ' Inventing ritual, discovering meaning No doubt there is much that is personal and distinctive about each young traveller's decision to visit Gallipoli. But their experience when they arrive there has much in common with an older generation of pilgrims and indeed with visits to Great War cemeteries other than Gallipoli. Pip's reconciliation with people 'who had once been the enemy' was mirrored by those who had far greater reason for resentment. When John was a child the issues were simple: 'Those horrible cruel Turks fancy killing my nice uncles.' But visiting Gallipoli he realised George and Wes were 'the victim of emotive jingoism' 'in a way[,] it served them right what did they expect the Turks to do, invading their country'. Linda's grandmother never recovered from the loss of her young brother but she found comfort in the words of the Turkish leader Ataturk etched in stone by the sea: 'weep no longer... having lost your sons in our land they have become our sons as well.' On leaving Lone Pine Lynda told the young tour guide she would leave her uncle in his care, 'to which he replied "with two of my great Uncles'". Even on the Western Front, where war has scarred two generations, the experience of pilgrimage can also be one of reconciliation. 'You had mothers too', a gruff old soldier wrote in the German cemetery at Langmark. And at times that quest for forgiveness spilt into the arena of contemporary politics. At the Dawn Service at Gallipoli, amidst a sea of Australian and New Zealand flags, a party of young back packers raised a very different kind of banner. Addressed to Mr Howard, it read simply: 'Say Sorry'. 48 'Reconciliation' was one word that recurred time and time again in the surveys. Fellowship was another. In his celebrated study, Turner coined the term 'communitas'. The pilgrimage, he argues, is a liminal state; it transports all who join it beyond the constraints and distinctions of everyday life, uniting all in a common purpose. What was striking about this survey is how frequently pilgrims referred to that sense of shared experience. Very few embarked on this journey alone. Families travelled together, their parents conscious that they should 'keep the tradition alive' for their children. Close-knit groups of young Australians and New Zealanders, 'mates now and forever', made their way to Gallipoli. 'Harriet' recalled that a love of five years began on the bleak slopes of the Peninsula: 'I still believe that that relationship was born out of a huge need for comfort [there].' And Charles remembered a winter visit to Flanders as one of the most 'moving' moments in his marriage. We walked down that long white row of tombstones. I can still feel the crisp, cold air on my face. We began (I don't know why) reading the inscriptions out aloud, the one after the other. I was all right until I came across some lad, an only son like ours killed so far 48 Questionnaires completed by John B. (Cargo NSW); Lynda F. (Launching Place Vic.); Valerie P. (Salisbury Qld); author's notes on visit to Gallipoli, April 2000.

16 Scates: Pilgrimage, Memory, Mourning and the Great War 15 from home and 'missed so very much' it said. I could feel my voice breaking. We stood there in that cold place[,] holding one another. 49 The fellowship of pilgrimage extends beyond dose-friends and family. Participants in tours run by the Australian War Memorial spoke of a growing sense of camaraderie. 'We started as strangers' one noted, 'but developed strong friendships that have continued'. In the classic paradigm of pilgrimage, these moments of communitas are usually heightened by ritual. Charles recalled standing beside a man he had never met as the Last Post was sounded at the Menin Gate in Ypres. A small crowd had gathered, most had pinned poppies on the names that looked down on us. It was so dark and the notes cut right through you. As the buglers finished this big bloke, with an even bigger Australian accent, shook my hand and wished me luck. I could see tears welling in his eyes, I guess he saw them in mine... I had never met him before but he felt like a brother. 50 What the sounding of the Last Post is to Menin Gate, the Dawn Service is to Gallipoli. Despite 'the distraction of ten thousand people and 350 tourist buses', Lyn remembered a fragile sense of union with strangers less than half her age on a stony beach ten thousand miles from Australia. 51 And in that 'stark' but 'beautiful' place, the scene was set for the most treasured rituals of male bonding: [Just before] the Dawn Service i [sic] said to my wife that being away from home for 5 weeks that i would just love to have a Bundy... There was a tap on my shoulder and this young bloke about 22 said 'here ya go mate have one on me' he then produced a plastic throwaway cup and a near empty bottle of the stuff and poured the last of it into my cup. An Ayssie [sic] backpacker living in London who didnt [sic] know me from a bar of soap gave me his last swallow of rum. I reckon that's... mateship. 52 The sense of comunitas also extends to those involved in other ways in the journey. Respondents thanked gardeners who showed them some little kindness; they wrote in almost loving terms of school children who 'carried flowers,... sang songs and read poetry about "Les Australians'". And that 'feeling of togetherness' extended even to the long dead families of their long dead countrymen. I constantly thought about the grief their family would have felt until the day they too died... the inscriptions [were so]... sad [and] moving... I kept picturing the next of kin sitting there with the form to fill in... the overwhelming grief and sadness Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti Structure (London: Penguin, 1969); questionnaires completed by Bob B. (Maroubra NSW); Matthew D. (Sydney NSW); 'Harriet' (details withheld on request); Charles S. (Fremantle WA). 50 Questionnaires completed by Jim E. (Bungendore NSW), Richard B. (Canberra ACT), Charles S. (Fremantle WA). 51 Questionnaires completed by Lyn and David T. (Coogee NSW). 52 Questionnaire completed by Peter H. (Charters Towers Qld). 53 Questionnaires completed by Sibyl C. (Carrington NSW), Rosemary P. (Koolunga NSW), Kerry M. (Alexander Heights WA), Matthew D. (Sydney NSW); see also Ross McG. (Richmond NSW). Note the message in St Mary's Visitors' Book, Harefield, England: 'Our Uncle Leo Lang is buried here. Thank you for looking after him'; author's notes on visit to Harefield, 1998.

17 16 Australian Historical Studies, 119,2002 If pilgrimage is a journey that changes the way you see yourself, it also changes the way you see the world around you. Approaching the graves of the dead, these travellers found themselves 'in tune with some presence': the symbols of significance (as Turner puts it), 'became denser, richer, more involved'. 54 Gallipoli's landscape is charged with meanings. As pilgrims placed poppies on Simpson's grave, they saw dolphins playing in the sea off Ari Burnu; many record the passage of clouds across the sky or note 'the awful hush' that settled on the ridges and gullies of the Peninsula. A child of sixteen, Christine could still shudder at the silence: 'The Lone Pine... grave site is the one that still stands out in my mind. It was so quiet up there. Not a bird seemed to sing. Nothing moved. On the memorial it said "Their name liveth forevermore".' 55 And the passage to the Western Font is 'marked' (as MacCannell would put it) by the same kind of symbolism. In a long and moving letter, Myra described her progress across the rising fields of Flanders: 'I opened the gate, [I] walked the carefully tended stepping stones, [I] reached the modest bronze plaque set into the ground on the edge of Pozieres Ridge. I kissed my fingers and touched the plaque.' 56 'Never naive, never innocent': a statue of a digger straddles the commemorative site at Bullecourt. As a personification of Australian nationalism, the monument provoked very different responses: from 'admiration' for his 'carefree stance' to disgust at so 'loutish' a representation of our soldiers. 54 Questionnaires completed by Mrs P.T. (Launceston Tasmania), Jim E. (Bungendore NSW), Charles S. (Fremantle WA), Myra B. (Aberdeen NSW); Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action in Human Society (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), Questionnaire completed by Christine H. (Montague Bay Tas.). 56 Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (NY: Schocken Books, 1976), 41; questionnaire completed by Myra B. (Aberdeen NSW).