Mel Gibson enthralled female movie-viewing audiences with his big blues and his down under twang when he starred in Gallipoli (1981), a film about a pivotal battle during the Great War (we didn’t count them then). Little did I know when I first saw the movie where in the world Gallipoli was – it’s in Turkey – or that I would some day visit it (twice so far).
The Allies decided in 1915 to try to break the stalemate on the Western Front by landing forces on Gallipoli, a peninsula along the Dardanelles of strategic significance, and sending them in from the East (along with Russia’s military). The reason the Australians made a movie about the battle is that Australians and New Zealanders made up the bulk of units to attempt to land at Gallipoli, and it was their first full-fledged service as part of the British Empire’s military (as I understand it).
But thanks to poor planning and Ottoman resourcefulness, the Allies experienced a bitter defeat in one of the most brutal series of battles – 100,000 soldiers died on both sides in eight months of fighting. (One irony is that the British won the rights to name bathrooms in Turkey – rule WC!) It was a pivotal event, not only in the larger war, but also in the history of Turkey and Australia. The war gave Australians, arguably for the first time, a sense of Australian nationalism – hence the movie. And for Turkey, Gallipoli produced a military leader – Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – who would become the father of the Turkish Republic. History runs on unintended consequences.
Each year Australian and New Zealand tourists flock back to Turkey to commemorate the dead and participate in ceremonies (April 25) that honor this war. The Turks welcome the Aussies and the Aussies in turn honor the Turks. The reason for the latter has something to do with the exceptional maintenance provided to the military cemeteries that hold the deceased Australian and New Zealand soldiers (some of whom could not be buried until after Armistice). Like many military cemeteries, the neat rows of white grave markers, surrounded by closely cut grass and war monuments of various kinds, are moving in themselves.
But the epitaphs we read yesterday were as touching as they were puzzling. They were curious, partly because the biblical references were small compared to what someone might expect from British colonial culture of the Victorian era. We did see one – had to be a Presbyterian – which spoke of justification by faith and peace with God. Another one invoked the second petition of the Lord’s prayer fittingly. But the one that was the most moving was also the one devoid of religion (an impossibility I know for the neo-Calvinist). It read “my only darling boy.”
Maybe a creative grad student has already done this, but a dissertation on gravestone epitaphs might be a useful way to measure biblical literacy and religious conviction. If the student compared wars, he or she might find ascending or descending rates of religiosity.
Old Life 
You should listen to this song called “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” by The Pogues about the slaughter of the Australians at Gallipoli. I often get chills when I listen to it. So sad.
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I have definitely read a book with a section that discusses part of this headstone phenomenon.
Perhaps it was in John Butler’s Becoming America? Darn fuzzy memory.
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A favorite local marker reads Pelagian: “Ships don’t come in – they are built!” But what to make of Calvin’s grave unmarked altogether? Genius.
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Zrim, from Andrew Pettegree’s chapter in the Cambridge Companion to John Calvin, p. 297: “…[Calvin] sharply reproved those who disturbed the church by invoking his name, or as he put it, ‘making an idol of me, and a Jerusalem of Geneva.'”
One way to minimize that idolatry perhaps is an unmarked grave.
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Gallipoli was a British disaster from start to finish – poorly planned and executed using precious lives to try to achieve the nigh impossible. Under German direction the Turks were able to kill thousands of men from the British Empire in a campaign pushed hard by the bullish Winston Churchill who could be profoundly naïve at tactics. It was yet another utterly futile loss of life which reminds me of the relatively recent and present wars in Indochina, the Middle East and Afghanistan which arguably achieve little except death and misery. Thank you Dr. Hart for bringing this little known episode of the First World War to an audience who may have never heard of it before.
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David, he must turn over in his grave every October 31.
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Well, Calvin would have appreciated my disappointing quick McPlgrimage to Geneve. I arrived to find Cathedrale St Pierre closed for setup of a national and I’m sure mostly heterodox TV broadcast in 2009. I drowned my sorrows in mediocre French beer and returned chastened to Luzern, enjoying the lakes and mountains along the railway. Calvin would surely have chortled at my (all about me, too) plight. At least my pastor got a postcard out of it. They kept the gift shop open.
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No no, Zrim, check your catechism (they have those in the URC, right?)
WSC 37: “…and their bodies, being still united to Christ, do REST in their graves till the resurrection.”
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World War I was a testimony to the buffoonery of generals if there ever was one. Outdated military strategy, meet the machine gun.
A few of the young men fortunate enough to survive (or not get conscripted into) the war:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-7Vu7cqB20
A few other shows that come to mind that deal with the repercussions of The Great War are “Boardwalk Empire” (most notably James Darmody & Richard Harrow) & “Downton Abbey”. Compared to WWII the Great War is a pauper when it comes to being a television & movie subject.
Good books include Paul Fussell’s “The Great War and Modern Memory”, Robert Graves’ “Good-Bye to All That” (great title), and Paul Johnson’s “Modern Times”, which starts up after the war but deals with the World that the War helped make. After 20 years the latter remains maybe the best book I’ve ever read.
Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” may be the best and best known book & movie on the war.
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An interesting question for church historians is the degree to which the pessimism engendered by the Great War contributed to the secularization of the West in the 1920s onward. Sydney Ahlstrom makes the case that what we saw in the West in the 60s was actually fully birthed in the 20s. Certainly there things that were already present in the 19th century (German higher criticism, Darwinism) that were huge contributing factors, but the massive loss of life in the Great War may have been the icing on the cake.
The point in my life at which I think I really began to become an adult was when I took Western Civilization from 1789 and a course called “Twentieth Century European Crisis” in 1989 & 1990 from the young historian James Kennedy. Once you begin to understand the history of the 20th century it becomes impossible to continue seeing the world through a child’s eyes.
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Calvin had to have an unmarked grave.
A marked grave was liable to too much worship or hatred, and disinterment, and who knows what with the remains…
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My favorite part about Calvin’s unmarked grave is that you can visit it:
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Thanks, Brian. that nice little fence should stop the rolling.
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But, David, if Reformed fencing doesn’t stop hypocrites from eating and drinking judgment, how will it stop saints from idolizing (and thus rolling)?
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