TWELVE TREE COPSE (NEW ZEALAND) MEMORIAL
IF STONES COULD SPEAK - HELLES
back to if stones could speak
I found myself sitting
useless alongside Captain Bartlett, second in command of the 15th
North Auckland Company. He was wounded too. I said to him, “Sir this is a
sheer waste of good men. I’m going back, I’m going to risk going back to see
if I can stop this madness.” He didn’t argue with me. So I took off my
webbing, stripped down to my tunic, and leaving my riffle behind, set off at a
gallop back across the Daisy Patch. The dead were lying everywhere, little
silent bundles of New Zealanders.
Sergeant Joseph Gasparich quoted
in "Voices of
Gallipoli" (Auckland 1988), Maurice Shadbolt, p. 84
This website has been prepared by
The front line perimeter to be covered by the
New-Zealanders was from Krithia Nullah on the right to the Gully Ravine on the
left; a width of about 1200 yards. Inside this perimeter the Canterbury
Infantry battalion covered the right between Krithia Nullah and Fir Tree Wood,
a distance of about 400 yards. The Auckland Infantry battalion covered the
centre, including Fir tree Wood, and the Wellington Infantry battalion covered
the left to Gully Ravine, a distance of about 800 yards. The Australians
covered the perimeter to the New-Zealanders' right, immediately over Krithia
Nullah.
At 10.30 am the whole line moved forward, only to come instantly under lethal
machinegun fire. Men dropped right down the line......
"Bloody Gallipoli", (Auckland 2005), Richard Stowers, p. 187
the first authentic hotel on the Gallipoli peninsula
Last updated : 04/12/06
I witnessed the big Allied advance against the Turks, and of the New Zealand Infantry across the Daisy Patch. It was just a hell. All those bodies lying across fields sprinkled with daisies and poppies - or perhaps the poppies were just patches of blood. It was somewhere around then than New Zealanders got the name of "the white Gurkhas".
Private Russell Weir (NZ Infantry Brigade Staff-WIB) quoted in "Voices of Gallipoli" (Auckland 1988), Maurice Shadbolt, p. 38
Yes, I still think of
Gallipoli. You may well ask if any war is worth it. You may well ask
those lines of white crosses under which are buried the finest young fellows
New Zealand could produce : was it worth it ? Was it worth your lives ??
No.
No. It was not.
Private Tony Fagen (AIB) quoted in "Voices of Gallipoli", (Auckland 1988), Maurice Shadbolt, p. 22