Shrapnel Valley Cemetery

The Allies landed on the peninsula on 25-26 April 1915; the 29th Division at Cape Helles in the south and the Australian and New Zealand Corps north of Gaba Tepe on the west coast, an area soon known as Anzac. Shrapnel valley was a main line of advance, and later of communication with the front line, from the landing beach at Anzac Cove. It derived its name from the heavy shelling it received from the Turkish artillery in the first days of the landing.

Transcribed from the plaque inside the gate of Shrapnel Valley Cemetery

For England

The bugles of England were blowing o'er the sea,
As they had called a thousand years, calling now to me;
They wake me from dreaming in the dawning of the day,
The bugles of England - and how could I stay?
The banners of England, unfurled across the sea,
Floating out upon the wind, were beckoning to me;
Storm-rent and battle-torn, smoke-stained and grey,
The banners of England, and how could I stay?
O England, I heard the cry of those that died for thee,
Sounding like an organ voice across the winter sea;
They lived and died for England, and gladly went their way –
England, O England, how could I stay

A poem by James Drummond Burns (Scotch College-Melbourne), who died on 18^th September 1915

machine-gun fire, the spluttering of musketry, the crashes of schrapnel and high explosive thundered round and round the head of Monash Gully, echoing and re-echoing in the myriad cliffs and valleys. In the confusion, a party of about twenty Turks rushed our front trenches. At last an effort was being made to break the Anzac line. ...
... Major Quinn, realising what his post meant to Anzac, warned his men for a counter-attack. Presently, the observers on Pope’s and Plugge’s Plateau saw the little band clamber on to the parapet, and with bayonet and bomb hurl themselves into the enemy’s ranks, which momentary wavered, then broke and fled. Back filtered the garrison, to realise that their beloved leader was mortally wounded, killed in the defence of the post that bore his immortal name.

"The New Zealanders at Gallipoli", (Auckland 1921), Major Fred Waite, p.169-170

Robert Andrew "Saddler" Slattery learned about his brothers' death (John Slattery) in a rather unusual way as F. F. Knight points out in "These Things Happened" (Melbourne 1975 / p. 166-167) :

Some of the troops did not seem to receive any letters or to write any. It was not that they could neither read nor write, but they found difficulty in committing their thoughts to paper. Many of them were wanderers who lived ‘under their hats’, and did not keep in touch with their relatives. Such a one was Saddler Slattery.

Slattery expected no mail, but some one lent him a Sydney Mail, at least ten weeks old. Its middle pages were covered with photographs of men killed in action, amongst these photographs was one of his brother. He might have been killed less than a mile from where Slattery worked, but the next-of-kin had failed to inform him.

But at 3.20 on the morning of May 29, an earsplitting explosion brought everyone in Monash Gully to his feet. A mine had wrecked No 3 Subsection in Quinn’s Post. Instantly, the musketry and bomb duel burst into life. Flashes of flame ran round the enemy’s trenches and ours. The bursting of enemy shells fitfully illuminated Monash Gully. The detonations of hand-grenades, the bursts of