downunder update

It’s a fair bet that you haven’t heard of Canakkle.

Let me place it on the map for you. The province of Canakkale lies on both sides of the Dardanelles which connect the Sea of Marmara to the Aegean Sea. Its shores touch both Europe and Asia and regular ferries chug across the Straits between the peninsulas of Gelibolu and Biga.

Canakkale lies at the heart of our history, it was a crossing point for many armies, traders and migrating peoples, and remembered as the setting for two bloody wars. Read the rest of this entry »

John Simpson Kirkpatrick was an 18 year old Geordie who jumped ship in Australia in 1910. He became known as ‘the bloke with the donkey‘.

He ended up at ANZAC Cove on 25 April 1915 and rescued more than 300 wounded soldiers. He was killed less than four weeks later.

Simpson carried no arms. Read the rest of this entry »

For the Fallen, by British Poet Robert Laurence Binyon, is a moving poem written to honour the World War I British war dead and, in particular, the British Expeditionary Force.

It was first published in September, 1914, after the news of the high casualty rates at the Battle of the Marne on the Western Front.

The fourth verse from that poem is known today as the Ode of Remembrance. Read the rest of this entry »

ANZAC Day, the Baptism of Blood for the Butchers Bill. Expeditions which are decided upon and organised with insufficient care or thought generally end disastrously.

25 April, a public holiday in Australia, marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War. It commemorates a baptism of blood for the colony, one of the greatest disasters in the unholy mess of the War to end all Wars. Read the rest of this entry »

In December 1941 the Australian garrison at Tobruk was besieged by the crack Afrika Korps for 240 days.

The deep harbour port of Tobruk, the last stop on an ancient caravan route was once an early Greek colony, and then accommodated the Roman Legion which guarded the frontier of Cyrenaica.

It’s seen plenty of battle and bloodshed over the centuries. In 1941 the Allied forces, made up mainly of the Australian 9th Division, captured the then Italian garrison, and in April 1941, Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel attacked with his elite Afrika Korps.

Read the rest of this entry »