Easter meets Anzac

Some of the survivors of the conflict did not surface for many years, shunning the public ceremonies surrounding their feats. And it's only lately that we can look at those people with clear eyes, recounting their failings as well as their successes, embracing them fully.

Les Carlyon writes that the battlefields were simply so far away that people didn't even think to visit - certainly not for the first decade and more.

Yet when the first mourners began the pilgrimage to Gallipoli – a pilgrimage which continues to this day – they met the same man who had repulsed their sons and lovers on the heights above the Dardanelles Strait.

Kemal, later named Attaturk, was an outcast among the so-called Young Turk movement, whose star had waned until that fateful day.

His quick thinking created the long drawn-out stalemate which inspired the Anzac legend and put him back on track to become the founder of a modern nation.

Perhaps he saw parallels in the course of all three nations forged in the hell of Ari Burnu, Lone Pine, Chunuk Bair and Suvla Bay when he addressed grieving relatives from the Antipodes.

"You the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries, wipe away your tears;" he told mourners. "Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well."

As an expression of grace it is even more poignant for coming from such an unlikely source, a ruthless ruler of steely determination who died an alcoholic in 1938.

Altogether the Australians lost 8700 men killed at Gallipoli and the New Zealanders 2700, compared with more than 80,000 Turkish dead. Britain lost 21,000 and the French 10,000.

Set against the rest of the war, these losses were light: Australia, lost 45,000 men fighting in France and Belgium during 1916-1918, and we number our war dead over the century as 102,000 and counting.

But Gallipoli was the moment of death and rebirth, a cross roads between ancient and modern worlds and the inspiration for new faith.

Among the many striking images on the peninsula is a memorial to a Turkish sergeant who risked all in the heat of battle to grab a wounded Digger, carry him to the Australian lines and deliver him to his mates.