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Audio transcript
Cape Helles lies at the end of the Gallipoli peninsula, and at the end of Europe. Across the mouth of the Dardanelles lies Asia, the old fort of Kum Kale, and the ruins of ancient Troy. To the north-west is the island of Imroz (Imbros to the Greeks) and beyond that, towering up out of the Aegean, lies Samothrace, where the headless statue of the winged goddess of victory, Nike, was found in 1884. Northwards the vista is over fairly flat countryside to the village of Alçitepe. This is the landscape of the Helles battleground of 1915, and for nine months British and French soldiers gazed from their trench lines on the unattainable heights of the plateau, also called Alçitepe, beyond the village, which had been their objective on 25 April 1915, the first day of the Allied landing.
At the highest point of the cape is the Helles Memorial, a monument to those whose remains lie scattered across the 1915 battlefield. On the stone panels of its walls are the names of 20 752 British Empire servicemen who died in the Gallipoli campaign and who have no known grave. Listed among them are 248 men of the AIF. Why are they not at the memorial to the missing at Lone Pine? At some point someone took the decision to record here the missing Australians of the 2nd Brigade AIF who fought at Helles at the Second Battle of Krithia on 8 May 1915..
There are other important Anzac links with this memorial. Listed at Helles are the main military units of the AIF and the NZEF which fought at Gallipoli. Nowhere else on the peninsula are they honoured in this way, for the Helles Memorial is the 'battle' memorial for the whole Gallipoli campaign. On three faces of the great obelisk are the words HELLES, ANZAC and SUVLA, the names given to those three areas of the peninsula where British Empire troops served. This is a place which deserves to be visited by Australians.