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Audio transcript
It surprises Australians to learn that more French soldiers were killed at Gallipoli than Australians. At Morto Bay is the French National Cemetery and Memorial, with 3236 graves and four ossuaries containing the bones of 12 000 unidentifiable soldiers. Memorial plaques recall the loss at the Dardanelles of French sailors from warships like the Bouvet. The French component of the Allied force at Gallipoli was known as the Corps Expéditionnaire d’Orient, made up of French and French colonial African troops. The Corps was responsible for a section of the right of the Allied line at Kereves Dere (Kereviz Dere), a deep gully about a kilometre north of the Turkish memorial (Çanakkale Martyrs Memorial).
At Kereves Dere the French struggled in a number of attempted advances to take the Turkish positions and so allow the whole Allied line to push towards Achi Baba. So fierce was the fighting, and so heavy were French losses, that they called this the ‘Ravin de la Mort’, the Ravine of Death. Here French soldiers, men of France, Algeria and Senegal, battled for Turkish positions like Haricot (Bean) Redoubt and Le Rognon (The Kidney). Such homely names belied the French and Turkish blood that flowed for these forgotten battlefield locations. A French medical officer, Dr Subin, wrote of this area: ‘Wounded everywhere! The killed lay in confused heaps which increased as you advanced … the bodies had swollen and their uniforms were tight and narrow. It was awful!’
During the campaign, Morto Bay was well behind the lines but open to Turkish shelling from Kum Kale across the Straits. Here Dr Subin had a dressing station under a cliff, probably not far from where the Turkish memorial is today. On 8 May 1915, the day the Australians attacked at the Second Battle of Krithia, the French also tried to advance. Dr Subin described the casualties: ‘We laid the poor fellows in rows … groans were piteous to hear … bandages soaked in blood, clothes torn to ribbons … ever more wounded arriving’. Subin’s words seem appropriate for Morto Bay, literally ‘Death Bay’.