Shell Green Cemetery Gallipoli: For evermore …

... for evermore: Shell Green Cemetery Gallipoli

There's a little God's acre near the crest of the hill overlooking the blue Aegean Sea. Sometimes, towards evening, the Turks tire of their fierce fusillade, and all seems peaceful and quiet. The report of an odd sniper's rifle sounds more like the crack of a stockwhip. The sun sinks in splendour on Samothrace, and the gloaming air is sweet with meditation and thoughts of home.

These are the words of Oliver Hogue, describing Shell Green. A journalist by trade, he served at Gallipoli with the Light Horse and sent dispatches back to the Sydney Morning Herald, signing off as Trooper Bluegum. His words captured the dichotomy of Gallipoli for those who served in 1915. The beauty of the landscape existing alongside the violence and destruction of war. He described Shell Green as a particularly dangerous place.

It's not hard to guess how Shell Green got its name. No gift for nomenclature is needed to find names for Hell's Spit, Casualty Corner, the Bloody Angle or Shell Green. The whole green is pitted with holes made by the enemy's shells. Some months ago, those shells played havoc with our men. Some were killed as they lay in their dugouts. Others slaughtered on their way to and from the beach. Some while in swimming. But now we've learned our lesson. We know the safety spots and the danger zones.

Death and burial became part of daily life at Gallipoli. Shell Green became, according to Hogue, a place of many graves. One of the padres described the work of burying the dead.

It is sad work, laying these fine fellows away in these graves in a hostile land, someday to be permanently marked, we hope. But meantime, indicated only by a board with the unit printed on it with indelible pencil, and perhaps a little cross made of two pieces of box. Some of the boys' faces have been so noble in death. Types of the best manhood of Australia. It is hard to see the light of many of our best homes put out so quickly and the work only begun.

Life could be extinguished very quickly indeed at Gallipoli, as the stories of some of those buried in Shell Green reveal.

Private Jack Bradley, a 19-year-old tailor from Launceston, Tasmania, enlisted in the 12th Battalion, which was part of the covering force for the landing on the 25th of April. Jack's life was soon cut short. He was last seen by some of his fellow soldiers at 10 am on the morning of the landing at the top of Shrapnel Valley.

35-year-old George James Featonby from Cohen, Victoria, arrived at Gallipoli as a reinforcement for the 11th Battalion on the 4th of August, just in time to take part for the August defensive. He was killed in action only 2 days later, at Lone Pine.

Private Ronald Munn, a grocer born in the seaside town of Merimbula in New South Wales, joined the 1st Battalion at Gallipoli on 4th of November and was killed in action just 20 days later, aged 31.

Men could live very short lives at Gallipoli, and those who served beside them had to come to terms with sudden loss and death daily.

Albert Facey, author of the acclaimed book, A Fortunate Life, reflected on his brother Roy's death at Gallipoli.

I'd lost a lot of my mates, and seen a lot of men die. But Roy was my brother. I helped to bury Roy and 15 of our mates who had been killed on the 28th. We put them in a grave side by side on the edge of a clearing we called Shell Green. Roy was in pieces when they found him. We put them together as best we could. I can remember carrying a leg; it was terrible.

Graves mattered to those left behind – not only for health reasons, leaving the dead in the open would guarantee more death and disease – but because creating them offered a chance to mourn. In their spare moments, men tended the graves of their mates. Some of the graves were incorporated into battlefield cemeteries. Others, in more isolated locations. When the decision was made to evacuate, some felt conflicting emotions. Storms had battered the peninsula in November, and a freezing winter was setting in. But any relief for the chance to leave deliberately was tempered by sadness and regret at having to leave the graves behind. One soldier expressed such sentiments in a letter home.

My goodness Mother, how it did go to our hearts, after all we'd gone through, how we'd slaved and fought, fought and slaved again. And then to think we had been sizzled in heat, tortured by flies and thirst, and later nearly frozen to death. It was hard to be told we must give it up. But it was not our wasted energy and sweat that really grieved us. In our hearts, it was to know we were leaving our dead comrades behind. That was what every man had in his mind.

The graves at Gallipoli remained at the forefront of the minds of many at the conclusion of the war. On the 10th of November 1918, soon after the surrender of the Ottoman Empire, the British Army Graves Registration Unit arrived on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Their role was to locate and mark the location of British dominion and Indian war graves. The graves were marked with wooden crosses. These crosses, some gathered together, others isolated, were an evocative illustration of the location and extent of the fighting in the campaign. Some were so close together, the crosses touched. When the task of marking and registering the graves was complete, the Imperial War Graves Commission began work on creating permanent cemeteries. The advice of Sir John Burnett, the principal architect for the Imperial War Graves Commission in Palestine and Gallipoli, influenced the design. The Cross of Sacrifice is set into the wall of each cemetery at Gallipoli. The sloped stone grave markers are designed to create a symmetry between the view across the cemetery and the landscape of Gallipoli. During the construction, the number of cemeteries was reduced. Concerns about erosion meant small, isolated cemeteries were consolidated into other existing or newly constructed cemeteries, less subject to erosion. Shell Green remained with the addition of reburials from nearby isolated graves and from small cemeteries like Arterial Road. By the mid-1920s, construction was complete. Memorials were erected for those with no known grave. Then, and now, the graves and the names on the memorials serve as an ever-present reminder of the individual lives lost in the campaign. So, too, are the epitaphs penned by loved ones, many of whom never had the chance to see the graves. The pain of their loss etched in stone for posterity. Roy Facey's reads:

We take our saddest and happiest walks along the sands of memory.