Long Gallipoli Poems
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Australian and New Zealand Army Corps
Our ANZAC soldiers from the First World War.
Landed at Gallipoli on April Twenty-Five,
1915 was the year, at dawn when they arrived.
Their task to storm the beach, was thwarted by the Turks
Who laid in wait with loaded guns, and then they went berserk.
Before the ANZACS reached the shore, many had been killed
Others made it onto land, but to the bone were chilled.
Anzac Cove became their base, in dug out trenches lived
In mud and squalor, rats, and filth, but never would give in.
For months on end, fought tooth and nail, their goal to just survive
And for each other every day, prayed they would stay alive.
Eight months their campaign met a stalemate, neither side won out
Both sides of war lost many men; a truce then came about.
Evacuations sent them home, though weary, filled with pride
Because they knew each soldier there, stood proudly side by side.
And as the ANZAC legends grow, we will remember them
We bow our heads, in silent prayer, for all those brave dear men.
The Last Post then reminds us all, of what was sacrificed
So, we can live in peace because, they paid the highest price.
Christine 25/4/2026
Lest We Forget
Off Season in Gallipoli
April’s bus from Lecce unloads
at the fabled fish market. It’s closed.
The only hint of June’s full fare
is one slight stall. No one lunching there.
The streets are open; we stroll at will
by a weathered or a white-washed wall.
Look at the moored boats. The slips are full.
No one paints or mends a sail.
Not one child with shovel and pail
works the beach. One man and his bull
dog play a game of pitch and fetch.
Cameras out; this is the daily catch!
The mercato. Shop? No dice!
but its facilities have no line,
leaving time to lick Italian ice
or to enjoy the local wine
and for the uncluttered spell to weave
until it’s time to leave.
A Poem Of WW1
ANZAC Day
25th April 2018
Let’s have at Johnny Turk
Winston Churchill said,
We’ll secure the Dardanelles,
Keep our Russian trade fed.
His words so casually uttered
May have had to be eaten
Johnny Turk was well Generalled
And not so easily beaten.
The naval campaign to start
Was, at a price, repelled,
The following land invasion
Was resisted and held.
After eight cruel months
Our forces were withdrawn
Half a million dead and wounded
Left for both sides to mourn.
They came from India, New Zealand,
Australia, Canada, Europe as well
Only to leave their bones
In Gallipoli’s Hell.
And so it ended,
A campaign of disaster
With massive repercussion
Felt for so long after.
Constantinople never taken,
The Ottoman Empire in shreds,
Turkey arisen from the ashes which
Gallipoli General Attaturk led.
Words attributed to Attaturk
On a plaque overlooking the Bay
Honouring the dead of all Nations
Still stands to this very day.
Eighty one cemeteries and memorials
Now overlook that battle’s scene
The only mute and grim reminder
That a disastrous campaign had been.
And so we parade each year
To respect and honour the memories,
Of those that survived and those
Resting in foreign cemeteries.
This Poem was read out by Padre Ralph Catts, our Honorary Padre, at Hull Cenotaph ANZAC Day Parade. I had the honour of laying a wreath on behalf of Hull Veteran Support Centre. The Poem was written for the occaision.
Across troop ship bow the cliffs drew nearer
and into harm’s way mighty battalions drove -
men and mule upon cold waves of terror
stormed the beachhead landings on Anzac Cove.
The digger Dogs of War unleashed again
an Expeditionary Force by sea,
in hallowed ground of brave infantrymen
lie the bones of Empires in Gallipoli.
Great southern blue, red and white standard stars
in battle hymn out of Commonwealth port,
where the flame of liberty fiercely chars
every bleeding heart whose sons fell and fought.
A hundred years ago soldiers in a world at war
battled on a foreign shore
for King ‘n Country, God ‘n Corps.
The battle was lost, the Great War won,
their sacrifice laid bare, their duty done.
We march at dawn for mate and vet
and to remember the fallen Lest We Forget!
Sappers, farmers, salesmen, drovers and clerks -
young men and boys their slouch hats wore,
and in steep gullies and ravines fought the Turks
like when on the velt they fought the Boer.
In muddy trench and bunker riflemen joining
charged the lines on Ottoman ancient land,
loud shellfire through dead night and dawning
fell in great battle Anzac’s finest stand!
On Lone Pine, Dead Man’s Ridge, Chunuk Bair
the battlefield told a colony’s tale,
beyond those cliffs soon would her bugles blare
in Palestine, Fromelles and Passchendaele.
A hundred years ago soldiers in a world at war
battled on a foreign shore
for King ‘n Country, God ‘n Corps.
The battle was lost, the Great War won,
their sacrifice laid bare, their duty done.
We march at dawn for mate and vet
and to remember the fallen Lest We Forget!
Raise the flag and let us honour the slew
whose battle is over - the glory and the ghost
of those men of valour in distant graves who
stood their ground and stood their post!
Written: April 2015
The Broken Soldier
An old man
Over a hundred years old
Laying in a bed
His mind travels back to a time
He lived a life no one had to live
An ANZAC storming the shores of Turkey
An unknown place called Gallipoli
He watched s his friends died on the beach
His brothers died fighting in the trenches
Blood flowing in rivers
Soldiers running across acres of the dead
While officers hide miles away
Sleeping in the wet trench
He cried a tear for every ANZAC who fell
That time affected him
Seeing so much pain and death
He was never again quite right
The boy as gone
All that was left was a broken soldier
With memories he should not have
Even today
A century later
He still remembers
He has shed a billion tears
But when he dies, he will be happy
He will be with his friends and brothers
Once again, laughing and drinking beer in the pub
And he will be happy
Yeterli Gelibolu Yeterli
(Enough Gallipoli Enough)
Passchendaele and the Somme all those battles
~ To end all wars and all we got is poppies ~
More ‘papaver’ red petals in Gelibolu as far as eyes can
see and minds can take sprinkled over constant denial
like rancid blood sweet talked in icicles of raging demise
~ Hypnogogic Hallucinations ~
~ Dreams are for real ~
Not in my name but surely it can’t be the fault of
those flowers that they seed so happily where the
sorrow remains fertile on sculls engraved under
~ Crosses and Half Moons like ~
~ Weeping Widows clothed in a scarlet sea ~
Nature works well when left alone from sick human minds
beauty does not require money power bullets or greed
but poppies seem to grow best when rooted on bone meal
~ Humanity crushed into osseous matter ~
~ Calcified depravity forever and when...~
04th May 2018
Gallipoli
by Robert J (Bob) Moore
They came together across the sea,
to this place they called Gallipoli
all walks of life, class and creed,
all they knew, there was a need
From far and near, they heard the call,
did not know, so many would fall
they knew a job needed to be done,
and they would do it, each mothers son
For many it was a chance to roam,
did not think some, would not come home
they’d see the world, and make their name
and as a hero, come home again
That April morn was cold and grey,
the enemy did not run away
he stayed to fight for his homeland,
and to the last man, make his stand
Friends were falling as the bullets flew,
have to keep moving, nothing more I can do
find some shelter, then look around
but nowhere to hide, on this cold ground
So now it ends, so far away
from home, and friends, and normal day
I wonder in future, the years to come
will they think of us, and what we have done
Lest We Forget
In early April the bus from Lecce
unloads us at the fabled fish market.
The place is shuttered down, not even
the scent of chowders past lingering
in the air. The only hint of June’s
full fare is one slight stall where we
might taste the slimmest feast from the sea.
Our pre-season stroll through the town
finds the walkways of Gallipoli
totally negotiable, no clump
of photographers enthralled
by weathered or whitewashed walls
selects, collects, and edits images
while others still in line are stalled.
From the piazza we look down
upon the moored boats, a fleet
of white and blue at rest, sails furled.
The slips are full, all expectant still.
No one putters with paint or repairs
a necessary cloth in this week
before the moveable feast.
On the beach’s sand and seawrack
where summer’s bodies will soon
arrive, accumulate and over-
lap in ever-increasing heat,
a single person, a young man,
and his dog are the only creatures.
Their toss/fetch game is photographed.
In the Mercato, nothing is
for sale; but its facilities
require no wait, leaving us time
for questing tongues to lick
a taste of the local gellati
on a bench before the patient sea
until the bus beckons us to leave.
A bird flies over a blue-green sphere,
but it doesn't measure a day or year -
it may be ten thousand years ago,
or perhaps, ten thousand years, hence -
the world glanced over by a crow
shows neither monument, wall, nor fence.
Sometimes, it soars, sometimes it flaps -
in the now, it knows no future or remains,
using eyes, not names on maps,
for it has no use for names.
Never, does it count up scores.
It only flaps and soars.
But you're human, so I will appease,
using man's names for these things it sees:
towering, fruit laden trees,
over desert hares enjoying breeze,
as they feel it softly blow
the date palms of Jericho.
Leatherbacks in the ocean, that glide free,
but hatch upon the land...whereupon,
they find their way back to the sea -
the turtles of Marathon.
Swimming to the river's song,
darting under an iceberg,
in a current, cold and strong,
the brook trout of Gettysburg.
Down below, a mountain steep
in the prairie far below
graze those austere sheep,
the bighorn of Ludlow.
Over the scrub and brush
and flying by the sea,
it spies the singing mistle thrush,
and gulls of Gallipoli.
Wildflowers bloom by trickling springs.
A mother bird patiently sits.
So pleasantly she sings -
a skylark in Auschwitz.
Living a life that's solitaire,
climbing on terrain that's rocky,
enjoying mountainous fresh air,
the serow of Nagasaki.
A kingfisher swoops down for a snack.
For a moment, he will not fly.
but will rest on the sturdy back
of a water buffalo in My Lai.
Spreading out his broad wings,
a seabird after a squall -
to her little chicks, a perch. she brings,
a cormorant in Stonewall.
Gazing at the full moon, in profile,
a striking pose, quite noble,
he mournfully howls all the while,
the grey wolf of Chernobyl.
Building a den in the sand,
the sweltering heat, to withstand,
this skittish animal was a
desert fox of Gaza.
Yet, there was one creature, unseen.
I wonder where its teeming masses went?
Was it unintelligent?
Was it unevolved?
Passenger pigeons or something mean -
a riddle dies unsolved.
House for house wall for wall and crumb for broken crumb
We fight like Stalingrad with nothing left to salvage
For honour glory power and some ‘god’ or other
Ypres Gallipoli Aleppo Damascus and ruin’s rubbles blights plain sight
Can we not fight for loving kindness and devout compassion’s grace
An eye for an eye until there is no needle left and the haystack
Towers like a smouldering inferno over sanity and common sense
Dogma for dogma ideology for broken dreams in tatters
Mother of all Wars and Nations on the grounds of greed and hatred
Lost children lie in crippled parents’ vanished arms and hearts and souls
Broken bones and shattered forlorn essence splintering humanity
. . . Ashes strewn on the altar of self-righteousness
. . . Splattered brains and crumbling crumbs
. . . Poppies rest easy on bone meal and rotting flesh
29th May 2019