Lest we forget: Restless ghosts haunt The Nek

THE immortalised Gallipoli trench line remains an inhospitable place. Even the shrubbery here is hostile. Andrew Carswell, pictured, retraces the steps of the Anzac charge. INSCRIPTION A TOUCHSTONE TO WARRIOR ANCESTOR | LEAGUE’S GALLIPOLI HEROES | GUIDE TO NSW DAWN SERVICES

ANZAC day 2

THE Nek, that immortalised Gallipoli trench line, remains an inhospitable place.

The frigid Aegean winds of April launch up Walker’s Ridge and hit you square in the back.

The barren cliffs at your rear, at your right, at your left, crumble hazardously underfoot.

The nights are darker for the cover of trees. And the wild animals at your front and down Monash Valley growl and howl unnervingly.

Even the shrubbery here is hostile. It pulls. It tears. It doesn’t relent.

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Andrew Carswell dressed in ANZAC uniform on Walkers Ridge / Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Most uncomfortable is the silence. That eerie calm when the birdsong that replaced that ungodly whistle of a Turkish bullet travelling a little too close for comfort, hushes till dawn.

This is Gallipoli after dark, long after the poppies are laid and the tour buses escape back to civilisation.

Alone with the ghosts, the ghosts of Gallipoli and the tragic attack mounted on August 7, 1915, by two regiments of the Australian 3rd light horse brigade on Ottoman trenches on this harsh stretch of turf.

Alone with your heavy thoughts and deep introspection, of placing yourself in that intense scenario, the jump from the trench at the sound of another whistle, a whistle so horrifying it would rattle the spine.

Could you do it?

Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Picture: Sam Ruttyn

When your only light is the glint of the moon bouncing off the bayonets or a machinegun’s red glow?

Unfathomable.

Of course there is a crescent moon casting a faint glare over the Aegean this night. A Turkish crescent moon. It watches over the trenches that remain, carved out of the rock beside the Nek Cemetery.

Perhaps surprisingly, given the August 7 bloodshed, there are only 10 headstones spaced out in the cemetery, whose flank is at the absolute mercy of the fierce northerly winds driven from the flat plains.

Andrew Carswell dressed in ANZAC uniform on Walkers Ridge / Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Ten valiant men, buried on the spot among 300-odd others whose bodies simply disappeared somewhere between this gracious piece of grass and the barely 50m of no man’s land up the ridge.

The trenches that remain, rounded by 100 years of weather, are a lesson in discomfort. Brittle rock for your back, rusty old barbed wire at every step, prickle bushes dotted on the floor. Cigarette butts litter the trench floor.

Perhaps it’s the only place where such litter is not out of place. The men here a century ago chain-smoked like prisoners, desperate to settle the nerves, battling to fill their nose with anything but the stench of rotting flesh.

Andrew Carswell dressed in ANZAC uniform on Walkers Ridge / Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Here, still to this day, it’s a rough night’s sleep, even without the barrage of bullets and bombs.

Lying in the 100-year-old trench, back against the bare wall, one feels like you are being watched, like the eyes of the heroes lost are peering through the bases of the pine trees and piercing you — the ghosts of Gallipoli forever guarding this sacred ground where so much blood was spilt.

The only two surviving unwounded officers of the 8th Light Horse after the Charge at The Nek / Picture: Supplied

There is no sense of peace, but only starkness.

You see, Gallipoli is too nice in parts. Its manicured lawns are wondrously peaceful patches but they cover the bleakness of why those men are there, buried in its turf or lost in its surrounds.

Its vegetation is green and dense, but only covers up the brutal nakedness of the gravelled hills that the men knew best.

Picture: Sam Ruttyn

The Nek does not meet that cultivated description.

It remains unpleasant, distressing and morbid.

And it needs to be.

For here Australia’s innocence was dealt a killer blow and the lives of 372 men — the flower of a new nation — were mercilessly cut down before breakfast.

Unfathomable.

Picture: Sam Ruttyn

Originally published as Lest we forget: Restless ghosts haunt The Nek