Interviewer
Prime Minister, what does the word “Gallipoli” mean to you?
Prime Minister
It is a word that I was brought up with in history at school, one of the famous battles of World War I in 1915, fantastically brilliant in its concept but failed utterly in carrying it out, perhaps for reasons we did not quite know.
It was the first really big combined operation in getting armies ashore by amphibious means. It required very close cooperation and communication between ships and shore. It would have been a terrific operation with all of the modern things we have got, a terrific operation if we had had experience of it. It was a totally new kind of battle and they did not and yes, we had to withdraw and we lost a lot of men.
We remember it especially because of the great cooperation between our forces and the Australians and New Zealanders the great Anzac battles. It meant a great deal to them. It was perhaps the [end p1] first time they realised they were a full independent nation and they had come to defend freedom and we pay tribute to them, indeed we do. It is seared into their soul, the numbers they lost, and we pay tribute to those whom we lost.
Interviewer
Should we remember Gallipoli, obviously for those veterans who were assembled in momentous events, but for the mass of people in Britain at the moment it is just a name; why should they remember?
Prime Minister
I think there have been many books, many articles, a good deal said about it on television. You should always remember.
This was World War I. This was when we had terrible battles raging on the Western Front in Europe and had the Gallipoli and Dardanelles battle been successful, many losses of men and materials might have been prevented. You should never forget! We won a war. You cannot win every battle. But also, you should never forget the lessons of those battles because they will come in again as they did in the Falklands. We learned the lesson of Gallipoli. It was that they got ashore, they established a bridgehead and they could not effectively move out of it to take the whole peninsula.
We went to the Falklands, they got ashore, they established a bridgehead, they remembered Gallipoli and they knew they had to move on to take the whole island. [end p2]
Interviewer
So it does bring back memories of the Falklands?
Prime Minister
Yes, it does.
Interviewer
It is difficult to imagine that kind of war ever happening again.
Prime Minister
Provided we keep our defences strong and our alliances sure, it will not, but I think … . (gap in recording) Turkey is now our ally, a staunch member of NATO and I was interested because it was General Atatürk, their most brilliant general, also their most brilliant politician, the architect of modern Turkey—rather like the Duke of Wellington, a brilliant general, a brilliant politician, rather like General Eisenhower, a brilliant general and then a brilliant politician. Atatürk had something of the poetry and understanding of the grief of these battles—as did Wellington when he went to battlefield and said: “This is the last battle I will ever fight!” after Waterloo—and in 1934 he sent this message to people who were going there to remember on that battlefield, people who had lost their lives, and it is very beautiful: [end p3]
“Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives, are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore, rest in peace: having lost their lives in this land, they have become our sons as well!”
and so we are going as allies now to see that nothing else like this shall ever happen again.