|
Saturday, September 22, 2007 Galata Tower looms over the harbor of Istanbul, and has done so for hundreds of years. It’s on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. The tower, built of brown stone in 1384 A.D., looks like a cylinder but actually tapers gradually toward the top, and is capped by a pointed roof that looks like a witch’s hat. On the top floor, just under the pointy roof, an open walkway circles the tower, offering a grand view of Istanbul in all directions.  Even
near the top, the tower interior is large enough to have a café, and you can
sit in the cafe at tables with good views in all directions. The neighborhood around the Galata Tower is part of the old Jewish section of Istanbul, and synagogues and Jewish restaurants are still there. I tried to go into the main synagogue, Neve Shalom, as today is Yom Kippur, but an armed guard outside would not let me in without a reservation. The synagogue experienced a car bombing a few years ago, I discovered later. The outside wall of the synagogue is a simply beige color with white Stars of David across the wall, and one side of the wall there is a locked steel door. I would bet it leads to a courtyard, and that the building inside is much more ornate. Later in the day, I went to the place where James Bond rowed through an underground cavern filled with incredible marble columns. The scene was in the movie, “To Russia with Love”; it was filmed in the Yerebatan Saray, or Basilica Cistern, near the Hagia Sophia.  The
cistern used for underground water storage in ancient times has more than
three hundred columns and can hold more than twenty million gallons of
water, but today it is an eerie tourist attraction. The old city of
Constantinople had no local water source, and the Emperor Justinian had the
cistern built in the 6th Century to provide water to the city in the event
of a siege. Two columns in the cistern have the carved stone head of Medusa as their bases. The funny thing is that one of the heads is upside down, and the other is on its side. No one knows exactly why. The carved stone heads came from some other Roman structures and were reused in the cistern. According to one of the myths retold on a sign in the cistern, Medusa had piercing black eyes and was in love with a fellow named Perseus. The jealous Goddess Athena turned Medusa’s hair into snakes and made it so that whoever looked at Medusa’s eyes would turn to stone. Then Athena sent Perseus to cut off Medusa’s head, and by holding the head of Medusa by the snake hair, Perseus was able to defeat many enemies in battle. His enemies turned into stone when they looked at Medusa’s head in Perseus’ hanging from Perseus’ hand. The way Perseus avoided being turned into stone is that he always looked at Medusa’s reflection in a mirrored shield that Athena gave him. In Byzantium, the carved head of Medusa, always upside down, would be put on the handles of swords and other objects to protect their owners. After wandering through the ancient cistern, I walked down to the railroad station near the harbor on the Bosphorus. Even the railroad station is a historical place. Originally built as the eastern terminus for the Orient Express, it now contains a small museum with wonderful railroad artifacts, and still operates as a railroad station. The Orient Express ran from Paris to Constantinople, and in its heyday in the 1920’s and 1930’s provided a grand, luxurious and exotic experience for the wealthy and the nobility of Europe. I think a lot of people know of “Murder on the Orient Express.” The mystery movie starred Ingrid Bergman and many other famous screen stars; the movie was based on the book written by Agatha Christie. Monday, September 24, 2007 I left Istanbul, and took the bus to Canakkale (pronounced ‘chan-ah ka-lee’). The bus left the huge central bus terminal, the Otogar, 10:30 a.m., and arrived at 4:30 p.m. The route went west along the Marmara Sea, then along the Dardanelles. At te narrowest place along the Dardanelles the bus drove onto a ferry and crossed the narrow waterway to Canakkale. The Hellespont, about 20 km further west, is the opening into the Mediterranean. This is really an historic spot. The Persian King Xerxes, in 480 B.C.E., built a bridge of boats across the Dardanelles exactly where the ferry crossed. Xerxes’ Army of at least 100,000 men invaded Europe to conquer Greece, but, with many fewer troops, the Greeks defeated Xerxes’ Army at Thermopylae and Salamis. Later, Alexander the Great, in 334 B.C.E., crossed the straits here too, and still later the Roman Emperor Augustus did the same thing in 20 B.C.E. Then in 124 C.E., Hadrian crossed this spot. In the First World War, the combined Allied Forces of British, French, Australians, New Zealand and India tried to take the Gallipoli peninsula and failed to cross. However, today, it was my turn, and I crossed the Dardanelles in comfort! Some history, I‘d say. My hostel in Canakkale is called the Anzac House, and it comes complete with Australians and New Zealanders of all ages. They are here to visit Gallipoli, of course, and I will join them tomorrow. Tuesday, September 25, 2007 This morning, along with a group of Australians and New Zealanders, I set out to tour Gallipoli for most of the day. Our Turkish guide gave us an excellent and informative tour. It was an emotional and moving experience to visit the cemeteries and memorials with Australians, New Zealanders and Turks.  Generally,
I find battlefields difficult to understand on the first visit. The story of
a battle usually involves many things that happened simultaneously, and
keeping everything in relative order and relative location takes
concentration. During the First World War, the British and French believed
the Ottoman Turks were weak, and they believed they could capture the
Dardanelles and control enemy sea lanes leading to the Black Sea. They set
up a plan to take the peninsula on the western side of the Dardanelles with
a beach landing. Winston Churchill was head of the British Navy, and
supported the plan. It was a terrible mistake.Like D-day, almost thirty years later, the Allied Forces landed at several beaches along the western shore. The British and French took the southern most part of the peninsula, while the ANZAC, Australian, New Zealand and Indian forces landed further north. At the time, the Turks thought the invasion would be even farther north and so only had about 160 men to oppose the ANZAC. After the remnants of the small Turkish force ran out of ammunition, they retreated. A young Turkish Army lieutenant, Mustafa Kamal, came upon the soldiers in retreat, and ordered them to fix bayonets and hold the ANZAC force until he could bring up reinforcements. Lieutenant Kamal is remembered in Turkey for what he said to those men: “I am not asking you to attack, I am ordering you to die. In the time that passes until we die, other troops and commanders can take our place.” Of course, Lieutenant Mustafa Kamal did not die; he went on to found the modern Turkish Republic after the war and became President Ataturk, “Father of the Turks.” The ANZAC force, meanwhile, fearing more soldiers behind the ridges in front of them did not advance. This delay gave the Turks enough time to bring in more soldiers and thus start a stalemate that lasted from the end of April until the end of December 1915. Both sides dug in, built trenches and fired at each other daily. The trench warfare on Gallipoli was horrendous as the opposing forces were incredibly close to each other; in some places the trenches were only 25-30 feet apart. The casualties on the Turkish side were much greater than on the Allied side. In the final analysis, after half a million soldiers in total died, neither side really won, but the Allied Forces withdrew and the Turks maintained the integrity of their homeland. One of the stories to come out of Gallipoli was about a 22-year-old Australian soldier named John Simpson Fitzpatrick. “The Man with the Donk,” i.e., the man with the donkey, as he became known had worked as a boy at an English Fair giving donkey rides to children and caring for the animals. His family moved to Australia, and he volunteered for the Army when the war broke out in 1914. He was part of a medical unit, and was the second man out of his landing craft when the invasion started at dawn April 25, 1915. The first and the third men were killed. The medics like Simpson were short of stretchers and almost half the men who landed were dead or wounded. Food and especially water were in very short supply. There was no water on Gallipoli; the water that the Allied Forces had came from Egypt and had to be supplied in water cans from the landing craft. An improvised collecting post was set up and the medics worked all day to bring the wounded there. The Turks held the high ground and could fire down at the ANZAC forces; stretcher parties were particularly vulnerable. As it turns out, several donkeys were brought ashore in the invasion, but they had been abandoned in the initial fighting. Simpson rounded up some of the grazing donkeys, and started to use them to haul the wounded. He had to improvise reins using medical bandages, but he was able to bring some men back the first day. Later he got some rope and blankets to carry the wounded on his donkeys. Simpson carried out wounded men under incredible circumstances. He walked his donkeys through the no-man’s land between trenches only 15 yards apart! Simpson walked through “Shrapnel Gully,” but somehow survived from dawn to well past midnight avoiding sniper fire and shrapnel on a dozen or more rescue trips each day. Simpson named his donkeys “Murphy,” “Abdul,” “Duffy,” and even “Queen Elizabeth.” To feed his animals, he joined up with the Indian Artillery unit who had fodder for the mules they brought to haul their guns. The Indians called him “Bahadur,” the bravest one, and to his own troops he was known as “Scotty,” “Murphy,” “Simmie,” and “the Man with the Donk.” He met his end May 19, 1915; during his 24 days of battle he is credited with saving more than 300 lives. Gallipoli had a lasting impact on Winston Churchill; for a time after Gallipoli, Churchill lost his job in the British Government, and had his hopes of a political career destroyed. Fortunately, he was forgiven and elected to Parliament a few years later. During the Second World War, even after promising Stalin that the Allies would open a “Western Front” by invading France, Churchill could not bring himself to do it. He remembered the disaster at Gallipoli, and would not let Roosevelt start an assault from the beaches in France. Instead he agreed to an invasion through Italy in the south, by way of Sicily and Anzio. Finally, of course, Churchill had to agree, and the result was D-day. Wednesday, September 26, 2007 A bus took twenty minutes to get me to ancient Troy from Canakkale. The Turkish government has set aside a National Historic Site that contains the ruins of this ancient place, and, like Gallipoli, the United Nations lists Troy as a World Heritage Site. My visit to the ruins of Troy, brought back recollections of reading the Iliad many years ago. Homer’s famous poem covers the last part of the ten-year siege of Troy in the Seventh Century B.C.E., and the story is relevant today. The archeological site dates back to perhaps 3000 B.C.E. For a long time Western scholars had no real evidence that Troy ever really existed. A British archeologist, Frank Calvert, found the present site in 1865, and brought back a few relics. A wealthy German, Heinrich Schliemann feverishly accepted Calvert’s finding, and he had Calvert get a permit to excavate in 1871. Not only did he excavate, but Schliemann and his wife Sophie looted the treasures, and in so doing, destroyed much of historical value. He brought his finds back to Berlin, and during the Cold War, the Russians stole the treasure, but would not admit it until 1993. After Schliemann died, his assistant, Wilhelm Dörpfeld, a much more scientific archeologist, continued working and actually developed the stratification of the various layers of archeological finds. The work continues even today by scientists from the University of Cincinnati and the University of Tubingen, Germany. Philip Sternberg Scoutmaster, Troop 1131 |