ENSHRINING A COCK UP

Next Wednesday we will commemorate yet another cock up by military 'geniuses'who wasted thousands of young lives in badly planned campaigns then passed them off as victories. Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Battle of the Somme, Gallipoli, Dunkirk, Singapore,Korea, Vietnam,Cambodia, Somalia,Iraq, Afghanistan. In 2002 I visited Turkey, we spent an afternoon on the Gallipoli peninsular and listened to our tour guide, Ian Dunwoodie, tell us the facts, right there where it all happened; about the troops being landed in the wrong place, How the British officers drank tea on their warship out at sea while the troops were bring slaughtered. If you have the stomach read the books. Meanwhile, a young Turkish Colonel, realising that his regiment (I think it was the 57th) was all that stood between Constantinople and the invading army, deployed his men in trenches along the hill and told them they would have to hang on until reinforcements arrived and that they would probably die.The trenches are still there. The regiment was killed holding the line as their colonel ordered. He went on to become Kemal Ataturk, who led Turkey into the 20th century. On Gallipoli now there is an Anzac cemetery, A French cemetery, a Canadian cemetery, a British cemetery and at least four very large Turkish cemeteries. I cannot think of April 25th as anything glorious.What quarrel did New Zealand have with the Turkey? And twentyfive years later I myself heard a New Zealand politician, who had been a conscientious objector in WW1 telling us, 'Where Britain goes we go.'as he introduced conscription and sent another generation of young men to be slaughtered and I have read the names of boys I went to school with on their gravestones in Crete. Military Intelligence? Is there such a thing?