Understood Johnno 
Closest battlegroung for me in Canadian history would probably be the Plains of Abraham outside Quebec City. I've been there once.
I'll have to look up Gallipoli and refresh my memory.
An attempt to seize the straights between the mediteranean and black seas in 1915, it deployed over a hundred thousand troops mostly british and french but with contingents of australian and new zealand troops.
Very much fits the same cultural pattern for ausies and kiwis as 'the alamo' does for texans, i.e. an honourable defeat against overwhelming odds. The campaign was weird in many ways, and was an unmittigated disaster from start to finish.
The Anzac contingents landed at the wrong beach, meaning instead of landing at a gentle, sloping and *undefended* beach, they were actually landed under a cliff face, in some places 30-40' high, within a mile of a turkish cavalry training base, cliffs they were expected to scale, in broad daylight, under heavy machine gun crossfire.
Frankly one has to question the competency, not only of an admiral who cant tell the difference between a beach and a cliff, but frankly also of the first lord of the admiralty who appointed him. That lord was Winston Churchill, and this would be far from the last time in his life that he would send tens of thousands of ausies to their death on a completely tactically pointless campaign (eg in WWII he also decided to abandon the Australian division defending Singapore despite not only knowing it had no guns facing the malay peninsula but also in the full knowledge they very little fuel and even less ammunition (the Prince of Wales was on a supply mission to resupply these troops when it was sunk by Japanese naval aircraft, there wasnt a chance in hell the troops could hold singapore yet churchill not only refused to evacuate them himself he also point blank refused to allow Australia to even mount a rescue attempt on our own).
By some miracle the grunts from all armies managed to establish a beach head (the kiwis actually captured their main objective but were nearly 400 yards ahead of the main lines and thus had to fall back to avoid their salient being encircled).
The final lines stabilised about two and a half miles inland where it remained stuck in trench warfare for nearly 6 months. The command officers (except the commanding general himself, who had practically no military experience at all when appointed to the command) all realised the gamble had failed as soon they failed to secure their initial invasion targets, but the general would not listen, finally the media, in the form of Rupert Murdochs grand father, managed to get proof of the disaster to the parliament and after some political gamesmanship the command was changed.
The new general, after exploring several options, decided that enough troops had died in a pointless cause and lobbied, succesfully, for a retreat.
The final miracle of the campaign, one widely regarded by military historians as one of *THE* truely impressive feats in military logistical history, came when 4 entire divisions of troops (the entire expeditionary force) were evacuated in a period of less than six hours, so quietly and efficiently that the turks didnt actually notice for nearly a full day.
There are many elements that draw ones attention, and this campaign went along way towards teaching the british that just because someone has a noble title doesnt necessarily mean they know anything about commanding men on a battlefield. There were also many humorous elements in the campaign, A trait that ausies\kiwis and turks share is that we tend to have somewhat overactive senses of humour, we actually enjoy being somewhat irreverant, im sure that Johnno and Sarah will back me up when i say that for many Australians the ultimate sin is to take onesself too seriously , and that did come through here.
Part of the turkish lines were commanded by a young senior lieutenant Mustafa Kemal (who would later overthrow the monarchy and take the name Kemal Attaturk). A story related by capt. Hunter, light Australian Horse Brigade goes that on one occasion Kemal arranged for a recon party to attach the turkish telegraph lines to the allied telegraph lines just so that after an extended turkish artillery bombardment he could send them the message "how did you like that you Australian b*****ds" according to Hunter what really annoyed the british officers wasnt so much the bombardment, nor Kemals message but the fact that when it was read out several of the Ausie officers, including John Monash the commander of the Australian contingent were literally on their knees bent over double laughing their heads off at the sheer audacity of Kemal, and the sheer absurdity of the situation.
a much more detailed account of the campaign can be found here
http://www.awm.gov.au/encyclopedia/gallipoli/index.htmIn case you cant tell i'm not only interested in history (including military history) im actually passionate about it.
cheers
Fozzi
