Gallipoli: A War Hero 

By: Donna Broadbent

They say that war is a brutal and unforgivable place, where there is so much blood shed going on around you that you wish you were like those draft horses back home, the ones who walk around with blinkers on so their focus is on what’s up ahead and not what is going on around them.  Or to even be one of the blokes who are still at home with their loved ones, the ones who don’t have to worry about getting a fricken bullet through the head whenever you would poke it out from the trenches. Bloody mongrels, how I envy them right now.

I’ve been away at war now for 4 months and it is already becoming hard to distinguish that the soil below our boots was at one stage any other colour than the blood red I have become so accustomed to.  I admit I wasn’t a religious man when I left for war, but I seemed to find myself desperately praying to a god who I don’t even know exists or not.  But I continue to do so when my desperation rises to the surface and I begin to doubt whether I will even make it out of this hellhole alive or if I will just become another blood stained smudge on the ground along side those who have fallen before me.

As soldiers it was expected of us to endure the hardships of war that had been thrust upon us, and as instructed we soon did.  We learned to be able to man the trench and take out the Turks who tried to perpetrate our defence through blistering conditions such as rain and snow.  We endure sleeping outside in the cold night air with only our uniforms to keep us warm, along with the fact that our trench had become infested with mice and flies that most likely were drawn by the soldiers that were beginning to smell a bit potent due to the lack of bathing time.  But the thing that got on most of the lads nerves was the mud, we would spend endless hours in it from fighting in it, to having to sleep in it, to the unfortunate circumstances where some of us would be left to breath our last breath as we lay there to die in it.

Some of us may have left our homes and loved ones as boys but those who are lucky enough to endure the hardships of war and the continual onslaught of the Turks will be eventually able to return home as men, heroes even.  But I suppose that is the ideology of war as whether we win or lose, return home to those we cherish in person or as just a piece of memorabilia that helped us make it through those difficult times by telling us to just keep fighting and pushing forward, we will remain damned to be forever known as a war hero.  The ones who stood up and marched off to war to face death right in the face and just hoped they would be able to at least make an ounce of difference to the prolonged outcome as then it would make the whole ordeal worth while.