There was nothing behind the trenches for the fighting sides. Sea on the one side, steep ridges on the other; trenches were definitely a snare. These trenches haunted by death became a place for the stories of the people which had turned into legends. For those now fighting, not for the Sultan but for their own land, their own country, every trench was their homeland. ANZAC soldiers, in turn, started to question the British Empire and were inclined to create their own identity with heroic legends in a far country. The ones fighting in Gallipoli shared the same destiny. They learned to feel respect for one another while the life and death struggle were carried on between trenches eight, ten, twenty metres away from the other; this mutuality of fate laid the foundation for the amicability which was established after the war.


Haluk Orals passion for nearly twenty years, this book which is a product of delicately compiled documents, objects and memoirs, is not a work of classical history or a military history research. The book focuses on human landscapes from the Ariburnu Battle which is one of the critical parts of the Gallipoli Campaign. The author traces the human stories which took shape on both sides, on a narrow coastline, where a thin line was drawn between life and death.

-ALI BERKTAY