The end of 1918 saw British and French warships lying off the Golden Horn and British soldiers on guard at the forts of Chanak and Kilid Bahr.
Was it not prophesied that one day a New Zealander would sit on London Bridge and survey the ruins of the metropolis? In the year of grace, 1918, the real modern New Zealanders—with the dust of the desert still on their faded tunics, complete with their wristlet watches and folding kodaks—stand on the famous Galata Bridge and snapshot the imperturbable Turkish boatman who seem but faintly interested in the doom of the Ottoman Empire. There in their old slouch hats stand the war-worn troopers—young crusaders who have contributed their full share to the humbling of those despots who for centuries have been the curse of Western Europe.
Going ashore at Maidos.
Among the troops to re-occupy Gallipoli were the Canterbury Mounted Rifles, who, in December, disembarked at Maidos, and with their comrades of the 7th Australian Light Horse, did not hesitate to sit as conquerors on the giant guns of Kilid Bahr.
The Triumph of Anzac.
Men of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles sitting on a 14-inch gun at Kilid Bahr.
Up the valley towards Lone Pine they rode, until they came to the Turkish victory monument erected on the site of the famous Australian salient. Then over to Koja Chemen Tepe, to stand in silence where British soldiers had never stood before. This was the moment of triumph: this was the prize for which we had striven in 1915, and now, after all these years, the prize was ours—on the one hand the great forts and Point Nagara running out into the rushing waters of the Narrows; on the other side the great panorama of the Aegean Sea—Samothrace and Imbros in the distance; the Salt Lake and the fatal plains of Suvla; away South, the forbidding hump of Achi Baba; and closer in, the Anzac beaches, Russell's Top, the tangled steeps of Walker's Ridge, The Farm, and the ridge of Chunuk. These men of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles were the triumphant victors, but slowly they rode down the winding ways of dry watercourses looking for the last resting places of brothers and comrades-in-arms. Never a yard but somebody stopped and silently searched for an identification disc.
