9 Copyright Able 2015 On April the 25th 1915, the first of more than 13,000 NZ soldiers landed here, on the Turkish Gallipoli peninsula in a place that would become known as Anzac Cove. Eventually, nearly 2800 NZers were killed at Gallipoli, and nearly twice that number again were injured. One of those wounded was my grandfather, Martin Brooke. Historians tell us Gallipoli was where NZ lost its innocence and found its identity. Now, 100 years later, I want to know more about Gallipoli, my grandfather's involvement and why this ill-fated campaign has such a prominent place in NZ's history. How did young men like my grandfather end up here, and what lasting legacy has it left on the families of the men who fought here? As we commemorate its centenary, Gallipoli remains one of NZ's worst military disasters. DRAMATIC MUSIC MOMENTOUS TRUMPET MUSIC I've played for NZ, but my grandfather nearly gave his life for this country. He volunteered for the Great War here in Pukekohe in the second week of August 1914. When he was 96, my grandfather was interviewed by oral historians Jane Tollerton and Nicholas Boyack. Our family have never heard that recording. It will be a new experience for us all. TENSE MUSIC In the early 1900s, Pukekohe was a busy rural town. But when war was declared on August the 4th 1914, the Empire called and NZ was quick to answer. READS: Great Britain declares war on Germany. My grandfather is gonna wake up and see these papers. And that would be rather scary for him, but as my grandfather is English, he's gonna have an obligation to sign up for it. And sign up he did. Martin Brooke was 22 and ready for adventure. READS: Our Brave Boys. Our Brave Boys. There he is. Martin Brooke. He's made the local paper. I'm embarrassed to say I know little about my grandfather's Gallipoli. Maybe my father, Sandy, will know more. GENTLE ACOUSTIC GUITAR Now living in England, I've not seen my father for some years. So I've asked Sandy to meet me at the old Karaka farm, the place he grew up and where I spent my first year. Hey, Sandy. Hey, Sandy. Hi, hi, hi. How are ya? Oh, can't complain. Yeah. Give you a hug there. You all right? Give you a hug there. You all right? Geez, you got` Christ, you` Some beef on there. BOTH LAUGH What's it like being back here? What's it like being back here? It's marvellous to come back to have a look. First time I've been back for... 50-odd years. As a returning soldier, Martin acquired this farm when he came home. And later on he left Sandy in no doubt about Gallipoli. It was absolute murder going into Gallipoli, cos he said they just got into a rock face. Landed on the beach; the Turks up above just machine-gunned them as soon as they came off the, uh, boats. So he actually told you that? Yeah. He said, 'Oh, it was one hell of a place to be.' Martin was seriously injured in Gallipoli. He carried the scars for the rest of his life. I remember as a kid when we used to go and visit him in Pukekohe. I remember as a kid when we used to go and visit him in Pukekohe. (CHUCKLES) I used to go and touch his elbow. It was like a big lemon, wasn't it? I used to go and touch his elbow. It was like a big lemon, wasn't it? Mm. And, uh, it was so` And, uh, it was so` Oh, used to give him hell in the winter. Did it? (INHALES SHARPLY) Yeah. He used to get Mum to rub it, cos it just ached like a toothache. My grandfather had run away from England looking for adventure when he was 17. Arriving in Banks Peninsula, he worked on farms, gradually making his way north. Have you not heard`? You've not heard this before? Have you not heard`? You've not heard this before? No. MARTIN: I thought, 'Oh, I'm going to join up.' So I got on the train, came into Auckland. I went straight down to the hall. I said, 'Look, I want to be in the Auckland Mounted Rifles.' I saw some doctor. He examined me; he said, 'Yes, you're fit.' I loved excitement. I loved something new. I thought, 'Ooh! Back again over the sea, here and there and everywhere.' So` So there you have it. He chased excitement, and he wanted to go round the world. (CHUCKLES) (CHUCKLES) And to fight a war. Eh? Eh? Good God. He didn't know what he'd let himself into. OMINOUS NOTES 22 years old. And it's here ` right here 100 years ago ` that his journey started. TRAIN WHISTLE BLOWS The great adventure. As they went away to war, all those eager young men, none could know what lay ahead in a place they had not yet heard of ` Gallipoli. Tom Burgess would become one of Gallipoli's first prisoners of war. Billy Corleison would have a premonition of death ` a premonition that would come true. MEN YELL Jack Shepherd would survive the war, but not the peace. And Charlie O'Hara and my grandfather, Martin, would live to be old men. UPBEAT MUSIC, BOOTS STOMP Within just two months of signing up, the first volunteers were heading overseas. It was October the 16th 1914. 10 ships, over 8000 men and nearly 4000 horses left Wellington. Together they formed the NZ Expeditionary Force. SHIP HORN BLARES As they sailed across the Indian Ocean, the boredom of ship life was offset by the constant fear of German raiders. Eventually, the troop ship stopped in Colombo, Sri Lanka ` or Ceylon as it was known at the time. UPBEAT INDIAN-STYLE MUSIC Robert Montgomery is the grandson of Charlie O'Hara, one of my grandfather's good mates from Gallipoli. 100 years after our two grandfathers were here, we've come to the Galle Face Hotel, where Martin led Charlie and a few other NZ troops into a little bit of trouble. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you. Thank you. It's a great, unexpected privilege to be sitting in a bar in the same hotel where these men drank 100 years ago. Trooper Charlie O'Hara from Papatoetoe had joined the Mounted Rifles just days before my grandfather. Monty has no idea that I have an eye-witness account of what our grandfathers got up to. MARTIN: And as soon as we got in, I said, 'We want to see all the boozers in this place.' We went round to the last pub, and I said, 'My God, we're broke. We haven't got any more money.' I said, 'We've gotta pay this bloke.' And it fell to Charlie O'Hara. So Charlie said, 'I'll pay him.' Charlie ran out of the pub with the driver running after him. I think my grandfather started off the war drinking, and he ended it in the same way as he started. So I think it set the tone for his war, anyway. Charlie and Martin were late back to their ship, but eventually they sailed on from Colombo. The Australians and NZers on board probably thought they were heading to England. But instead, they were diverted to Egypt, where they would train for the next five months. They arrived in Egypt. Did our grandfathers get up to any more mischief? Well, we have here a picture of one of the prostitutes available in Egypt for the troops. But all I can say about that is on my grandfather's war record there is no evidence that he contracted VD at any part of the war, so whether he took part in that, I don't know. Yeah. I would say, just on the basis of that photo, that she would not have been very busy. All joking aside, the good times were rapidly coming to an end for both of our grandfathers. Cheers. To the grandfathers. Boom. So who's gonna pay this time? So who's gonna pay this time? Well, I've got no money. So who's gonna pay this time? Well, I've got no money. (LAUGHS) SOMBRE PERCUSSION MUSIC Gallipoli. My first time here. And it's cold, bitterly cold. There's no one here in winter ` only the dead. Coming to the place where my grandfather came. And I didn't know what I was gonna do, whether I was gonna burst into tears or contain myself and control... my emotions of... walking on the same soil my grandfather did 100 years ago. And it's amazing. I feel very satisfied to actually make the journey. I've touched the water, I've touched the land. And now where I'm standing, right in behind where we're going to is where my grandfather got involved in the battle with the Turks. READS: 'You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, 'wipe away your tears. 'Your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. 'After having lost their lives on this land, 'they have become our sons as well.' Ataturk. MAN CALLS TO PRAYER IN ARABIC So why did my grandfather end up here in Turkey when he was expecting to be fighting the Germans in France? Essentially, it was because the Turks entered the war on the German side. The Turks controlled the Dardanelles, the main sea route to Constantinople ` modern-day Istanbul. And overlooking that vital strip of water is where I'm meeting NZ military historian Dr Damien Fenton. The idea behind the Gallipoli campaign was Winston Churchill's, and his idea was to knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war really quickly. And he thought he could do that by sending an Allied naval fleet through to the Dardanelles Straits to sit outside the capital, Constantinople, and basically force the Turks to either surrender or face having their capital city flattened by naval bombardment. The Ottoman Turks know this waterway is important. It's well defended ` it's got forts, it's got coastal batteries, guns. They lay minefields across the strait to stop ships. So you've got a problem ` to get a fleet up here, you're gonna have to get rid of the minefields. To do that, you need to do something about the coastal guns, cos they'll sink your minesweepers unless you do. So first of all, they try a naval attack. GUNS BOOM And that ends up in a disastrous attack on the 18th of March when we lost three battleships. So at that point, they decided, 'OK we can't just do this by sending warships up the strait. 'How about we send a land force to invade the Gallipoli peninsula 'and knock out the coastal guns that way, and then open it up for the fleet.' So that's where our guys came into it, and that was the job we were given to do. Troops from a number of countries including Britain, Australia, NZ, India and later France were involved in the Gallipoli landings. The plan was for the British to land at the bottom of the peninsula and for the Anzacs to attack further north. 25th of April. Tell me about that day. The Anzacs landed in the wrong place. They should have landed 2km further south on quite a gentle beach. Instead, they landed at the place we now know as Anzac Cove. They are immediately confronted with these steep ravines and cliffs, but they press on and basically follow their nose. The problem is in doing so they become disorganised. Units gets split up and lost; officers lose track of their men; men lose track of their officers. Nobody really knows who is doing what. It's complete chaos. Now, while that's happening, a commander called Mustafa Kemal, in charge of the Ottoman 19th division, a force of about 12,000, 13,000 men, he orders his division to head straight for Anzac` Anzac Cove. So by midday you've suddenly got this massive force of Turkish reinforcements that runs smack into our guys. MACHINE-GUN FIRE The landing was a disaster. But my grandfather would have had little knowledge of that. He and the other Mounted Rifles were held back in Egypt. Their time would come. One of those who did land on April the 25th was Tom Burgess. Tom, like my grandfather, had signed up in Pukekohe, but in the infantry. His great-niece Carol Over has been researching Tom Burgess' story from the rugby field to the battlefield. Tom's battalion was one of the first battalions behind the Australians that landed at Anzac Cove. They were faced with this enormous task of getting up these cliffs in order to fight the Turks, and the Turks were sitting up there and just picking them off. Tom and the Anzacs made some progress that first day, but then were forced to pull back. GUNSHOT SOMBRE MUSIC Tom got` He was wounded. And when his battalion retreated, Tom was left. GUNFIRE (COUGHS) He lay in the battlefield for three days. It's reported that every Turk that went past him either bayonetted him or batoned him. He was eventually picked up by the Turkish stretcher-bearers and taken to a base hospital on the peninsula. And then he probably would have been taken by ship into Constantinople, or Istanbul as it is today, where he was put in the Giuliani Hospital. Word of Thomas's capture eventually emerged when his name appeared in the NZ Herald. He also managed to get letters home to friends and family that were printed in the local newspapers. Goodness gracious me, look at this here ` September the 9th 1915. There he is, look, Private Thomas Hayes Burgess. His name appeared on the casualty list published in July the 12th. TOM: Just a few lines to let you know I'm alive and well. Well, I've had a pretty rough time. I was wounded and taken prisoner by the Turks when our troops landed at Dardanelles. I was treated very kindly by them. Have been in a splendid hospital for two months where my wounds have healed up quite well. Wow. Man, that's quite special, isn't it? Wow. Man, that's quite special, isn't it? That is very special. But that letter belied what was really going on. On August 26th, he was transferred to another hospital called Tash Kishla, which was what they called a punishment hospital. The Turks thought that the Turkish prisoners of war where being badly treated by the British, so then they decided` so then they decided` Revenge. ...that it was going to be a retaliation. The conditions in Tash Kishla were appalling. The guys slept on mattresses on the floor, if they were lucky enough to get one ` they usually had three apiece to a mattress. Thomas was doing OK, and then he died. His death must have been unexpected news to family back home. Why did he die when he appeared to be doing so well? Much later, the truth came out. Another NZ prisoner of war, Private William Surgenor, filed a startling report. But it took almost 100 years before Carol would see it. READS: 'Private Burgess was left behind 'when his crowd retired at Gallipoli, having been wounded. 'Some stretcher-bearers picked him up, and he was taken to camp. 'He told me himself that he had been sodomised there.' Bloody hell. 'He was then taken to hospital suffering from pneumonia, appendicitis and exhaustion.' Obviously` Obviously` Oh, it was very, very distressing, you know, to find that out, but at least you know what happened to him, what he went through. The little rugby guy from Pukekohe. I don't know, I've always had this connection with Tom, and I have no idea why, so I really wanted to go and visit his grave. And that's the head` the headstone. Phew. I was the first person from our family that's ever visited Tom's grave. After the emotion passed, then I got really, really angry and I just, you know, 'What the bloody hell is he doing here? 'I mean, he's 10,500 miles away from home. 'He should be back in our country where we can go and see him.' All these sort of things, you know? Yeah. But what has been really nice about it, when I told all my cousins and so forth that I had been, that now a lot of them also wanna go. And I think... (VOICE CRACKS) it was worthwhile. SOFTLY: OK. I've got a lump in my throat. Terrible as Tom Burgess' death was, it wouldn't be the last. More Anzacs were required to fill the gap. And one of them was my grandfather. 9 Two weeks after the landing at Gallipoli, reinforcements were urgently needed. The Mounted Rifles, their horses still in Egypt, were called to relieve those left from the first landing on April the 25th. MARTIN: We saw that we were getting closer because... there were young men coming out from the trenches that only looked to be about 15 and 16 years old. The sigh of relief as they came out ` they were all of a shake. And I thought, 'Oh isn't it a devil of a thing putting little boys 'right at the very pinnacle of that blasted hill.' REFLECTIVE MUSIC My grandfather and the rest of the Auckland Mounted Rifles would spend most of their time at Gallipoli at a place called Walker's Ridge. Uh, the ridge itself ` on the other side there, there's sort of a slope. The Mounteds were told, 'That's where you're living. 'That's where your bivvies and dugouts are.' So that's where they sleep and eat. And then up here, more or less where we are, this is the front line. The formidable sheer cliffs ` I mean, you can just see the scale of it, it must have been` They must have arrived here and just thought, 'Where have we landed? What are we supposed to do with this?' EERIE MUSIC The landscape has changed down the years. There's more vegetation now, and they say perhaps as much as 10m of topsoil has eroded away. Even so, I find it hard to believe anyone could have lived here. Well, here we are. We're actually on Walker's Ridge, 100 years on. My grandfather was walking this turf with a lot of his mates, friends, Australian guys, Kiwi guys. And just behind us, the front line. EMOTIVE STRING MUSIC Further inland, a few trenches remain. Here, everyday life was exceptionally tough for men like my grandfather. The heat really became a problem for the men, mainly because of the lack of water. There just isn't enough water in that area that they hold on Anzac to supply 20,000 men. Consequently, it becomes pretty filthy fairly quickly. Lice becomes a problem, getting into their uniforms, their bedding and their bivouacs. And then you also get the flies. And with the flies comes disease and sickness. And sure enough, there's an outbreak of dysentery, and just about every man comes down with it at some point. It's pretty harsh conditions. And on May the 19th, the atmosphere changed. Turkish troops began a whole new kind of attack. MARTIN: And then we heard, 'Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah,' being called, and somebody said, 'Oh my God, it's the bloody Turks. They're attacking.' MEN SHOUT GUNSHOTS RICOCHET MARTIN: There were the officers running up and down, 'On the fire step! Get right to the top! 'Start shooting! The enemy's there.' Keep going, lads! CONSTANT GUNFIRE FUSE HISSES BOOM! MARTIN: These Turks, they got right close up to Walker's Ridge. There were about 60,000 Turkish and Arab soldiers involved in this attack, 40,000 in the first wave alone. 40,000? 40,000? 40,000 spread around the perimeter. But even so, your grandfather would have no doubt been facing looking at, I don't know, 10s, 100s of Turkish or Arab soldiers coming at him. They were gonna absolutely annihilate the Anzacs and the enclave and just wipe it out. And it was an attack all along the line, so the whole Anzac perimeter. And there was nothing subtle about it, it was just the full frontal assault, just charging directly at our trenches, straight at us. And I mean, it must have been terrifying. AUTOMATIC GUNFIRE Your grandfather and his mates in the Auckland Mounted, they stood their ground, they stayed in their trenches, they manned the fire step. The machine-gunners, you know, did their terrible work, and they actually` they stopped the Turkish attack literally dead. The Ottoman Turks lost 10,000 men out of that 40,000 in the space of a couple of hours. At least 3000 dead. I mean, it was slaughter. It was just slaughter. No-man's-land, the area between the two front lines, is now carpeted with dead bodies, and so both sides agree to have an armistice for one day to go out there and retrieve bodies and clear them. Burying the dead during the brief armistice must have been hard. The respite gave everyone time to reflect. Billy Corleison, my grandfather's friend, so brave during the fighting, developed a bad feeling. MARTIN: Now, Billy Corleison, he was in our section. And Billy was` We all liked him. He was only about 19. He had a premonition that he was going to get killed. We all said, 'Come on, Billy!' Billy. Billy. Yeah? What's the matter? Just a bloody dream. MARTIN: 'I don't know,' he said, 'I don't know. 'But I've got a feeling` got a feeling something's going to happen.' And as sure as we were ordered in this trench this night, there must have been a Turk that had seen this head come up and have a look. Somebody said, 'Billy, stop putting your head over the top, looking out there. The bugger'll shoot ya!' Billy! Billy! GUNSHOT MARTIN: There was a bang. 'Oh God, they've shot him.' He knew he was going to get shot. He knew his life had come to an end. Billy Corleison's death would haunt my grandfather for the rest of his life. 9 The Gallipoli campaign had been going for nearly seven weeks, and the pressures and the casualties were increasing. By mid-June my grandfather had been on Walker's Ridge for a month. He was tired. People had been dying all around him. Four days after Billy's death, my grandfather was approached by an NCO and ordered back up to the front line. MARTIN: Sergeant Ross had come up to me. He said, 'I've got to get another two or three men together. 'They've got to go out to another outpost.' I said, 'I was out at the outpost for two days this week, 'and I've, sort of, only just been up at the trenches.' And he said, 'I've been given orders to get them, and you're one of the men I'm going to get.' I said, 'No, you're not.' I'm not going back! MARTIN: And I started fighting him on the side of the hill. And I was about to go back to the boys,... BOOM! ...and this blasted shell exploded right in my face. Went through my shoulder, went through my legs down here, through this knee. And somebody said, 'My God, Brookey, a wonder it didn't kill ya.' I said 'I'll never get killed. I've been preserved for better things.' (CHUCKLES) This is the first time I've heard that story. It's a shock. But even more disconcerting to me is Damien's take on the events that had lead up to the explosion. On one level, he's obviously very unlucky that he just happens to be where this random shell has landed and exploded. He's copped it. On the other hand, it hasn't killed him, at least not outright, and you could argue that this has possibly saved him... (CHUCKLES) from a court martial. Eh? Disobeying an order in the face of the enemy carries the death penalty. Really? Really? Yeah, really. Yep. So can I sort of loosely say that it's probably a good thing that my grandfather got hit? It may well have. It's not to say that he would necessarily have been sentenced to death, but` and he probably wouldn't have been ` but technically, it is there as a possibility. My grandfather ended up on the beach waiting for life-saving medical treatment. But like so many injured Anzacs due to be treated on hospital ships, his survival was mostly a matter of luck. He comes down here for two days, waiting to get rescued. Early in the campaign, the Anzacs had just one dedicated hospital ship at Gallipoli ` the Gascon. Susanna De Vries is an historian and author. She's researched the terrible conditions medical staff worked in. There's three doctors, seven nurses looking after` at one stage, they have as many as 900 people on the Gascon. You know, crowded together like sardines. They didn't have penicillin, they didn't have modern painkillers and they didn't have blood transfusions. All they have is morphine. And when the morphine runs out, they're, uh` terrible, terrible pain is endured by these poor men. Thousands of men died who didn't need to die. Your grandfather is taken on board on the 16th of June in the heat of the summer. He's taken on board, he's blue-carded to have an operation. He's very lucky that he doesn't get gangrene or they would have had to amputate an arm and a leg. The gangrene is the great killer of the Anzacs. More people die of gangrene than die of being shot on the beach. My grandfather survived the surgery. But many of those around him were not so lucky. MARTIN: There were the different forms lying on the deck. They were all encased in canvas, and you could see one leg here, one arm or no arms or two legs off, just the body, all being buried. And as they buried them, they all went down into the` all with this big, heavy stone in to take them to the bottom. SPLASH! I think the description of the funeral is what's so very interesting in your grandfather's account. Because at the time of Gallipoli, he couldn't have mentioned this. Funerals are a banned topic. Two of the nurses on the Gascon tried unsuccessfully to get the word out about conditions on the hospital ship. It's taken 100 years for the nurses' diaries to fully come to light. It's the lost story of the war because they saved 10,000 Anzacs. They were truly heroic. And your grandfather's story is very interesting because it's almost the missing piece in the jigsaw. Yeah. Trooper Brooke. Yeah. Trooper Brooke. Trooper Brooke. My grandfather was evacuated, and arrived in Egypt on June the 30th 1915. But for the NZ troops he left behind, Gallipoli was far from over. This monument memorialises a battle called Chunuk Bair. Around August 8th, NZ troops pushed higher than any of the Allied troops had ever been before. READS: 'In honour of the soldiers of the NZ Expeditionary Force, '8th of August 1915. 'From the uttermost ends of the Earth.' POIGNANT MUSIC Ataturk. Briefly, the Kiwi soldiers glimpsed their objective ` the Dardanelles ` for the first and only time before being pushed back. The NZ loss of life at Chunuk Bair was horrendous. And when the RSA was established the next year, some even argued that August the 8th was a more fitting date for Anzac Day rather than the 25th of April. I am the master of the way. I am the master of the way. ALL CHATTER, LAUGH Hey! Over here, mate. (LAUGHS) Hey! Over here, mate. (LAUGHS) Thank you so much. See ya! Hey, thanks for driving tonight. Hey, thanks for driving tonight. You owe me. Hey, thanks for driving tonight. You owe me. (LAUGHS) Fair enough. Kate was giving me the eye as well. What?! What?! She was. No. No. BOTH LAUGH What's that? What's that? Oh crap. Don't worry about it. You're well under. Don't worry about it. You're well under. Yeah, but it's a lower limit now. Good evening. Any alcohol tonight? Good evening. Any alcohol tonight? Uh, just a couple... with dinner. Good evening. Any alcohol tonight? Uh, just a couple... with dinner. Yeah. She's fine, eh. Stop. That's over 250 micrograms. I now require you to accompany me to the booze bus... Oh stink. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you do say... It's a failed result, ma'am. ...may be given in evidence in court. You could ring a taxi and pick your car up in the morning. Let's call your mum and dad. They're, like, 10 minutes away. Let's call your mum and dad. They're, like, 10 minutes away. We're not calling my parents. CHILDREN ARGUE CHILDREN ARGUE Please. Behave yourselves. No. In the car. INDISTINCT RT CHATTER 9 The stand-off at Gallipoli continued through the heat of the Turkish summer. The NZers made one more offensive push to try and break the enemy lines. 93-year-old Margaret Shepherd's father, Jack Shepherd, was one of those who survived long enough to take part in the battle of Chunuk Bair. Margaret and her son, John Keenan, treasure Jack's wartime diary, which records events at Gallipoli after my grandfather had been evacuated. Events that almost obliterated the regiment they both shared ` the Auckland Mounted Rifles. John, we're on August the 7th. There's obviously` It's quite a critical day. It is. It is. It's a crucial day isn't it? It is. It's a crucial day isn't it? It is. So what happened there? So what happened there? Well, it's a crucial day for NZ's nationhood and its military history because that was the start of the battle of Chunuk Bair. MEN YELL, GUNFIRE JACK SHEPHERD: We charged across about 100 yards of open ground, swept by machine guns, and a good many of our chaps fell, shot in the rush. After crossing the hilltop, we came to a small hollow where we lay in the scrub at the mercy of the snipers ` trapped. Chunuk Bair is a terrible, terrible loss of life. The Auckland Mounted Rifles were all but wiped out. Jack was wounded at Chunuk Bair. He was shipped to England to recover. While there, pictures of home in front of him, he wrote to family in NZ explaining what had happened. READS: 'My word, it was an awful day, that 8th of August. 'I will never forget it. 'The whole of our regiment was nearly wiped out.' While Jack recovered, those Allied troops still on the peninsula were withdrawn. The eight-month campaign had been a disaster. Gallipoli became the defeat we can never forget. Elsewhere, the war continued. And Jack Shepherd, again deemed fit to fight, was sent to the Western Front, to Belgium. He arrived in time for the battle of Passchendaele, which saw 3700 NZ casualties, including 845 deaths in one day. Jack Shepherd served nearly four years, almost constantly in the front line. It's all such a... a hopeless business, isn't it, a terrible sacrifice, and... um... Young men in the best days of their growing up, to be` have to live like this and have all his f` so many of his friends drop beside him, and then to keep on going. And eventually, he came back to NZ. But he never recovered from the ordeal. He was obviously stressed. And evidently, he went to some doctor that was way up north and, um, told to go and get over it. So unfortunately, my father took his life` own life... in the end. SOLEMN MUSIC Margaret was just 4 years old when her father committed suicide. Well, I feel very sad that, um, a man who had a life to live... Yeah. > Yeah. > ...was broken by the war and, um, lack of... help. But there was nothing. But there was nothing. But there was nothing there. So that's from Martin and that's from Jack. Good on you. Excellent. Excellent. My father. Yeah. GENTLE STRING MUSIC The Rawene ferry in the Far North. A sentimental journey. For just over 60 years, the location of Jack Shepherd's grave was unknown. But after a lot of painstaking research, Margaret identified her father's final resting place at a settlement called Kohukohu in the Hokianga. Jack Shepherd lies here in an unmarked plot. Margaret is determined to give her father a headstone. It's lovely to have you around like this, and understanding. Really is nice. Jack's at peace, huh? Jack's at peace, huh? JOHN: He is. The journey to follow my grandfather's Gallipoli story has left me with one last piece of unfinished business ` a meeting with a man called Grant Corleison. We meet at the Auckland War Memorial Museum, at the Hall of Memory. My dad brought me here when I was about 8 or 9,... My dad brought me here when I was about 8 or 9,... Yeah. ...and pointed out his younger brother up there. William Corleison. And I think he was known to your granddad as Billy. Grant knows a few things about his uncle, but not how he died. Now, do you know my grandfather was an eye-witness to... to, uh, to Billy's last moments? No. No. So, I'm going to play you something, and you'll be very interested to hear this. MARTIN: Now, Billy Corleison, he was in our section. We all liked him. He was only about 19. He had a premonition that he was going to get killed. And as sure as we were ordered in this trench this night, there was a bang. Somebody said, 'Oh God, they've shot him.' He knew he was going to get shot. He knew his life had come to and end. It's lovely that your grandad was there with him when it happened. Only a few yards away from each other. And I think there's one last memory my grandfather would want me to share. (RECORDING) MAN: As a Gallipoli veteran in particular, and as a World War I veteran, what does Anzac Day mean to you? MARTIN: I particularly think of Billy Corleison. I often think of little Billy Corleison. And I've often thought if only I knew where some of his people were, I'd go and see them and talk about Billy. But probably it's too long ago. It's 80 years ago. Wow, what a lovely piece, to be able to hear that, all these years later. Remarkable. I want to stand up and give you a` what my grandfather would want to do so... Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks, Zinzan. Thanks, Zinzan. Yeah. Thanks, Zinzan. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome, man. Awesome, man. You too. Awesome, man. You too. Fantastic. The British artist Banksy said something interesting ` 'We die twice', he said. 'The first time when we stop breathing; 'the final time when our name is spoken for the last time.' Learning more about Gallipoli and my grandfather and his mates, I have learned some names I never knew before ` Billy Corleison, Tom Burgess, Charlie O'Hara and Jack Shepherd; names my family will be talking about for a very long time to come. My grandfather survived World War I. He came home and married Sybil Zinzan, who was the love of his life. He got a soldier's rehab farm, raised a family, saw two of his grandsons become All Blacks, and lived till 102. In many ways, Martin Brooke was the quintessential NZer. At the beginning of the war he thought of himself as British. But when he came home he was a Kiwi. That, they say, is the legacy of Gallipoli. Captions by Tracey Dawson. www.able.co.nz Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright Able 2015