A mission to Gallipoli
by Jodie Chillery
100 years ago on Turkey’s Dardenelles Straits, the ill-fated campaign of
the first world war at Gallipoli began, the intention was to work a way up to
past Istanbul toward Russia to create an Eastern front. The efforts of the
Australian and New Zealand forces and the losses they suffered are well
documented. But the battle of Gallipoli was also significant for at least three
of Arlesey’s residents back in 1915, and there are now several relatives of
Gallipoli veterans living in the village today.
The campaign lasted for 258 days and over 500,000 men were lost, but
what was it all about and what did we discover on our trip to the Peninsula
last year as part of the Arlesey Remembers You project?
For those that aren’t familiar with the project, to mark the centenary of the
beginning of WW1, Arlesey launched an ambitious project last year, to place
a bespoke poppy cross on the individual grave of every soldier listed on our
War Memorial.
One, Private John Bowskill who rests in St Peter’s Church yard was
wounded in Gallipoli, but made it home and survived some years after, until
his injuries finally got the better of him.
The remaining two are listed as having a memorial in the war graves of
Turkey. Soon enough as word spread several people who were already
planning to holiday out there volunteered to place the crosses. But it
emerged that the battle site is not on the conventional tourist trail, is a six
hour drive from Istanbul and not particularly well situated for day trippers! So
as the months passed and crosses were laid on the well trodden paths of
the Western Front, Arlesey church yard and even Israel, those that rested in
Turkey were looking like they might not get a visit.
Until, my father, Chris, happened upon an idea. He remembered a
conversation with his mother, my grandmother who is 93, about an Uncle of
hers who she’d never met. He had died at the battle of Gallipoli. We did a bit
of research and sure enough Great Uncle Herbert, or Able Seaman Herbert
Jestico was buried at the Lancashire Landings Cemetery near the tip of the
peninsula. He was in the Sussex Howe Bn. Division a Royal Naval Volunteer
Reserve. He died in Turkey on 21st May 1915 aged just 18.
We agreed that Y