Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Note on money, measurement and terminology
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: journeys into history
- Part I Loss, Memory, Desire
- Part II Family Journeys
- Part III Soldiers' Tales
- Part IV Testament of Youth
- Conclusion: journey's end
- Epilogue: The ghost of memory
- Notes
- Survey Informants
- Index
Conclusion: journey's end
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Note on money, measurement and terminology
- List of abbreviations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: journeys into history
- Part I Loss, Memory, Desire
- Part II Family Journeys
- Part III Soldiers' Tales
- Part IV Testament of Youth
- Conclusion: journey's end
- Epilogue: The ghost of memory
- Notes
- Survey Informants
- Index
Summary
Private George Irwin went missing at Gallipoli in August 1915. Last seen plunging into the Turkish trenches at Lone Pine, his body (like countless thousands of others) was never recovered from the carnage. His mother begins writing to the Red Cross in 1916:
I have interviewed so many boys who were with mine in the enemy trench and were blown up that I have … come to think that he might have been in one of these explosions, and been carried to some hospital in England suffering from loss of memory … [I've been] told … there were a number of cases like this …
Sarah Irwin continues to ‘hope’ ‘pray’ and imagine until the very end of the war:
I have never been able to think of him as dead. I feel he is still living somewhere. I write regularly to Turkey, but hardly expect a reply still something urges me to write and I will keep on trusting and hoping, until this dreadful war is over and all the prisoners are exchanged.
Twelve years after his death, Private Irwin's parents finally made their way to Gallipoli. Their journey had taken them 12 000 miles from Australia, first to Britain, then to Italy and finally across the Mediterranean to Turkey. They travelled in the company of 300 others, a ‘mixed party’ of grieving parents and returning soldiers determined to walk ‘the hallowed ground’ of the Peninsula.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Return to GallipoliWalking the Battlefields of the Great War, pp. 210 - 215Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006