Australian Army Museum of Western Australia > Records

World War 1, Europe Turkey Gallipoli, 1915

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1915

Subcollections

Overview

Soldiers digging graves on Gallipoli. Now identified as taken by Colonel Charles Ryan and described as "Gallipoli Peninsula, Turkey. 24 May 1915. Australian burial parties burying dead Australian and Turkish soldiers at the Nek during the armistice. More than 3,000 Turks and approximately 160 Australians were killed in the Turkish attack on 19 May 1915. Approximately one million rounds of ammunition were fired during the one day attack. The stench from the dead was so unbearable that the Turks initiated a nine hour armistice so that both sides could recover and bury their dead. Note the stretcher in the foreground. Surgeon General Charles Ryan contravened the terms of the armistice by taking this photograph." Australian War Memorial Catalogue # P02648.007

Historical information

Thanks to the research efforts of Dr Michael Sturmfels, of the “Friends of Gallipoli” a number of photographs in the collection of the Australian Army Museum of Western Australia have now been identified as the work of Sir Charles Ryan.
In 1915, soldier and surgeon Sir Charles Ryan captured the Australians’ experience on Gallipoli via a series of candid photographs. Ryan’s sensitivity, his empathy with those on both sides, and his eye for the remarkable – and the remarkable in the everyday – are apparent in his photographic work. His images take us behind the stirring accounts of battle being reported at home to reveal the dry, forbidding landscape, tired troops in the trenches, squalid dug-outs, and the horrendous task of burying the dead. Charles Ryan had a remarkable life, including service as a doctor with the Turkish army in 1877–78 and a close encounter with Ned Kelly, whom he treated at Glenrowan. During his career as a leading Melbourne surgeon and his long service as a senior military officer, he received high civil and military recognition.

Details

Registration number

cwa-org-32-P1900.835

Item type

Photographs

Themes

War and Conflict
War and Conflict > World War 1

Year

1915

Links to additional resources

"Friends of Gallipoli"

Armistice of 24 May 1915