"Wow, it's been a while since I posted a blog post." These words, or other similar phrases, echoed around the Internet in the past weeks as people like myself approached the new year. We bloggers who began with such diligent dreams got bogged down in real life: careers, family, friends, mass media (perhaps more of the later than was prudent). Eventually the weeks turned to months, until January 2016 showed up knocking.
Blogging isn't the only venture that can be overcome by poor planning, delays, and distractions. One hundred years ago today, Allied forces fled the the shores of Gallipoli in northern Turkey. It was the end of a brutal campaign that had drug on for nearly a year, resulting in the deaths of approximately 87,000 Ottoman Turks and 44,000 Allied soldiers (nearly 25% came from Australia and New Zealand). Turkey still remembers it as a great, if grueling, victory; the original landing on April 25, 2015 is commemorated as Anzac (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) Day down under.
For the rest of the world, this battle is an obscure footnote in a war best remembered by men facing off across barbed wire along the Western Front. I only know about this battle due to a forgotten 1980s movie we watched in a high school history class.
But most people have heard of Winston Churchill and the D-Day landing at Normandy. Back in 1915, Churchill was First Lord of the Admiralty, while Turkey was the third member of the Central Powers embattled against England and her Allies. Russia requested aid in keeping the Turks from advancing. Young Churchill seized the opportunity to open a new front in the war far away from barbed wire and mustard gas, believing a swift invasion would knock Turkey out of the war in one blow.
He was opposed by other members of the navy from the beginning; the War Office cut back the troops request. The ships that eventually made it to Gallipoli in February were plagued by poor weather and hidden mines. When Churchill pressured the Allied commander to keep fighting, Admiral Carden had a nervous breakdown and was replaced by a subordinate. After a month of delays and false starts, the land invasion at last began. But the Turks were ready and the landing became a bloodbath. A retreat was ordered in December and only completed in January of the next year.
Rather than accept a demotion after the Gallipoli disaster, Churchill resigned and entered the military as a soldier on the ground in France. Even when he eventually returned to England and politics, this defeat haunted him every step of his political journey. Many thought it would finish him completely.
Instead, the time between world wars allowed both Churchill and the Western powers to learn some important lessons: the patience that war requires, the intelligence required to plan an amphibious landing, the resources it takes to put such a campaign in motion. By the time Allies once again planned to storm a beach in 1944, both Churchill and the military knew far more about the costly price of victory.
History doesn't hold easy answers, for generals, statesmen, or bloggers. 2015 had plenty of ups and downs, both for me personally and the world at large. It's hard to look at defeat of any kind (personal, professional, national) and see the glimmers of victory farther down the road.
It takes wisdom to gain true victory, and wisdom, unfortunately, can only be gleaned through experience. In Batman Begins, young Bruce Wayne is reminded by his father that after we fall down, we have to pick ourselves up. Of course, that's a humanist take on life. In Holy Scripture, we're told that we can't rescue ourselves from our greatest defeat: but, in Christ, all things are possible. Solomon wrote that everything had a season: both victory and defeat, life and death, joy and sorrow.
As a blogger, a professional still trying to find her way in the world, a story teller, and a person, I've had my share of defeats large and small. I'm also getting to the point that I can finally look back at some of my earlier choices and see how decisions I made years ago are coming to fruit.
For 2016, I don't have any grand plan to conquer the world. But by this point next year, God willing I live to see it, I hope the choices I've made lead me to gain more wisdom, more love, more respect, and more richness out of the time I've been given.
You can learn more about the Gallipoli soldiers at the Australian War Memorial Image courtesy of Archives New Zealand.
