'Hell on earth'
'Hell on earth'
Almost a century after Australian troops went ashore at Gallipoli, their stories of bravery and sacrifice continue to reach out to a new generation.
And 7news can tonight give you a new appreciation of the hell they faced from the air, using drone cameras.
Coming in from the tranquil, turquoise Aegean, the Anzacs were confronted by a nasty shock in Gallipoli 99 years ago.
The drone vision in the video above gives a rare perspective of what they faced.
"It wasn't just the terrain. It was the fact that they knew nothing of the terrain. It came as a surprise to them,” said Ashley Ekins, an Australian War Memorial historian.
"Their maps were useless and gave them no knowledge of where they were trying to head to make it through the track."
The drone vision proves how impossible it was for the Australians on that first Anzac Day. Taking on sheer cliffs and mountains under brutal Turkish fire. They spent nine months in trenches in appalling conditions.
Ian McGibbon is part of a team collecting artifacts to document trench life for the centenary.
He says: “It was hell on earth. Yes. And people were trying to kill them to make it worse."
Dozens of majestic, but tragic, cemeteries dot the peninsula. At one today, 15-year-old Hayley Lye, a winner of the Simpson Anzac essay prize, was overwhelmed by grief at the grave of her relative Bernard McPhie.
She said: “Just thinking about how I reacted then it's almost 100 years later to think what it was like for the people back home when it was the actual time."
Almost a century on, this fatal shore is still heartbreaking for families of those who served.
