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WA student walks in footsteps of legends

CBC Fremantle student Riley Faulds, 15, in the trenchs of Gallipoli. Picture: Steve Ferrier/The West Australian

As Riley Faulds walks through the remains of a trench line near Lone Pine cemetery he begins to really understand what his great-grandfather faced after landing at Gallipoli nearly 100 years ago.

It is not the sort of understanding which you get from history books.

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Riley, 15, a Year 11 student at CBC Fremantle, has already got that, and plenty of it.

It is a real understanding brought about by staring up from Anzac Cove to the cliffs Francis (Frank) Keith Wyalong Marshall, of the WA-raised 11th Battalion, had to climb after being among the first ashore on April 25, 1915.

Riley, one of 32 WA students on the Premier's Anzac student tour, said that the Anzacs made it up the cliffs at all was amazing.

"You get told about it, but until you see it…," he said, his voice trailing off.

"What has become clear is how almost impossible it must have been."

Frank Marshall was one of the original Anzacs, joining the 11th Battalion soon after war broke out in 1914 and sailing from Fremantle on the Ascanius on October 31 that year.

He fell seriously ill in Gallipoli and he was badly wounded twice, resulting in the loss of his left eye and many months in hospital back in Fremantle.

Riley said seeing how close the opposing armies' trenches were to each other put the conflict into sharp focus.

"The Turks and Anzacs were pretty much living with each other," he said. "It's much easier to understand, being here."

Riley said he had found it surprisingly moving to be at the place where his great-grandfather fought.

"I have been brought up hearing so many stories about him, I felt like I knew him," Riley said. "I wasn't expecting it to be so emotional."

The Anzac student group, who will be in the area for a week, spent Saturday visiting battle sites around the Gallipoli peninsula, and focused on learning about the Turkish perspective.

At the main Turkish memorial they took turns in explaining various aspects of the campaign, reciting verse and laying a wreath.

They were not alone.

Turkish people in their thousands are visiting the peninsula to commemorate the anniversary of the start of the war that set off a chain of events which finally resulted in the birth of the Republic of Turkey.

Hundreds of Turkish visitors were at the memorial when Riley's group paid their respects, and some joined the students and stood in respectful silence with them.

At the nearby village of Eceabat, Turkish buses were lined up end-to-end along the waterfront waiting to drive on to the ferry to cross the Dardanelles.

Many local governments across Turkey are helping residents visit the battle sites, and a number of the buses advise they are visiting "the land of the martyrs".

Street vendors offer key rings, ceremonial knives and traditional Turkish sweets.

Australian accents are also heard in number, and a banner hung from the side of the Liman Balik restaurant offers a "welcome to Anzac Day 100th year".

Not far away, smoke billows from a barbecue put on for guests who are in town from a cruise ship, while stalls nearby sell T-shirts, caps, medallions and "very cold beer".

Eating their lunch is a group from Victoria and NSW, including Andy Burton, from Drouin, east of Melbourne.

He has come to follow the journey of his great uncle, Lindley Verity, who survived the campaign, and to visit the grave of one of Lindley's mates, who did not.

"It was incredibly moving, it brought me to tears when I saw his grave. He was just an 18-year-old kid," Mr Burton said.

As he waits for his bus to take its place on the ferry, Selcuk Akoglu, visiting from Istanbul, explains that his family lost two men on his father's side and one on his mother's side.

"In every family all over Turkey, if you go back to that generation, you will find one or two at least," he said.

Visiting the battle sites made him feel incredibly sad, he said.

"It would be much better of course if it didn't happen," he said. "But it happened, and when people know what happened in the past, hopefully they will have a lesson out of it."