Recovering Gallipoli’s Missing Soldiers
Recovering Gallipoli’s Missing Soldiers In November 1918, Lieutenant Cyril Hughes and his graves registration section landed on Gallipoli on a bleak day that winter storms punished the rugged terrain. Hughes was confronted with a landscape of broken trenches, and rusted barbed wire. He could see the bones of hastily buried soldiers from a mile away as broad white streaks down the ravines. Hughes’ section joined the British Graves Registration Unit, which would find, identify, record, and temporarily protect every British and dominion grave, and bury any unburied dead. Hughes had a strong connection to Gallipoli, landing there in May 1915. He was twice wounded before being evacuated. Hughes regretted abandoning his comrades’ graves: ‘In 1915 we did not quite finish our job,’ he explained, ‘but, by Heaven, we would see it out this time.’ An immense task confronted Hughes’ section. Of 12,000 Allied soldiers who had died in the Anzac sector, nearly 6,000 were unburied, their remains scatte...