After the Gallipoli campaigns, yet another of the astonishingly deadly and stalemated confrontations of
World War I,
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, commander of the
Ottoman forces and later revolutionary founder of modern
Turkey, penned the following moving words to his enemy:
Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives;
You are now living in the soil of a friendly country, therefore rest in peace.
There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us
where they lie side by side here in this country of ours.
You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries,
wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace.
After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.
This piece is now engraved in English on a monument at the Gallipoli site.