Taking wing

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For Camera-Critters

After the ANZAC Day commemoration (posted here and here) at the Jerusalem War Cemetery, Bird and I were just about the only living souls left out there in the noonday sun.
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Bird left the tombstone and ascended.

Bird came to rest atop the Cross of Sacrifice, a symbol that stands in all the British military cemeteries throughout the world.

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More about Jerusalem's ANZAC dead

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Let us continue yesterday's ANZAC Day commemoration post.

So many Commonwealth soldiers died in the battles to push the Ottoman Turks out of Eretz Israel (then known as Palestine) during World War I.

There are British military cemeteries in Gaza, Beersheva, Ramla, and Haifa, and several in Jerusalem.

In yesterday's post we saw the Australian Memorial just outside the gate of the Jerusalem War Cemetery.

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At the opposite end of the central avenue of the lovingly cared-for cemetery is a chapel.
Its interior is dedicated to the soldiers of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force who fell in Sinai and Palestine, 1916-1918.
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"From the uttermost ends of the earth" indeed!

Above the lintel is St. George slaying a dragon.

The graves of 24 Jewish soldiers are grouped more or less together.
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This tombstone was the only one of the cemetery's 2,515 tombstones on which visitors had put a pebble, the Jewish custom for paying respects.

The Jewish graves had little wooden star of David markers with the symbolic Australian poppy on them.

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Rabbi Raymond Apple, rabbi emeritus of the Great Synagogue of Sydney, was at the ANZAC Day ceremony yesterday to read appropriate prayers and Psalms.

(I believe he made aliyah to Israel in 2006, following his retirement.)
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I like what this family had chosen to inscribe on the stone of Lance Corporal M.I. Trachtenberg, age 36:
"Scholar of St. John's College, Cambridge. Beloved by all."
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For That's My World , this week my heart has been much with the Australian world.

On the joyous extreme--the birth of an Australian granddaughter named Libby (meaning "my heart" in Hebrew) in Sydney, and on the solemn side--the commemoration of ANZAC Day in Jerusalem.

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ANZAC Day in Jerusalem

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The Cross of Sacrifice is a symbol that stands in all British military cemeteries in the world.

The Imperial War Graves Commission began to issue directives for cemeteries in 1917.

Welcome to the Jerusalem War Cemetery on Mount Scopus.

Please click to enlarge the photos and read the nice words.

ANZAC Day was commemorated on April 25 not only in Australia and New Zealand, but also in Israel.

"Their name liveth for evermore" proclaims the Stone of Remembrance, the second of the two monuments which are standard in all such British cemeteries.

A wreath was placed even by the "Office of the Quartet Representative."

You can read the story of the Allied Forces' Egyptian Expeditionary Force on the sign.

It is the reason that there are now 2,515 Commonwealth burials of the First World War in the cemetery.

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A nice article in Haaretz summed it up thus:

" . . . Australian and New Zealand Army Corps conquered Palestine in the winter of 1917. General Edmund Allenby's forces, including ANZAC troops, boasted some 75,000 infantry soldiers, 17,000 cavalrymen and 475 cannons. They started out from Egypt, moved northward through the Sinai Desert, and advanced as fast as they could lay railway tracks; some 56,000 laborers and 35,000 camels were employed in this enterprise. Gaza was destroyed almost completely. After conquering Be'er Sheva, the troops advanced toward Jerusalem.

The residents of the country welcomed them enthusiastically, as an army of liberators.

'All are kind and have nice faces,' the author Mordechai Ben Hillel Hacohen wrote. "Their faces are good like the faces of big children.' "

Just outside the gate is the Australian Memorial from 1935.

The inscription reads:

1915-1918

TO THE GLORY OF GOD

AND IN MEMORY OF THE PART PLAYED BY

THE AUSTRALIAN IMPERIAL FORCE

IN SINAI, PALESTINE AND SYRIA.

THIS MEMORIAL HAS BEEN ERECTED BY

THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA.
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So very many tombstones . . .

They are uniform: the soldier's unit's symbol, his name (first initial and family name), number, age, and date of death. Some families formulated a short personal inscription.

Most of the stones show the symbol of the man's religion.

Tomorrow I will show you examples of the 24 Jewish graves.

Tomorrow I will post the mosaic inside the chapel.

But now let's concentrate on the wall of names around it.

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The JERUSALEM MEMORIAL was unveiled by Lord Allenby May 7, 1927.

It commemorates the 3,366 Commonwealth servicemen who died during the First World War in operations in Egypt or Palestine and who have no known grave.

The quotation from the Bible refers to Moses but is also applicable to the poor soldiers.

How sad not to have a marked grave . . .

At least the relatives have a name to touch and adorn with a poppy.

Of the 2,515 Commonwealth burials of the First World War in the cemetery, 100 of them are unidentified.

The stone says simply:

A SOLDIER OF THE GREAT WAR

KNOWN UNTO GOD

For ANZAC Day--chairs for the living next to tombs for the fallen, all overlooking the city of Jerusalem.

Jerusalem owes so much to these young men who came from so far away to help.

On Lt. Godsill's tombstone, part of Binyon's poem, known to every Australian and to those of us who love Australia:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.
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ANZAC Day in Australia, Jerusalem, Beersheva

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Because the Sabbath is supposed to be a day of rest, our buses do not run from Friday afternoon until Saturday night. Very rarely, but sometimes, I wish I had a car. Like this morning. I would have gone to the 6:00 Dawn Service at the Commonwealth War cemetery on Jerusalem's Mount Scopus.

Instead, I offer you my photos from St. Mary's Cathedral in Sydney, Australia.

April 25 is ANZAC Day. Australia New Zealand Army Corps soldiers were known as ANZACs.

To quote the Australian War Memorial website:

"In 1915 Australian and New Zealand soldiers formed part of the allied expedition that set out to capture the Gallipoli peninsula to open the way to the Black Sea for the allied navies. The plan was to capture Constantinople (now Istanbul), the capital of the Ottoman Empire and an ally of Germany. They landed at Gallipoli on 25 April, meeting fierce resistance from the Turkish defenders. What had been planned as a bold stroke to knock Turkey out of the war quickly became a stalemate, and the campaign dragged on for eight months. At the end of 1915 the allied forces were evacuated after both sides had suffered heavy casualties and endured great hardships. Over 8,000 Australian soldiers were killed. News of the landing at Gallipoli made a profound impact on Australians at home and 25 April quickly became the day on which Australians remembered the sacrifice of those who had died in war."
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On Wednesday the Turkish General Staff website posted previously unseen film clips and photographs of the Battle of Gallipoli to coincide with the 94th anniversary of the devastating campaign. I actually watched the half-hour video.

I wondered HOW these armies, using ox-drawn carts, camels, mules, donkeys, and horses (so primitive compared to today's equipment) managed to slaughter each other in such terrifying numbers: 55,000 Allied losses and an estimated 250,000 Turkish casualties.
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