In Alan Moreton's book, Gallipoli, there is a short passage about a large Turkish Gun, christened Asiatic Annie (located at Kum Kale), the shells of which unearthed priceless treasures that were as old as Troy.

Has anyone else come across references to these treasure troves; I know that Schliemann's controversial dig had taken place in the area some years before.

Who claimed/kept the loot?

Where are these artifacts now?

Has anyone seen photos of troops with their finds?

I have seen photos of French troops with archological finds found while digging trenches at Gallipoli including one with some large intact pottery. I believe these photos were found in an old New York Times Mid Week War Pictorial Extra series that apparently ran here int he states during the war. I will see if I can locate the book again and find the photos.

Would you be interested in a scan if I find them? Let me know, thanks.

Ralph

I think the French work was on the European side near where their cemetery is now. They evacuated Kum Kale on the Asian side after about two days, April 27 or so.

There are plenty of examples of antique masonry, statues and pots in fields, gardens, farms and villages of Cape Helles. These can be seen as one walks around. Much of it is broken; it's quite common-place and unremarkable. There's a lot to be found between Morto Bay and V Beach. It may be antique and classical, but I don't think it is worth much. If it had a value then someone would have taken appropriate steps.

The locals in Cape Helles attatched much more importance to what the British Army left behind when they evacuated in December 1915. Despite the well-publicised burning of equipment loads of gear was abandoned intact. So much so that the locals who returned to the area were convinced that the British withdrawal was only temporary; nobody in their right minds would leave this amount of kit. The British had left it behind to help them when they landed again.

But any invading army would require finance. The returning British Army would need gold. Gold is heavy to move and transport; the British had probably buried it when they left. Where was it buried? For many years after the villagers of Suvla and Helles combed the area behind the old British lines looking for the cache of gold they believed the British had left.

As you can imagine any British person turning up in Gallipoli looking for the spot where they belived Grandad's unrecovered body was buried received a very interested hearing. 'Listen Achmed, nobody in their right mind would come 3000 miles to find their Grandfather's grave. He knows where the gold is buried. But he needs our help. What percentage should we ask for?' Clearing up these cross-cultural misunderstandings usually took some time.

The writer Alan Sillitoe wrote about his friendship with the late poet Laureate Ted Hughes:

On another convivial evening, Ted and I worked out a trip to the beaches at Gallipoli. His father had been a soldier there in 1915, and had told Ted that the winnings of a pontoon school among the troops, amounting to hundreds of sovereigns, had been buried in the sand and must still be there. We opened maps and reckoned up distances, calculated the number of days to drive there, and the supplies to take. That did not materialise either, all of us having more important things to do.

(Poet of the spirits of the land

Ted Hughes

John Redmond and Alan Sillitoe
Friday October 30, 1998
The Guardian)

PS Hughes was haunted by his father's accounts of the war, and much of this sense of horror finds its way into his poetry. I believe his father was Edward Hughes from the Yorkshire town of Heptonstall, who served with the Lancashire Fusiliers.

Sorry....check facts before posting: Only 17 survivors from a whole battalion seems very extreme and I suspect the facts have become garbled: Anyone like to suggest which unit William Hughes may have fought in?

Simon

(Ted Hughes was the youngest of William and Edith Hughes' children. He had an older brother and sister, Gerald and Olywn. His father worked as a carpenter until their move to Mexborough in 1937, at which time they purchased a newsagent shop. It was a close family, sometimes silenced by the war experiences of William Hughes, who was one of the few survivors of his regiment in the First World War, Gallipoli expedition. Ted Hughes was too young to be a participant of the Second World War, but he still did two years of National Service before attending Pembroke College, Cambridge University in 1951 where he had won a scholarship to read English....

Hughes was born in 1930. His father was one of only 17 survivors of a whole regiment of the Lancashire Fusiliers slaughtered at Gallipoli. When very young, Hughes soon became aware of the many families in their village still mourning the loss of a father or son, or sons, in the First World War. Later he wrote more poems about that war than the Second World War, but, as he was growing up, newsreels of the concentration camps gave him a "direct experience of despair".)

My first reply was nonsensical and it speaks well for forum folk that no one said so! Of course the guns in Asia could and did shell the peninsula in Europe! So the shells could have unearthed things where the French were above Morto Bay. It was to get these guns that the French went to Kum Kale in the first place.

Charles Bean, the Australian Official Historian when in Gallipoli in 1919 to collect Battlefield relics and report on the condition of allied war graves, stumbled on several valuable ancient coins.
He sent these back with the battlefield relics but somewhere in the journey from Turkey to Australia they disappeared.

There was a thread last year on the WFA site concerning finds from France arising from trench digging that are apparently now in the British Museum and also a magnificent gold medal found on the Rumanian front and now in the Hermitage. Given the mass of excavations that were done by hand , the finds all over Europe must have been many and varied - and many must have simply been pocketed and sent home perhaps.

Asiatic Annie.

Was 'Asiatic Annie' an individual gun or a one of a group of guns at Kum Kale on Asiatic Turkey.

Reading Robert Rhodes James's 'Gallipoli', the index of the publication lists the subject matter as follow -

'Asiatic Annie' (Turkish long-range gun), 232.

Page 232 the subject matter reads as follows -

"...The shelling from Asia was now extremely serious, and the daily drain of killed and injured caused by 'Asiatic Annie' - particularly on the French - made everyone jumpy. General Gourand was blown over a wall in Sed-elBahr and severely wounded..."

However when I read Nigel Steel and Peter Harts, 'Defeat at Gallipoli', I get another impression, there are two references, page 336 and 407, the subject matter reads as follows -

page 336.

"...The most famous Turkish batteries were guns firing from the Asiatic shore and collectively known as 'Asiatic Annie'. These concentrated their fire on the beaches, where they knew that all the British stores, equipment and men had to land. The fire was of an intermittent nature rather than a fierce bombardment. From this platform above W Beach we could see the flash of the gun as it went off, then the damn thing would drop - Hell of a Row! You could hear it coming like a train after the damned thing had dropped. It sounded bad but it's bark was worse than it's bite. The saving grace for the beach personnel was that 'Eight times out of ten they never exploded, dud shells. But it was frightening for all that' ".
Source ref. (Clements and Murray)

page 407.

"...There was a bugler on top of Sedd el Bahr fort and he could see the flash of the gun or the flash of a gun - whether it was Asiatic Annie we don't know - but the moment he saw the flash he used to blow a low G, you know, and that meant to say: 'On it's way. Now, as soon as that went everybody dashed to the cliff. That was the instructions. We had 28 seconds, I think that was the time it took the shell to come over. That's not a lot of time to get back, and then all of a sudden, Bang!..".
Source ref. (Ordinary seaman Joe Murray)

Perhaps it was the number of dud shells, creating minor excavations that led to the discovery of ancient treasures, live shells would have destroyed many of them.

James O'Sullivan.

From what I recall of an old New York Times article the French were unearthing relics, including large intact pottery pieces, during entrenching. There was one photo I recall of several French soldiers showing off their finds.

I doubt much would survive an exploding shell.

Ralph

The British Official History of the Gallipoli campaign makes three references to shelling from the Asiatic Shore. In all cases it refers to 'guns' and 'batteries' in the plural. The most detailed reference is a footnote at the bottom of p.75 of the Second Volume which says:

"As far as could be ascertained the Turks now (June 1915) had seven medium and heavy pieces on the Asiatic Shore in addition to numerous field guns and howitzers which contstantly changed positions."

The History goes on to note that the only British guns judged capable of dealing with them were 60 pounders; but the British Army only had four of them, two of which were out of action because of a shortage of relatively minor parts. The History also states that the Turkish shelling from the Asian side was mainly of nuisance value and inflicted little in the way of human or material losses to the Allies

I believe Asiatic Annie was the largest gun in the group. Another of the large guns earned the nickname 'Quick Dick.'

In a shell crater, caused by Asiatic Annie, two huge jars with skeletons (from the time of Troy) in them, were discovered, along with other treasures including silver and vases.

I take the point that most of the ancient finds were, however, uncovered at Cape Helles, when the troops were digging trenches - rather than from shell holes. My understanding is that thousands of items were uncovered, including jewellery, coins and ancient tombs.

What happened to the statue of Eros, unearthed at Lemnos just before the landing? That would have needed a signed order to be shipped off the island..... wouldn't it?

What of the beautiful cup found at Hissarlik by a French doctor which "with its long handles, almost ethereal in their delicacy, give to this little thing the palpitation of wings"? Were there no guidelines for soldiers to hand over artifacts found in this way - or did everyone in charge turn a blind eye, concentrating more on securing their defences??

It's curious to me that the French evacuated so quickly since it would have been obvious the enemy could bring more guns in to the Asia side. Perhaps it's because of the terribly unrealistic expectations of large gains day one which soon would have put the allies out of range of almost all artillery.