New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) Gallipoli 2019 contingent holds small service at Chanak Consular Cemetery in Çanakkle, Turkey

Narelle Silwood, NZDF Civilian of the Year, recites the Ode on English at the NZDF Chanak Consul Cemetery remembrance service. Ms Silwood is wearing the Nga Tapuwae kahu huruhuru in recognition of her service to the New Zealand Defence Force.

On 18 April the New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) Gallipoli 2019 contingent held a small service at the Chanak Consular Cemetery in Çanakkle, Turkey.

The NZDF contingent paid respects to the eleven members of the Canterbury Mounted Rifles Regiment buried in the cemetery. The regiment returned to Gallipoli in 1918 to help maintain the armistice and to recover and bury the dead. During that time they suffered 11 deaths — all but one from influenza.

Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s Burak Gundogan also attended the ceremony. As Country Supervisor for Turkey, he and his team of gardeners and stonemasons care for the war cemeteries on the peninsula and the Chanak Consular Cemetery.

Mr Gundogan says there are also the graves of two New Zealand civilians in the Chanak Consular cemetery who died in 1965.

“On 11 November 1965 Rosalind Webb and her friend, Jean C Walker, were driving on the Gallipoli peninsula to visit the grave of Miss Webb’s grandfather, Major David Grant, when the car was involved in a crash and both women died,” says Mr Gundogan.

“They are buried in the Chanak Consular Cemetery and we take care of their graves along with the military graves.”

Misses Webb and Walker are also commemorated in Nurses’ Memorial Chapel in Christchurch.

Mr Burak Gundogan of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission places a wreath at the NZDF Service of Remembrance at the Chanak Consular Cemetery. The cemetery contains the graves of 11 Canterbury Mounted riflemen who died in 1918. The regiment had returned to Gallipoli to recover and bury New Zealand dead following the 1915 Gallipoli campaign

The Chanak Consular cemetery also contains the graves of two New Zealand women who died in a car crash in 1965 while visiting the grave of a family member who died during the 1915 Gallipoli campaign. The NZDF Gallipoli 2019 contingent paid respects at their graves during the Service of Remembrance.