Walking in footsteps of great-grandfathers at Gallipoli

Walking in footsteps of great-grandfathers at Gallipoli

Lincoln University postgraduate student Lucy Burrows will be making the trip to Gallipoli today to walk in the footsteps of not one, but two, great grandfathers.

Winning a place at the Gallipoli centenary celebrations in the Government ballot last year, she will not be the lone family representative. Her brother also won a ballot place and the pair will bring along their mother and father, who had entered and missed out.

Both sides of the family have a connection with the spot which has forged a special place in New Zealand and Australian history. The great grandfathers are on paternal and maternal sides.

“I am looking forward to it,” she says.

“I found out a year ago and have been reading some books on the campaign to find out more of its history.”

She regularly attends dawn service on Anzac Day and the experiences of Ernest Burrows and John Morrison have “always been part of family history”.

Her family have Ernest’s war records, but no diary, and little direct knowledge of what he went through.
“He never talked about the war,” she says.

She will be taking their medals to Anzac Cove and Chunuk Bair.
Ernest was a local and joined the Canterbury Mounted Rifles. John had come from Scotland in 1910 and ended up fighting for his adopted country.

She says both men survived the war.

“Ernest was taken home with dysentery and never returned to the war, while John was wounded at Passchendaele and survived the war as a prisoner of war working on a German farm.

“They told him he would be shot if he tried to leave,” Lucy says.

Both were famers, and farming is still in the family, based at West Eyreton.

A trip to Troy and around Europe will follow but it is Gallipoli which will be special.

They will be camping overnight with 10,000 Kiwis and Australians to be there for the dawn service.

Going to Gallipoli will give her a different perspective on events and she is interested to see it from a Turkish viewpoint.

However, at the forefront of her mind will be remembering the two young men who walked those shores in 1915, braving the bullets and shells, and who had no idea their families would be so intertwined 100 years later.

Images;
Lucy jpg: Lucy Burrows, pictured at Lincoln University, is Gallipoli bound.
Ernest Burrows jpg: Ernest Burrows, Lucy’s great-grandfather in his uniform.

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