Damaged 4.7 inch naval gun barrel, Heavy Battery, 1 Australian Division, AIF : Clarke's Valley, Gallipoli

In July 1915 a squad of Australians could be seen dragging a 4.7-inch gun up the southern flank of Anzac, high above Clarke’s Valley. Being originally a naval gun, it fired close to horizontal, so it had to be placed out in the open, not tucked behind a hill as howitzers were. The gun’s lack of a recoil mechanism made it dangerous to be around when it was fired. Made in 1896, it had been modified to serve on land in the Boer War – which the troops knew. They were aware that all the new guns were being sent to the Western Front, and they would just have to make do. “It might have been at Waterloo,” quipped Captain Richard Gee. “It was really worn out, and the shells went anywhere from it, [but] it had a pretty big range and we were able to warm the Turks sometimes.”

In December, the Anzacs departed for other theatres of war and left the gun behind. It was too big to move, so it had to be destroyed by setting off an explosion in the barrel. “With a hell of a report … It blew the outer casing of the barrel clean away for about 3 feet,” recalled Sergeant Cyril Lawrence, one of the sappers who blew up the gun. Soon after, the Turks began to work their way through the deserted trenches, saps, and tunnels, taking away anything of value. The barrel of the old gun would have made a great trophy for their own war museum, but they abandoned it before taking it far. It was still there in 1919, when the Australian Historical Mission was researching Anzac, and they recovered it as a memorial to the unhappy campaign.