Under a hail of machine gun fire, 4,000 Australian and New Zealand soldiers struggled ashore on a narrow beach 90 years ago in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign that would claim more than 130,000 lives.
Blinded by darkness, hundreds of men from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) were cut down on April 25th, 1915, at the edge of the remote peninsula in western Turkey.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard
At daybreak today, Australian Prime Minister John Howard, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, Britain's Prince Charles and other officials honoured the ANZAC on the milestone anniversary of one of the bloodiest battles of World War One.
They were joined by 15,000 Australians and New Zealanders, as well as Turks, for the largest-ever Anzac Day here that marks an event that shaped the birth of all three nations.
"Those who fought here … changed forever the way we saw the world and ourselves," said Mr Howard, standing before a black Aegean Sea as a lone frigate sailed past.
While the last known Gallipoli veteran died in 2002, Anzac Day has become a pilgrimage for mainly young tourists from Down Under. They quietly huddled under blankets throughout the night as winds lashed the peninsula.
Gallipoli was the first time Australia and New Zealand fought under their nations' own flags, and this ribbon of land halfway around the world has become their national touchstone.
It also heralded the rise of Kemal Ataturk, the Turkish officer who led the resistance. He later founded modern Turkey, the republic that emerged from the ruins of the Ottoman empire.
The ANZAC invasion seemed cursed from the start. They were to have stormed a larger beach but a current brought them north to the strip of sand surrounded by perpendicular sand cliffs.
Australia and New Zealand were part of a British-led force, which included French and Indian units, that aimed to open the Turkish straits to wartime ally Russia. After eight months, the Allied forces withdrew from Gallipoli in defeat.