Remembrance of things past: an inquiry into the fate of the Istanbul medical students who fought in the Gallipoli campaign

Abstract

During the Great War, university students, like all young men at the age of military service, were called up as part of the general conscription in the Ottoman Empire. According to a popular story, which is the subject of this study, all Darulfunun (today Istanbul University) students who took part in the Gallipoli campaign as volunteers in May, 1915, were annihilated in the May 19th attack. As all students of 1915 were lost, the medical school was said to have had no graduates in 1921. This investigation was carried out, using material from the university and military archives, to identify the medical students who died on the Gallipoli battlefield, and to clarify their situation at that time. It was found that, as academic staff and students were distributed to the troops, education never commenced in 1915 and that the faculty building was closed for more than a year to serve as an inland war hospital. As all students were drafted into the army, there were no graduates in 1915. While it has been possible to identify eight physicians who died on the Gallipoli battlefield, no records were found concerning the medical students who were killed at Gallipoli. (c) 2004 Published by Elsevier Ltd.