This memorial remembers the terrible loss of life which occurred during WWI when a force famously including  the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) attempted to land and defeat the armies of the Ottoman Empire. They were attempting to capture Constantinople and secure a sea route to Russia. There were huge cassualties on both sides.

The monument includes a tree sculpture of dead oak trees, pollarded to represent the arms and hands of injured soldiers reaching upwards in hope of rescue as they lay in the mud among the unburied dead.*

*From the National Memorial Arboretum Guidebook Edition 4