Çanakkale Hilal-i Ahmer (Red Crescent) Reenactment Area

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The Çanakkale Hilal-i Ahmer (Red Crescent) Reenactment Area, at Alçıtepe in the Eceabat district of Çanakkale, is an open-air recreation of a field hospital set up behind the front during the Gallipoli Campaign. Alongside the hospitals of the Ottoman 5th Army, mobile hospitals run by the Hilal-i Ahmer (Red Crescent) Society played an important role. Wounded soldiers first treated themselves with the war dressing kit they carried, then were taken by medics to collection points, on to dressing stations and finally to hospitals. The tour starts at a machine-gun trench that guarded the hospital and continues through a tea house, operating room, storeroom, registration and first-aid tents, a steam disinfection unit, an infirmary tent, a water-carrier's station and a horse-drawn ambulance. Sound installations recount the bombing of a dressing station by enemy aircraft in 1915. The nearby 1915 Trench Reenactment Area, inspired by the trench fighting at Arıburnu, shows front-line life with features such as a trench periscope and a mine tunnel.