According to one of the other books I've read on Gallipoli, Moorehead's is supposed to the the best at that time. I've heard since that he missed some things, got a few just a little off but that this is still the "go to" book for an overview of the battle(s).The invasion of Gallipoli was based on the success that the British Navy had in advancing to Constantinople. Although they lost several ships and discovered mines that made them turn back, the Government, especially Winston Churchill, thought that an assault on the pennisula would allow the navy to advance and capture the city. However, no one really looked at what they were getting into. First of all, the pennisula is mostly mountains or rocky cliffs, especially close to the beaches. Therefore, any landing sites would be small stretches of sand that stood a good chance of being bombarded by the Turks as they landed. (The experience here, however, gave enough information about such assaults that the Normandy invasion, using it, was successful.) Second, one assault team was made up entirely of volunteer Australians who had never fought before so were an unknown quantity. Third, no one could determine the true status of the Turkish army. And lastly, most of the commanders were dunces - some were pulled out of retirement and never visited their troops to see the conditions they were fighting under.Moorehead gives a lot of detail which I wasn't interested in - such as the type, size and number of sailors on specific ships - but the book kept me interested. I had to read it in stages, however, to be able to digest all the implications and information.Two parts especially stand out. A British submariner managed to get through the nets, mines and strange water conditions (hard to explain) and actually cruise around the waters near Constantinople and sink many ships. He put the fear of the British into the Turks. His success enabled the British to send more subs into that area.Also it's obvious that Moorehead loved the Australians. Volunteers who had never seen the violence of war turned out to be the best soldiers. When fighting was sparse or at a standstill, they calmly remained in camp and waited for orders. As Moorehead says"No stranger visiting the Anzac bridgehead ever failed to be moved and stimulated by it. It was a thing so wildly out of life, so dangerous, so high-spirited, such a grotesque and theatrical setting and yet reduced to such a calm and almost matter-of-fact routine. The heart missed a beat when one approached the ramshackle jetty on the beach for the Turkish shells were constantly falling there, and it hardly seemed that anyone could survive. Yet once ashore a curious sense of heightened living supervened. No matter how hideous the noise, the men moved about apparently oblivious of it all, and with a trained and steady air as though they had lived there all their lives...."The Aussie, more so that their British counterparts, came to know the Turks on a personal basis. A bit like the Christmas armistice in the West, the Aussies and the Turks frequently stopped fighting and during the quiet would throw food items or coffe or other "necessities" to each other since their trenches were just a few yards apart. Once a note came over from the Turks: "Bully beef no coffe yes." During times of truce for burial of the dead, they worked together with no animosity or thought of breaking the truce.Moorehead includes maps to help the reader locate the pennisula and the landing sites and battles. All in all, it is a good introduction, and a great reference, for anyone interested in the battle.
Much of this was surprisingly dry, but Moorehead broke out the Leigh-Fermorish adventure and enchantment at frequent enough intervals to keep me reading. I will never forget his description of the exultant mood of the fleet before the landings. Rupert Brooke thrilled to the idea that he might fight on the wine-dark Homeric seas, as part of what was romantically called the "Constantinople Expedition," the young poet's dream of war, as Moorehead defines it, "the Grecian frieze, the man entirely heroic and entirely beautiful, the best in the prescence of death." At the outset, at the embarkation, their hearts are light, as hearts always are if you have a large force on your side and nothing but space to oppose you. Their weapons are in their hands; the enemy is absent. Unless your spirit has been conquered in advance by the reputation of the enemy, you always feel yourself stronger than anybody who is not there. An absent man does not impose the yoke of necessity. To the spirits of those embarking no necessity yet presents itself; consequently they go off as though to a game, as though on holiday from the confinement of daily life. (Simone Weil, "War and the Iliad")And Moorehead recounts many instances of that stereotypically English courage: casual, sporting, nonchalant. The young Lt. Commander Freyberg, who had helped bury Brooke in an olive grove on Skyros days before, was tasked with fooling the Turks by lighting flares on a diversionary beach. Announcing that one swimmer could do with less risk what he had been given a platoon and a small boat to accomplish, Freyberg "had himself taken towards the land in a naval cutter, and when the boat was still two miles from the coast he slipped naked into the icy midnight sea" trailing a waterproof bag that contained the flares, a signalling light, a knife and a revolver. He lit the flares, investigated the Turkish defenses, and swam out again, to be pulled half-dead out of the sea by the crew of the cutter. And there was the British submariner who swam to the Marmara shore, planted and detonated explosives under a viaduct over which Turkish supply trains ran, then swam back to his lurking craft. Air Commodore Samson came upon a German U Boat in the Sea of Marmara. Though he had ready jettisoned every one his bombs in a previous attack, Samson swooped low and leaning out of the cockpit made a defiant gesture of emptying his rifle into the U Boat's hull. "In a world that has since grown used to the unearthly courage of young men with fantastic machines it is still difficult to credit some of the things that happened."I'm off to Gallipoli in less than an hour!
Do You like book Gallipoli (2002)?
This was my ANZAC octave reading. Moorehead narrates the impossibilities and hopes of the Gallipoli landings with clarity, humor and generosity towards the Allies and their foes. Missing is the usual mythologizing and sentimentality that reduces the Gallipoli campaign to a faded image of its ancient precursor poetically captured by Homer. Comfortable in the heady debates of admirals as with life in the trenches, Moorehead covers the social and political ground as best an anyone i know.I discovered in the pages of this book the ANZAC's who are worth remembering but not idolizing; a campaign that richly construed was poorly completed; and a fresh appreciation for the horror of war and the humanity that periodically surfaces in the courage and wisdom of minor and great actors in this deadly drama. I will read this book again, next year.
—Lyndon
If you have any interest in military history, it is an exceptionally good account of one of the more notorious campaigns of WW I. It has a great account of Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty and Kirchner as the overall head of Britan's war effort going back and forth as to whether to ever try getting through the Dardanelles strait and trying to take Constantinople and the courting of the 'Young Turks' (the revolutionaries who overthrew the Sultan) by Germany, as well as a really well-written narrative of the long, totally futile for everyone, months in which tens of thousands of lives were totally wasted for absolutely nothing. Of ocurse, WWI was millions of lives wasted for absolutely nothing. It also makes frequent references to the history to previous battles from the time of ancient Greece, and has accounts of the incredible beauty of the area (when it's not being blown apart by artillery fire).
—John
Continuing my exploration of Australian history and literature. Sad and depressing book. The plan of attack on the Dardanelles was not the worst plan of World War I. In fact, it was better than most. But it was a sideshow and the failure of the original landing, which was the largest amphibious assault up to that time, doomed the expedition to ultimate failure. Gallipoli was the birth of Australia and New Zealand as countries, marked by the tremendous courage of their soldiers, fighting half a world from home. It is certainly true that to understand Australia and Australians, it is necessary to understand this battle.
—Will
