Gallipoli (Large Print Edition) by Alan Moorehead (Larg… (2024)

It was the silence of the Gallipoli peninsula which most surprised and awed the survivors of the campaign who returned there after the war, the stillness of the cliffs and beaches where nothing much remained of the battle except the awful sight of the white bones of unburied soldiers and the rusting guns along the shore. Of the sunken battleships nothing was to be seen.

Gallipoli, by Australian Alan Moorehead, is an engaging narrative history about the famous WW1 naval and land campaign. It took place on that sliver of geography between the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. The disastrous campaign was dreamt up by Churchill in the early months of the war — ostensibly to protect British interests in the Middle East by seizing the straights which would also free up Russia to wage war in the Balkans and on the Eastern front. Eleven months later the British led forces fled Gallipoli utterly humiliated. It was last victory of any importance for the doomed Ottoman empire.

Churchill, Lord Kitchener, the poet Rupert Brooke and the intriguing General Ian Hamilton are all found in the pages here. Enver Pasha, the enigmatic leader of the Young Turks, and Mustafa Kemal, who later became Kemal Atatürk the creator of modern Turkey, both figure prominently.

Supporting the British in Gallipoli were large Australian, French and New Zealand land forces. Of the 50,000 Australians who landed on the beaches at Anzac Cove and the other beachheads near Gallipoli. Nearly 10,000 soldiers and sailors died, a shockingly high casualty rate even by WW1 standards. Many infantry died right there in the trenches from sniper or artillery fire or from the occasionally ill-advised frontal assaults against the Turkish front lines. Many men also succumbed from dysentery and other related diseases.

Moorehead was just a young boy in Australia when the disaster in the Dardanelles unfolded. It is no surprise that the veterans who returned home from Gallipoli had a profound effect on him. Moorehead turned to writing and became a well known WW2 war correspondent and wrote this book some forty years later in 1956.

This book is written from a western perspective and while it makes note of the bravery of the Ottoman forces, the author’s sympathies clearly lie with the Allies. Secondly the maps in this book are inadequate so upon reading I regularly referenced Google maps to better understand the geography of western Turkey. It was a rewarding rabbit hole adventure in itself

5 stars. So this was book #75 in my WW1 project, and is easily one of my favorites. Focused solely on the 11 month campaign the narrative is full of depth and insights. The chapters on the terror and warfare waged by both the British submarines and the German u-boats were riveting.

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 co*ckpit 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!

Written almost 60 years ago, this 4 Star account of Gallipoli is still fresh and informative. I was only minimally familiar with this campaign. Fixed that! Moorehead takes you through the inception, planning, execution and final withdrawal with precision and care for all participants. The Allied and the Turkish forces fought bravely, often in desperate battles for small gains in the historic lands near where Xerxes crossed the Hellespont, Achilles and Hector fought on the Trojan Plain, where you can swim between Asia and Europe in an hour. After Moorehead’s description I want to go stand on Sari Bair and look over the battlefields.

Moorehead clearly explains the origins of the plan, Churchill is key but not the only one responsible. The naval campaign to force the Dardenelles was new to me, I thought the land campaign started at the same time but no, The RN and the French tried to break through to the Sea of Marmara first. The failure to force the passage translates to a “victory” for the Turks, bolstering some of the leadership. Later, we see the forces build up, not as strong as they should be. It was quite a collection of forces gathering in Egypt:

This in itself was something of an achievement, for the force that was now assembling itself in Egypt was a very mixed bag indeed. There were the French, a splendid sight on the parade ground, their officers in black and gold, the men in blue breeches and red coats. There were Zouaves and Foreign Legionaries from Africa, Sikhs and Gurkhas from India, and the labour battalions of Levantine Jews and Greeks. There were the sailors of the British and French Navies. There were the Scottish, English and Irish troops. And finally there were the New Zealanders and the Australians.

These last were an unknown quantity. They were all volunteers, they were paid more money than any of the other soldiers, and they exhibited a spirit which was quite unlike anything which had been seen on a European battlefield before. A strange change had overtaken this transplanted British blood. Barely a hundred years before their ancestors had gone out to the other side of the world from the depressed areas of the United Kingdom, many of them dark, small, hungry men. Their sons who had now returned to fight in their country’s first foreign war had grown six inches in height, their faces were thin and leathery, their limbs immensely lithe and strong. Their voices too had developed a harsh co*ckney accent of their own, and their command of the more elementary oaths and blasphemies, even judged by the most liberal army standards, was appalling. Such military forms as the salute did not come very easily to these men, especially in the presence of British officers, whom they regarded as effete, and their own officers at times appeared to have very little control over them. Each evening in thousands the Australians and New Zealanders came riding into Cairo from their camp near the pyramids for a few hours’ spree in the less respectable streets, riding on the tops of trams, urging their hired cabs and donkeys along the road—and the city shuddered a little.

The initial landings by the British, ANZACs and the French are covered in all their confusion. One complaint is that the French land forces are almost ignored. The British landing at Cape Helles is “hellish”. The ANZAC landing is similarly difficult. The Turkish force response is better than expected. The future dictator of Turkey makes his mark on the day as he opposes the ANZAC force:

There is an air of inspired desperation about Kemal’s actions this day, and he even seems to have gone a little berserk at times. Instinctively he must have realized that his great chance had come, that he was either going to die here or make his name at last. He was constantly at the extreme front, helping to wheel guns into position, getting up on the skyline among the bullets, sending his men into attacks in which they had very little hope of survival. One of his orders was worded: ‘I don’t order you to attack, I order you to die. In the time which passes until we die other troops and commanders can take our places.’ The soldiers got up from the ground, and ran into the rifle and machine-gun fire; and presently the 57th Turkish Regiment was demolished.

Only 9 months will pass between first landing and last man out. So much sacrifice in between. Initially, the ANZACs thought of the Turks as monsters or animals but Moorehead relates the growing respect for the opponent as the battle rages. In a May 1915 battle, the Turks lose heavily trying to push the ANZAC forces back. In the truce that follows, you can see flashes of the famous Christmas truce in Europe. Each side gains the respect of the other.

The British landing at Sulva Bay is just heartbreaking to read. Victory was there for the taking. Moorehead was not as harsh as he needed to be on the generalship in this battle. Just so terrible to how good leadership could have won the day and saved so many lives. Conversely, the account of the withdrawal of forces from all three beachheads was inspiring. Very clever and almost no casualties incurred. I was very glad to have read this book and hope to find more books focused on individual parts of the campaign. This passage was very sad:

In the many books that were written about the campaign soon after the first world war, there is a constantly repeated belief that posterity would never forget what happened there. Such and such a regiment’s bayonet charge will ‘go down in history’; the deed is ‘immortal’ or ‘imperishable’, is enshrined forever in the records of the past. But who in this generation has heard of Lancashire Landing or Gully Ravine or the Third Battle of Krithia? Even as names they have almost vanished out of memory, and whether this hill was taken or that trench was lost seems hardly to matter any more.

As I write this on the 100th anniversary of the Second Battle of Krithia (and coincidentally the 70th anniversary of VE Day), let us not forget these brave men. Read this book and commemorate the action.
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Although one can deem the whole war unnecessary, Gallipoli was definitely one of the most unnecessary of its campaigns. It didn't accomplish much, if anything. Alan Moorehead writes that both sides suffered around 250 000 casualties and in retrospect many viewed the campaign as a mistake. Nevertheless, it is an interesting and important story of lives lost too early, of a battle on historic ground.

Alan Moorehead was an Australian journalist and writer and wrote this book in 1956. It is an excellent book on the Gallipoli campaign. Much like The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916 by Alistair Horne it is written and paced with the skill of a great writer and on many instances it will keep you turning the pages, eager to know more. While Moorehead clearly has a fascination with the Anzac forces, which is understandable as he was Australian, he gives an objective and quite multi-faceted account on this battle. There are definitely many interesting moments from this battle such as the nine hour armistice that was imposed, under which the Anzac forces and the Turks grew a mutual fondness and respect for one another; or the evacuation that ended the campaign that had to be conducted in utmost secrecy.

Something that I very much enjoyed is that Moorehead's writing on several instances captures the romanticism and myth around Gallipoli that was created by many of the soldiers, even before arrival. The hopefulness of the young Allied soldiers was showed through their poetry and diary entries and many regarded this as a moment that would forever change history. Rupert Brooke (who would die before arriving at Gallipoli) wrote:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England.

Moorehead portrays the unique culture that the soldiers developed after being stationed at a front so far away from home, cut off from the rest of the world. In addition to this, he makes it clear that this was very much a battle that displayed the weaknesses of the British army and its leadership, their inability to organize the campaign correctly was probably what jeopardized it and finally, caused it to collapse. Although it didn't succeed, the Gallipoli campaign and its combination of naval and military operations as well as use of airplanes, would be an indication of the development of modern warfare tactics. By studying what went wrong here and avoiding to make the same mistakes, the Allies were able to succeed in Normandie in 1944.

Alan Moorehead’s Gallipoli is the classic popular account of the disastrous Anglo-French campaign in Turkey during World War I. The Australian-born Moorehead was a prolific writer who served as war correspondent, travel writer and historian of Britain and Australia; unfortunately of his time in his racial and political attitudes, he was nonetheless a gifted prose stylist with a flare for conjuring exotic locales and far-off events. Unsurprisingly then, he depicts the Dardanelles Campaign both as high adventure and grand-scale tragedy: Moorehead emphasizes how close the Allies came to success in both their initial naval attacks on the Dardanelles and their early land assaults, only to bog down in stalemate thanks to muddled planning, poor coordination and tenacious resistance by the Turkish army (led, in part, by future President Mustafa Kemal). The book sketches the fumbled Allied planning, with Winston Churchill among others implicated in a desperate plan to end the war with a quick victory away from the Western Front, along with the hyper-nationalism of Turkey’s CUP, comparing Enver Pasha and friends to gangsters and fascists (which a lengthy discussion of the Armenian genocide does nothing to dissuade). Moorehead’s book certainly feels romanticized when he devotes reams of pages to the flower of English and Aussie youth, excited for war and bursting with male camaraderie, their only to have their dreams dashed in a miserable campaign that repeated the mistakes made in Flanders and France. Generals waste men in charge after fruitless charge; more soldiers are funneled in by commanders unwilling to admit a mistake; daily existence in trenches and beaches are a misery of sniping, shellfire and boring drudgery; the campaign finally ends after nine endless months with an ignominious (if well-executed) evacuation, leaving over 500,000 dead or maimed on both sides to little purpose. Moorehead, no doubt because of his Aussie heritage, finds nobility in the sacrifice of the ANZACs who endured Turkish guns and distrust from their British commanders; later writers (from Peter Hart to Peter Fitzsimons) have done plenty to question or disparage this National Myth. One should approach Moorehead’s Gallipoli with caution; but viewed as a sort of Capote-ian “nonfiction novel” it brilliantly dramatizes the lives, deaths and dreams of young soldiers whose lives were so profligately wasted.

Alan Moorehead was a sensational Australian writer of the XX century. His works are usually considered to be generalized history for the masses, as he writes them more like a writer, not a historian. As Thornton McCarmish puts it, "for most professional historians, Moorehead was a mere popularizer. Nevertheless, there was a sly art to these narratives and a distinctive aesthetic to which ordinary readers responded in huge numbers." Alan Moorehead had always wanted to be, primarily, a writer, not a historian. To that, he had always shared his passions regarding journalism with his wife, as he became one of the most widely recognized ones in Europe.
Gallipoli is one of the most outstanding works by Moorehead, which made the author be put in a special literary category by Sunday Times. Furthermore, it was critically acclaimed both by critics and the campaign participants. Moreover, the book significantly increased the author's reputation at the time. At the end of 1954, he had visited Gallipoli and found out for himself that the Gallipoli campaign of 1915-1916 could be turned into a great book, filled with action and human sacrifice, which he was very good at delivering .
In the book, Alan Moorehead describes the Gallipoli campaign, which was carried out by the Allied troops against the Ottoman and the German Empires from February 19th, 1915, to January 9th, 1916. It describes the moves which both sides took and provides a good chronology, yet the book's focus is not as much to provide the reader with the information about the events, but rather to provide the reader with the feeling of what the soldiers on the battlefield lived through. Throughout the book's entirety, the reader might notice how Moorehead describes almost every single stone on the battlefield. One might even forget that he is reading a historical book, as Moorehead dives in into "Tolstoy-like" descriptions of the war: "grass vanished from the ground, and in place of green crops there were now wide areas covered with the fading purple flowers of the wild thyme, the dried-up sticks of asphodel, an occasional dusty pink oleander, a green fig or a pomegranate with its little flame-coloured blossom on the fruit." The author's graph mania can also be seen in how he overcomplicates some of the descriptions, making them long and beautiful rather than short and on point. For example, when Alan Moorehead describes the fleeing of the allied soldiers from the ship Swiftsure, he establishes that they "did not wait to pack their belongings; baggage, bedding, tinned preserves and an assortment of wines were dumped in a trawler and ferried across in a matter of minutes." Such a passage could have easily been shortened by stating that the soldiers did not pack their belongings without making the reader endure through unnecessary prose.
One of the author's central theses is that the Gallipoli campaign was forgotten. Throughout the book, he is trying to show that despite the Gallipoli mission being a battle destined to be lost by the allies, the act of bravery carried out by the allies shall always be remembered . With such theses, he reveals to the reader direct thinking behind the campaign, covering not only Winston Churchill, whom he considers to be the main person to take the blame for the disaster of Gallipoli , but the entirety of the Allied commanding, which did not do much to support the success of Gallipoli. Moorehead also shows that the landings were a horrifying mess, as Turks were defending their position bravely, while the Allied forces seemed to be lost entirely and inexperienced, as the commanders most certainly were relying on morale . Furthermore, he also touches on the fleet's role during the campaign, as he shows that even one submarine could have done significant damage. For instance, because of the dangers of a submarine attack, HMS Queen Elizabeth, the most powerful ship on the allied side during the campaign, was taken away .
A significant focus of Moorehead's book, as it was already stated, is on the life of soldiers. He provides insights into their lives using soldiers' diaries, memoirs, and even poetry, through which the struggles could be better understood. The author also describes the horrors of everyday lives, as the disease, flies, hunger, and dehydration were endangering people's lives. For example, some people were forced to drink seawater . The shortage of military supplies also came with such horrors, which resulted in some attacks being almost suicidal bayonet charges . Nonetheless, one might notice that some of the descriptions might seem fabricated. For instance, when he describes the problem of flies that the soldiers experienced, he states that "no tin of food could be opened without it being covered instantly with a thick layer of writhing insects." Although it is understandable that such a description was provided to make the reader feel the number of flies, it is unnecessary to overestimate the actual situation. One more overcomplication could be found in the author's description of the diseases that men experienced during the campaign, most notably dysentery. In his book, Moorehead states that "every man was infected by it." This information can be doubted by other researchers, such as Peter Hart, who suggested that dysentery caused a "heavy toll on the Allied soldiers." To that, Alan Moorehead sometimes falsifies the facts by assuming that some of the historical personalities he mentions seemed to predict the future. For example, when he mentions the Russian Emperor Nikolai II, he states that he knew "the revolution and his own death were not far off." Nevertheless, in reality, the emperor could have had no idea about the revolution in 1915, as the Russian Empire was doing well militarily. His death, especially, could have been seen in no way because the liberal-bourgeoise revolution was leading among the people's beliefs. When it finally occurred in 1917, it was not until the Civil War broke out when the emperor and his family were killed in inevitable circ*mstances, so there is hardly any chance he understood that his revolution and death were close. Thus, in the book, Alan Moorehead tries to perfect his writing by partially providing false facts, which may lead some people reading to confusion.
Another confusing moment in the book is that the French letters, seen in some chapters, do not have a translation . Considering this book was published in 1956, this might have led some people to misinterpretation or anxiety, as it takes time to use the dictionary, especially when translating entire paragraphs.
One more consideration that might be taken from the book is the sources Alan Moorehead used. Firstly, it is necessary to understand that despite the book being critically acclaimed, with Winston Churchill himself praising it, the book can be considered outdated now. The bibliography Moorehead provides consists primarily of ANZAC sources, which can be understood due to the author being Australian. Furthermore, nearly all these sources are first-person narratives of what was happening, as there was barely any scholarly research during that time, which might lead to confusing and unofficial information getting into the book. Moorehead himself describes the reliability of the sources as "confirmed by other people," which is a vague justification.
The conclusion that Alan Moorehead provides at the end of the study states that the operation in Gallipoli was a mistake from the beginning. He traces throughout the book that soldiers on the Allied side were providing their offense while being inexperienced, while the Turks clearly understood their territory, which helped them in defense. Furthermore, in Moorehead's opinion, the Dardanelles fleet attack was a wrong decision . Another argument that Moorehead gives to support his position is that the fighting was throwing one group against another until the other side was exhausted . Finally, in Moorehead's opinion, the motivation was high on both sides, as the Allied soldiers deemed adventure, while the Turks wanted their first major victory . Nevertheless, Gallipoli was almost forgotten by the allies; as Moorehead notices, they have concentrated more on the Western Front, which partially led to the loss of Gallipoli.
To conclude, Alan Moorehead's book is an interesting research that compels both the elements of fiction and non-fiction. The materials he uses in the research are valid for the time, yet they are unhelpful for scholars today. Thus, the main reading contingent shall be considered people who want to understand history in a general way: Moorehead provides a detailed and interesting description of events without requiring the knowledge of any other material. The statement he makes, in conclusion, is that the heroes of Gallipoli shall always be remembered, as despite the operation being a mistake, they have endured and fought bravely. Furthermore, the book primarily focuses on the ANZAC troops, yet it remains unbiased until the very end, as Moorehead treats both sides with the same respect. Nonetheless, Moorehead's book has many discussions that do not relate to the topic, as well as it has many descriptions which only complicate the narrative. Thus, the book might serve greatly to a regular reader if he is interested in either history or English, as the author not only details the historical events but also uses good machinations with the English language to describe them. Lastly, the book reads very easily, except for the part with no translation of French, which might lead one towards a better understanding of the Gallipoli campaign, World War I itself, and the horrors and successes that people endure at wars.

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.

-Brevedad exitosa para situar al lector, narración detallista para contar los hechos.-

Género. Historia.

Lo que nos cuenta. Relato de la realidad sociopolítica y militar pertinente en Turquía antes de la Gran Guerra y durante sus primeros meses, de la situación general y los intereses de los diferentes países protagonistas de contienda, con especial y comprensible protagonismo para el Reino Unido, y de los eventos que llevaron a la concepción y planificación del desembarco anfibio en la península de Gallipoli en los Dardanelos, el desarrollo de la propia operación y sus consecuencias a muchos niveles.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com/...

Has World War I become the forgotten war? It was the "war to end all wars," but then it became overshadowed by the next world war.

One of the darkest chapters of the war was Gallipoli, an ill-planned, badly executed attempt to break the stalemate by striking into the heart of Germany through Turkey.

The naval bombardment did not go right. The landing forces got trapped on beaches. The Turks turned out to have a lot more fight than the British ever expected. The British assigned Australian and New Zealand forces untenable landing areas while reserving far better ones for themselves. The winters were pestillential and freezing.

In the end, the battle at Gallipoli proved even more of a stalemate than the fronts in Western Europe.

One thing to note, the Turkish proved to be gentlemen soldiers. ANZAC soldiers and Turks developed a great respect for each other.

As the Great War ensnared powers beyond Middle Europe, it became in truth a world war, providing the spark to reignite old tensions in places like the middle east. In late 1914, the nations of the Black Sea became party to the conflict, and Turk railed against Russian and Bulgar as in conflicts of yore. After months of bloody stagnation in Europe, certain persons in Britain had an idea for altering the dynamics of the war; invade Turkey, the sick man of Europe, and encourage the Balkan Powers to rise against it. Not only would that force Turkey to release its pressure on Russia – allowing the tsar to concentrate fully on Germany and Austria – but it would put a handful of allied powers right behind in Austria’s backyard if the Balkans joined in. The Central Powers would be well and truly surrounded. The invasion would be so easy – use modern ships to blast a way through the narrow channel leading to Constantinople, using landings to help secure the forts if need be, and stand by and smile as the Turks fled before the might of modern military prowess. By awful luck, problems in command, and the feistiness of the Turks, however, Gallipoli became a year-long tragedy, a distraction from the west that never realized its promise.

Alan Moorehead’s Gallipoli covers the campaign from its planning through its execution to the end, when the greatest victory of the episode was realized in a bloodless retreat. Addressing both the naval campaign and the months of trench warfare, and considering both the Turkish and Allied sizes, Gallipoli impresses with its thoroughness and easy reading despite the grim nature of the work. He covers the larger maneuvers in full, but during the months of gruesome gridlock breaks way to address the political ramifications of Gallipoli’s floundering, both on the Turkish and Allied sides. The book contains some of the best maps I've seen in a text of this kind, including three-dimensional renderings of the hills that deliver the difficulty of fighting in this terrain much more than a simple topographical map could have. Gallipoli seems nothing if the difficulties of WW1 warfare concentrated into the narrow stretch of the Hellespont. In some areas of the ANZAC front, the opposing trenches were scarcely ten yards apart from one another, or within a grenade's -- or a tin of jam's - throw. In such confined quarters, the two sides could not help but realize one another's essential humanity, and this is often a tale of well-meaning men making awful mistakes against one another. Moorehead's Gallipoli is what Churchill's campaign was not: most effective.

This book was incredible. Now I am sure the many other books written on the subject are great as well however this was surely an eye opener and satisfied my curiosity of the famed disastrous campaign. Moorehead does more than just gloss over the events that occurred. He shows the frustrations and feelings of the commanders in charge of the battle. Specifically General Hamilton. Moorehead also focused on the more political aspects of the campaign and was able to show expertly why the campaign failed without having to outwardly state "this is why it failed". Finishing Gallipoli leaves me with much to think about, for example my original understanding was that the whole thing was Winston Churchills blunder however he was removed so early in the campaign that the end result can hardly be considered his fault. All in All this book serves as a reminder of what happen on that famed penisula already over a hundred years ago and how it should not be forgotten.

Not as smooth a read as 1776, but much more satisfying. While this book is written in a clinical, "historical record" type of style, it doesn't lose its humanity. The author tells the story of the war by writing about the struggles and conflicts and heartbreaks of the people involved. As a result, I came away with real knowledge of the events of the Gallipoli Campagin of WWI and real empathy for the men on both sides of the razor wire.

While it is easy to armchair something so thoroughly picked apart by critics, one still comes away utterly incredulous at the stupidity of the British High Command during WWI. Moorehead's version of the telling is a classic and doesn't disappoint. A solid read on the history of this tragic battle.

History, by it's nature, has no surprise ending, we all know how Gallipoli ends and the tragedies that ensued during the campaign but having someone like Moorehead to walk you through the day-to-day life of those involved in such a compelling way is illuminating. He understands the human element; the smells, pains, exasperations and psychology of those in the trenches.
This is second book by Alan Mooehead that I've read (The White Nile being the first) and I know I'll read more of his. He relates history on a personal level, little academics or minutiae, and it's like listening to a friend tell a fascinating tale.
If all you know of Gallipoli is the Mel Gibson movie then dive in to Moorehead's volume. Highly recommended.

Good account of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of World War 1. The author discusses events prior to Gallipoli that sparked British interest in a campaign. He also discusses the politics in Turkey at the time. He then discusses first the naval attempt to breach the Narrows, followed by an accounting of the 8 month land campaign. He finishes with an assessment, including the Turkish assessment that the British campaign was close to victory several times, thus validating the original basis for the campaign.

One of the great "botched jobs" of the first world war. Thousands of Australian, New Zealand, British and French troops were killed and injured with nothing achieved. All this while incompetent Generals and politicians dither about. Alan Moorehead was a respected journalist and author who produced this account of the campaign. Well written, easily read if very harrowing as the suffering and privation of the troops are well covered, even the rotting corpses in no-mans land as the guns kept firing while the navy was prevented from forcing the wat to the Sea of Marmara and Constantinople.

My respect for the men in these campaigns increases with the more I read. 4 stars.

This book has been languishing on my tbr pile for decades. Quite why I left it so long I’m not sure but I’m glad now I picked it up. The author was clearly well versed in his subject. It is lucidly written and mercifully free of the alphanumeric soup of formation designations which tends to bedevil works of military history. This one focuses more on the personalities central to the story of Turkey’s involvement in the Great War - the Young Turks, Mustafa Kemal, Lord Kitchener, Winston Churchill, and the various commanders – as well as the details of the many military engagements which marked the Dardanelles enterprise.

The idea out of which the landings on Gallipoli arose came from Lt-Col Hankey, Secretary of the War Council, as an attempt to evade the impasse on the Western Front, where the Allies were neither advancing nor killing more Germans than British soldiers were being killed, by a flanking move through Turkey and the Balkans. Moorehead outlines the political manœvrings between Kitchener and Churchill (First Lord of the Admiralty) on the for side and Lord Fisher (First Sea Lord) with various others against. The issue would lead in the end to the break-up of Churchill and Fisher’s hitherto close friendship.

The aim of the operations was first, using obsolete battleships (whose loss could be borne) to force a passage of The Narrows, a pinch point between the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara, and then, on to Constantinople in the hope of prising Turkey out of the war. The initial solely naval effort to do so having foundered on an undetected minefield, plans were made for an amphibious landing (actually two) to take the Gallipoli peninsula and protect the flank of a further naval expedition though the Narrows. This amphibious landing was the biggest in history up to that point. It was planned in three weeks. (Compare Operation Overlord in 1944, which took nearly two years to prepare.)

Turkey had recently suffered a series of military humiliations in the Balkan wars of the early Twentieth Century, leading to the Young Turks seizing control of the government. Their hold was precarious though, and another defeat might have brought their downfall. The withdrawal of the Royal Navy, seen as all-powerful, and its French counterpart after their initial setbacks led to an upsurge in Turkish confidence and, Moorehead goes on to say, acted as a trigger for Turkish resentment to find for itself a target in its minority (and Christian) Armenian population upon whom the government thereupon instituted a policy of genocide – murder, rape (Moorehead uses the words “molest women” the first time he deals with this but the more accurate term later) and forced migration amounting to a death march. The strong implication is that without the Allied ships’ withdrawal the persecution of the Armenians would not have occurred.

The Great War in general was a catalogue of lost opportunities or doomed attempts to follow up early success. Moorehead says that over Gallipoli in particular hung a peculiar lethargy, a miasma of indecision. The one exception to this was Mustafa Kemal, who twice, in the hills above Anzac during the first landings and again near Suvla Bay for the later one, managed to be by happenstance in the correct spot to appreciate the danger for the Turks inherent in the situation and to forestall Allied progress. (Some idea of his desperation and borderline fanaticism is that one of his orders at Anzac read, in part, “I don’t order you to attack. I order you to die.”) None of this excuses the failure of General Stopford, commander at Suvla, (with his insistence, the weariness of his men notwithstanding, that no advance could take place without artillery support) to understand there were no Turkish entrenchments there which required such an insurance, nor of overall Commander Ian Hamilton to impress upon Stopford the necessity of quick movement into the hills when briefing him in the first place.

Moorehead is good on the conditions endured by the troops - not least the depredations ensured by the infestations of flies as summer approached, landing on food as soon as it was uncovered so that no mouthful was without its insect accompaniment - and their diverions when no fighting was taking place. With dead bodies and excrement also prevalent it is no surprise that dysentery was soon rampant among the soldiers – even the headquarters staff. British soldiers’ rations were almost entirely of bully beef, whose fat melted in the can, supplemented by plum and apple jam, with no vegetables to vary the diet. By contrast any army officer invited aboard one of the ships - away from the flies, the lice and the smell of death and decay - marvelled at clean linen, glasses, plates, meat, fruit and wine. (Of course, on land there was a decent prospect of surviving a battle; but if a ship went down you most likely drowned.)

As a precursor to Turkey’s entry into the war, and without their say, so the Germans had mined the Dardanelles (obstruction of which was an act of war) so blocking the vast majority of Russia’s exports. Russia’s grain and other exports piled up in the Golden Horn before their ships had to sail back to Russia. When the time was ripe once more to reopen trade the Revolution in that country had removed (the now Soviet) interest in the trade. According to Moorehead (at time of writing in 1956) that pre-war trade through the Dardanelles had never revived in the forty years since.

One of the aspects of the Gallipoli battles I had not realised before was the extent of submarine operations. Several British submarines penetrated into the Sea of Marmara and devastated Turkish shipping there. One submariner even swam ashore to blow up an important railway line. German submarines - easily able to access the Mediterranean through the Straits of Gibraltar as no technology then existed to detect or prevent them - managed to torpedo some Allied warships.

The campaign saw military innovation on a large scale: as well as the experimental use of submarines and aircraft, radio, aerial bombs, land mines and other new devices, it trialled the firing of modern naval guns against shore artillery and the landing of soldiers by small boats on an enemy coast. But the story is mainly of opportunities missed and

Nevetheless it may have continued for much longer (and Moorehead suggests even succeeded in its aims) had not the Australian journalist Keith Murdoch arrived and witnessed the danger and squalor in the dugouts, the sickness, the monotonous food, the general depression. Despite being only a few hours at the front, in collaboration with the only British journalist Kitchener had allowed on the expedition, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, he planned to bypass the usual channels and break the agreement not to send reports without submitting them first to the censor at headquarters. His private letter to the Australian Prime Minister reached the eyes of Lloyd George (by now UK Prime Minister) who himself bypassed official channels by circulating it directly to the Dardanelles Committee without first asking Hamilton for his comments. The man sent out to take over from Hmailton and assess the situation for himself, Lt-Gen Charles Monro, already firmly believed that the war could only be won on the Western Front by killing Germans, Turks did not count.

Thus was set in train the process, sanctioned in the end by a visit from Kitchener himself, which led to the withdrawal of troops, at first only from Anzac and Suvla. That this was accomplished without the Turks getting wind of it - at Anzac the opposing lines were in places no more than ten yards apart - and with no loss, with the help of the famous improvised device of the self-firing rifle using dripping water from a can to fill another attached to the trigger or fuses and candles to burn through string and release a weight, in retrospect still seems astonishing.

That left only the beachhead at Cape Helles, upon which the German commander of the Turks, Liman von Sanders, unleashed a delayed attack accompanied by the heaviest artillery bombardment of the campaign on the now depleted British force the day before the final 17,000 troops were to be taken off. The British fire in response, perhaps inspired by desperation, was so devastating that the follow-up Turkish infantry refused to charge - something rarely seen before on the peninsula. This repulse convinced von Sanders that there would be no further British evacuation, but of course there was. Yet again the withdrawal was completed in the utmost secrecy and highly successful. Despite widescale destruction of supplies as the withdrawal took place the booty of food, weapons and ammunition retrieved from Cape Helles by the Turks took two years to clear up.

The hopes of those who advocated withdrawal never came to fruition, none of the troops from Gallipoli (save the Anzacs) were ever sent to the Western Front. Many more than had landed on Gallipoli were posted instead to the Salonika front or drawn into the long desert campaign against Turkey in Sinai and Palestine. Towards the end of 1918 plans were even well advanced to try again to force the Narrows by ship but were pre-empted by the Armistice.

While never neglecting the other side of the argument Moorehead’s position on the Gallipoli campaign is clear throughout the book; that its objective was worthwhile, and achievable, that its success would have shortened the war, given succour to Russia and even prevented the Revolution there and so given history a different direction.

A cruel comment on the whole business is that no special medal was awarded to those who took part.

An old book that stands the test of time. Moorehead is a balanced and informative writer with a knack of getting across the big picture and the small details. This is a thoroughly enjoyable account of a less well understood episode of British military history.

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.

Gallipoli is a little known battle in a poorly understood war and yet it holds a fascination for historians and students of the Great War, for it was on these beaches that Australia is said to have earned its nationhood and against its rocks that Winston Churchill’s career almost floundered.

“Gallipoli”, is a reprint of Alan Morehead’s 1956 classic that brings order and perspective to its subject for the novice and World War I student alike. The battle of Gallipoli was the 1915 Allied attack on the Dardanelles and Gallipoli peninsula of Turkey intended to seize Constantinople and force the Ottoman Empire from the war. Often characterized as Churchill’s first adventure in the “soft underbelly” of Britain’s German dominated opponents, it is here shown as having a deeper purpose and greater potential than the sad disaster that is commonly depicted. Aimed to draw Turkish troops from the Russian Caucasus front and open the Dardanelles to the export of Russian grain and the inflow of Western aid, it was the largest amphibious attack up to its time.

The initial phase of the offensive was an attempt by old ships of the Royal Navy to force the Dardanelles. When that failed the task was assigned to armies as the British landed at Suvla Bay and Cape Helles, the ANZACS, Australian New Zealand Army Corps, at what has since been known as Anzac Cove and French troops across the water at Kum Kale on the Asia side of the Continental divide. Failure resulted from a combination of dogged defense, lapses in coordination and execution, lost opportunities and, even to the end, indecision as to the commitment to the project: how much, how long, whether to withdraw. At the conclusion the shortcomings of the invasion were left behind as a flawless, virtually bloodless evacuation withdrew virtually the whole force with negligible casualties, except of course lo the unlucky few to be personally involved.

I am very glad that I read this book. I know relatively little about World War I and my familiarity with British military figures is sparse. During some early chapters I felt that I was missing something while trying to follow the generals mentioned. As I progressed and the campaign took shape I developed an appreciation for the battle not dependent on identities of individual actors. At its end I had a much greater understanding of how the story played out. I enjoyed the glimpses of humanity amidst death and destruction as the Australian and Turkish troops traded courtesies and gifts, reminiscent of the Christmas Truce on the Western Front a few months before. I am left with a sense of loss, of lives spent for no gain, and all the what might have beens. With more resources, which were available, perhaps the invasion would have reached its goals, the separate German-Russian peace unnecessary and, a revolution avoided and the history of the balance of the Twentieth Century immeasurably altered. We will never know but “Gallipoli” challenges us to appreciate, to analyze and to read more. For this it is a excellent tome.

I did receive a free copy of this book in the hopes, but without the obligation, to write a review.

Moorehead reminds us that things aren't terrible because they just happen to be, they're terrible because we made them that way. And nothing happens in a vacuum. It's pretty depressing, I know, but he also writes pretty well. And there's pictures.

Thumbing through the shelves of a secondhand bookstore (Unicorn Books outside Cambridge, MD), I found a battered copy of Alan Moorehead's Gallipoli in the stacks and bought it for a dollar. I'd say that's about right for it.
Gallipoli is a narrative account of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign, one that resulted in over 250,000 casualties for the Entente and the Ottoman Empire in a brutal deadlock that lasted for nine months in 1915. Like a lot of WWI's conflicts, the standout moments of the campaign were its start and its end, with a lot of the middle reiterating on a central theme of push/counterpush from one trenchline to another. The start marked a dramatic naval attempt to force passage of the Dardanelles straits in order to, essentially, bombard the Ottoman Capital into submission. And in the end, the Entente safely evacuated the peninsula and committed to other pushes through Greece (deposing the Greek monarch to make space for this) and the Arabian peninsula. The campaign made the reputation of Mustafa Kemal, and submerged that of Winston Churchill and half a dozen other proponents of the campaign. That's the cliffs notes version anyways, and Moorehead mostly picks up each element in turn with an eye for writerly flourish in his accounts.
Yet published in 1956, it's very difficult to separate Moorehead's work from the time of writing. To give one example there, Winston Churchill was not only still alive but actively praised the book and awarded Moorehead a cash prize for the book. Second, this was Moorehead writing within a decade of WWII, where he himself served as a war correspondent throughout the campaign. Third, as an Aussie himself, Moorehead's sourcing and primary interest for the Gallipoli campaign is in portraying the battles there as a nation building trial by fire for the Australia New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC).
Take all three together, and an otherwise very good summing up of the campaign with a solid writerly foundation becomes much more annoying to read. While at turns Moorehead acknowledges the campaign to be an utter waste of lives, he can't help but think what might have been accomplished if the Navy had forced their way through in those early days. If the army's first landing had been more aggressive. If the generals in charge were less conservative or better coordinated. If a later landing on Suvla Bay hadn't been done with raw recruits but instead with experienced ones. If If If.
In those ifs, Moorehead carries water for Winston Churchill especially, a proponent not just of the naval landing but especially of the subsequent land campaign past any reason or hope of success. Neither man can quit the view that "just one more" push would've done, even as Moorehead describes the ANZAC troops suffering to a man from dysentery and plagued by a whole civilization's worth of flies and Churchill burned every professional bridge in his political life. The result is a weird glorification of profound suffering, one that Moorehead breezes through almost entirely without quoting primary sources (something he does liberally when the generals are engaged in their umpteenth bout of infighting). Soldiers are described in Homeric terms, above such petty desires as sex or alcohol (but again, no quoting, and only really in reference to the ANZAC troops). Two journalist's attempts to expose the horrific conditions on the peninsula are also treated as a near scandal, with Moorehead calling one journalist "gloomy" and suggesting the other should have simply conveyed his concerns in a private letter...which is exactly what was attempted and foiled by the British Army itself.
Even at the end of the book, with soldiers dying of exposure and frostbite in their thousands, Moorehead devotes most of a chapter to one final twist where the British "almost" sent yet another full six divisions to turn the tide with a kind of palpable longing.
Perhaps that's understandable. As he notes in his conclusion, the alternative was the Western Front, a place of almost nihilistic carnage and grim attrition. Moorehead paints a rosy portrait of a world redeemed by a successful Gallipoli, one where the Russian Revolution never happened (what?) and half a dozen other sweeping events of the war are undone at the stroke of a pen. Perhaps.
But the difference between dreaming and living are vast, as Moorehead himself inadvertently illustrates in the book. The poet Rupert Brooke is given a loving shoutout, described in (again) almost Homerically attractive terms as he gleefully writes in his diary about looting Constantinople and raping the Sultan's wives, a kind of orientalist fever dream from the colonial era that explains so much of the British Museum's contents. Instead of the glorious campaign promised, Brooke died of sepsis on the island of Lemnos before the landings even started. In the end all his dreams of conquest were undone but a total unfamiliarity with what the task itself entailed. The same could be said of Moorehead's whole whistful view in my opinion. One can always dream that a battle could've turned out differently, but forty years later it might at last be time to wake up.

I've been interested in Gallipoli, one of the better-known battles of WWI, since my visit to New Zealand in 2015 and 2016. While in Auckland, my wife and I visited Te Papa, New Zealand's national museum. We experienced perhaps the most impactful exhibit I've ever been to (on the 100th anniversary of the battle, no less), and learned all about Gallipoli and its importance to Australia and New Zealand in the development of their national identity and international reputation.

Moorehead's analysis of this battle covers the Turkish military and political situation, the reasons why Great Britain (and France) decided to invade the Gallipoli Peninsula to secure the Dardanelles, what went well (and disastrously wrong) during the campaign, and why the Allied forces (including the 'ANZAC' corps from Australia and New Zealand) ultimately decided to retreat. Gallipoli could have been a pivotal moment in the War, but of the one million combatants on both sides, half were casualties and no military objectives were ultimately achieved by the Allies.

The writing style in this book is fine but not exceptional, and I do not consider this to be among the more riveting works of scholarship on WWI. The style and format of this work are dated (it was first published 62 years ago, after all). There are a number of photographs that do nothing to illustrate the events described in the book (generals, admirals, etc. posing for portraits in their dress uniforms), and poorly-drawn maps that do nothing to explain the sequence or position of military maneuvers. The author chose to focus on the "Great Man" concept of historical analysis and spends the majority of the book describing the decisions, disagreements, triumphs, and failures of a variety of important British (and a few Turkish) officers. Although he does mention what life was like for the men in the trenches, it's primarily through descriptions of anonymous soldiers rather than specific men (many of whom wrote journals, I'm sure, so there probably are a variety of available primary sources). The primary focus is on the British Army and Navy, with considerably less attention devoted to the Turkish perspective and virtually no mention of the German and French involvement in the conflict.

My understanding is that this is considered the primary mid-century secondary source for information and analysis about the Gallipoli campaign, so despite its shortcomings, this is a solid overview of an important moment in world history. Even though it took me a while to read this work, it's not especially challenging, so it's a solid choice for anyone interested in learning more about this campaign.

World War I had already sunk into trench warfare by the time the Gallipoli offensive started. Conceived as a second front and as an attempt to knock Turkey out of the war, it's execution was similar and achieved the same results. Alan Moorehead tries his hand at explaining the campaign.

The Gallipoli campaign was envisaged by many young Englishmen as some sort of quest. Seen as a battle in a far off land, the romanticism of many were off the charts. However, the same kind of bumbling, ineffectual leadership was seen in the Dardenelles as in eastern France. After nearly 280 days, the campaign ended in a series of mass escapes that were pulled off in an impressive fashion.

The problem with Moorehead's version of events is that the same romanticism many young English men had is prevalent in his writing. His special adoration for the Australians can be forgiven as it has always been a source of national pride in their performance in their first campaign. The fact that Moorehead is himself Australian tends to give his stories an air of bias. Indeed, other than the notables on the Turkish side (Mehmet Talaat, Enver Pasha, Kemal Pasha), the Turkish forces have no role to play other than the heavies in this real life silent movie.

A second problem comes from his source material. While written in 1956, most of his sources for the book are from people who served in the conflict and whose works were created in the decade following the campaign. Forty years on from the campaign should have seen primary research that Moorehead could've tapped into. It gives the appearance to me of someone not looking for something he didn't want to find as it would detract from his story. Sadly, it need not have been this way. No one who studies or reads about Gallipoli has nothing but respect and admiration for Anzac forces who were on the peninsula.

In the end, Moorehead's "Gallipoli" suffers from the lack of outside scholarship, a slight hint of bias, and overt romanticism. This campaign has been discussed in a more abject way and as such Moorehead's tale ranks slightly above granddad's stories about his time in the war.

BOTTOM LINE: Mid-century tale that reads more like historical fiction than history.

I ought to crack open a bottle to celebrate finishing this...
Not that it wasn't a fascinating read, I was just not able to stick with it because of family events this past Spring.
Mr. Moorehead's book on the World War I battle(s) of Gallipoli (seige is more apt), where the allied armies battled Germany and Turkey for control of the Dardenelles straits leading to Constantinople, is well-researched and beautifully written. That said, it is old-fashioned in the sense of hewing to the stories of the political and military leaders, with lesser attention to the foot soldiers and sailors who lived and died on the cliffs and beaches.
I began this because of the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, since in some ways, we're still waging war over this long-contested part of the world. The hash made of the two major assaults on the heights above the Dardenelles (both fell short due to miscommunications or poor leadership on the field), contrasted against the astonishing success of the evacuation (no lives lost), is jaw-dropping for this modern reader. Like certain accounts of the U.S. Civil War, this is a tale of personalities and power plays as much as a study of military strategy or maneuvers. Winston Churchill fell from power because of his promotion of this expedition, and the legendary General Kitchener also was pushed out of British war planning as a result of his involvement.
I gleaned some interesting tidbits from my reading: Churchill served in the trenches after he was booted from the War Cabinet. Poet Rupert Brooke was among those who joined the Expedition (he died of infection following sunstroke and was buried on the island of Skyros hours before his regiment was to sail for Gallipoli; I thought Brooke died in France). And a contributor to the decision to evacuate was an Australian journalist named Keith Murdoch--father of Rupert Murdoch, the now much reviled owner of Fox News and the larger Murdoch Media holdings. Huh.
Those who learn nothing from history are doomed to repeat it, as they say.

A vivid, comprehensive and very readable history of the campaign.

The book is compelling and coherent, and most of Moorehead’s focus is on the ANZACs, but he does cover the other allied forces and the Turkish side as well, to the extent possible at the time. He describes the muddled thinking behind the decisions made, the awful conditions endured by the troops, and the determination and courage of the troops in spite of it all. He covers the difficulties in keeping the forces supplied and the communications problems they suffered, and argues that the venture was doomed from the start. He also gives some good insight into Hamilton’s mind.

The narrative is clear, balanced and thorough, but Moorehead does assume some general knowledge of the campaign’s context and even some material on the tactical level. He also assumes that the reader knows French. The maps are a bit sketchy and sometimes hard to connect to the narrative (there’s also no map index) Moorehead also includes a lot of firsthand accounts, but these can seem excessive at times, and sometimes feel like crutches.

At one point Moorehead mistakes Wangenheim as the “Minister progenitor of the wartime alliance” between the Germans and Turks. Elsewhere Moorehead refers to the German army as the “Wehrmacht.” He also writes that the Germans took it upon themselves to close the Straits in 1914, even though Enver Pasha had ordered this to be done. He also mentions “priests” among the Turkish soldiers.

Still, an engaging, illuminating and well-written work.

REVIEW:
I read this in high school, the same year as All Quiet on the Western Front. I could smell the rotting corpses mingling with deadly gas. I felt the internal devastation the experience wrought within the soldiers.

While reading both horrific narratives, I remember giving squinty eyes to the high school Army recruiter every time I walked by his table. One day, I stopped to talk with him about what I was reading. He said, “war isn’t like that anymore.” *Cough* *BS* While I agree that patriotism is always in style, perhaps this and similar books were factors in changing their recruitment approach to emphasize how warfare is less visceral for many troops—more physically and emotionally removed through the use of technology (e.g., computers and drones).

I’m interested in reading a non-western account, perhaps from Turkey’s perspective and how this war galvanized their nation.

SUMMARY:
“A vivid chronicle of adventure, suspense,
agony, and heroism, Gallipoli brings to life
the tragic waste in human life, the physical
horror, the sheer heartbreaking folly of
fighting for impossible objectives with
inadequate means on unknown, unmapped
terrain.”

'...one of the greatest military tragedies of the twentieth century' states Max Hastings in his September 2013 introduction to Alan Moorehead's (born in Australia in 1910 and tome originally published in 1956) book on Gallipoli. He goes on to say '...it was among the most incompetently conducted campaigns in history, demonstrating the British genius for discovering at moments of crisis an almost inexhaustible supply of dud generals.' ' The Dardanelles adventure was the brainchild of that human dynamo the First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Spencer Churchill' Hastings continues. With spirits faltering a victory, somewhere was desperately needed. He conceived an idea using 'British sea power to attack the southern flank of the Central Powers, knocking Turkey out of the war and opening a supply route to Russia.' Russia was Britain's ally. They were going to go through the Dardanelles to get to Constantinople and demand Turkey's government to surrender.

It's like when a Premier League football team plays a non-league side in the FA Cup and completely underestimates them. They expect them just to roll-over because they have turned-up. This is what the British expected of the Turks. The Turks didn't just roll-over, the British planning was not good. The campaign lasted for 259 days from the first landing in April 1915 to the eventual evacuation in January 1916. The Allies sent half-a-million men to Gallipoli and half of them became casualties and the same for the Turks. In August 1916 a Royal Commission was set-up to investigate Gallipoli. '...from the outset the risks of failure attending the enterprise outweighed its chances of success'.

By late August 1914 it was still uncertain if Turkey would join the war on the German side. The Ottoman Empire had largely disintegrated. The Sultan had been deposed in 1909 and the Government was now bankrupt. The young Turks were looking for allies and they came to London with a proposal for an Anglo-Turkish alliance. This was politely turned down by the British. Eventually the Turks turned to Germany.

Mustafa Kemal, who would later become the first President of Turkey and credited as being the founder of the Republic of Turkey and given the surname 'Ataturk' meaning 'Father of the Turks', was actually anti-German but he was posted to Rodosto at the head of the Gallipoli peninsula. Kemal was to play a massive role in the planning and execution within the Gallipoli campaign for the Turks.

The War Council met on 13-JAN-1915 where Churchill showed his enthusiasm for the campaign. This would be a naval expedition in February to bombard and take the Gallipoli peninsula with Constantinople as its objective so on 19-FEB the assault began with two battleships the Vengeance and Cornwallis plus a French ship, Suffren, that got up close and personal. It was almost a test as the second assault happened on 25-FEB led by Vice-Admiral de Robeck on the Vengeance but is forced north by Turkish and German guns. These signs were not enough to put them off the thought that this would be an easy campaign and they would be sipping tea in a captured Constantinople by mid-March. Oh dear.

In March the British are attacking the straits (narrows) but the Turkish guns are doing their job and the battleships just cannot get through. Three battleships were sunk by mines. If the Turks had let the British through the narrows it was over. It was obvious that the navy was not going to be able to do this job alone. They are going to need the army and an amphibious landing. Kitchener, Secretary of State for War, informed General Ian Hamilton that he would be commanding the military force that would be sent to the Dardanelles to support the fleet.

4000 Australian and New Zealand troops (commanded by William Riddell Birdwood) were brought over from Egypt but then the army had to re-group in Egypt to sort out suppliers which meant the Turkish had time to fortify the peninsula. Hamilton had three weeks to plan the largest amphibious operation in the whole history of warfare. While all this was going on there was a massacre of Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire. It is thought that one-and-a-half-million were killed, The author states that the 18-MAR victory in the Narrows brought the Turks together and was psychologically such that they felt that they were strong enough to get rid of all Armenians.

The main striking force was to be the British 29th Division under Aylmer Hunter-Watson. They would land at Cape Helles and Birdwood's ANZACS (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) would land at Gaba Tepe (re-named later to ANZAC cove). There were to be two diversions. The Royal Navy pretended to land at Bulair and the French to go ashore at Kim Kale. They would be brought back to fight at Cape Helles. Sunday 25-APR-1915 was the target day. The landing at Sedd el Bahr (Walls of the Sea) was disastrous, Mustafa Kemal was attacking the ANZACs at Gaba Tepe. The beach was so small that they could not get inland. Reinforcements arrived on 05-MAY and the fighting carried on through 6th, 7th and 8th of May.

On the 18-MAY the Turks decided to close-in on the ANZACs and intense fighting occurred until a truce was agreed on 24-MAY for 9 hours. The Turks would not succeed in taking ANZAC cove.

On 26-MAY a new cabinet announced that Sir Henry Jackson would be the first sea lord and Churchill is out of the Admiralty.

Battles continued during June and July No-one was winning but by the end of July the casualties were about 57,000 each. Summer had arrived and the flies were everywhere and the soldiers got dysentery (infection of the intestines).

With reinforcements came the August offensive. Again this did not bring success and by 10th August not a single height of any importance at Suvla or Anzac was in British hands and at Cape Helles the battle subsided. 45,000 allied soldiers had fallen in the August battles and the British Generals were sent away to be replaced. In October Hamilton is replaced by Monro who sees the conditions and wants to evacuate immediately. Kitchener visits Gallipoli on 22nd November and also recommends evacuation. On 27th November there was a huge blizzard followed by ice and snow. The evacuation started and the Gallipoli campaign was over.

Moorhead’s work on Gallipoli is considered a classic historical account of the titular battle and it is easy to see why. He spins a compelling story of the decisions made by the men charged with this battle in both sides, drawing from primary materials and memoirs. This account draws the reader in to the day to day decisions and how this battle often was just at a tipping point, with the fog of war obscuring and preventing either side from making the final move. It is an astounding account of warfare that preludes what is to come in WW2.

However, Moorhead’s account fall short in my opinion, many which reflect the age of the account. He sometimes repeats slogans of the time used to dehumanize Turkish forces without pushing back on, and sometimes agreeing with, the stereotypes put forth. This account also spends most of its time amongst generals with little drawn from published material of those in the trenches themselves. Finally, I came to this account seeking an answer for why this battle in particular is holds such a large position amongst the ANZAC forces and their modern military successors. Other than their prominent role in this operation, and subsequent suffering, this account didn’t yield an answer.

This had sat in my library for years because every attempt I’ve made to read about and try to understand WW I had ended with me giving up because my brain could not sort out all the complexities and personalities. But I pressed on and pulled this from the shelf and I’m glad I did. The author’s voice and knowledge are strong and reliable and I could follow his telling of this disaster from start to finish. That’s not to say I understand the indecisiveness and lack of imagination in approaching the Dardanelles. Hamilton had the credentials but his management of his generals (such as Stopford in particular) bewilders even today. Keyes seemed to have the courage and the answer but was thwarted at every juncture. Remarkable to me how hard he fought for his plan only to be rebuffed. The submariners, the infantry on both sides, showed incredible courage and the evacuation plan was carried out brilliantly. Still Gallipoli remains synonymous with tragedy and failure. The book — I have a first edition hardbound — also includes photos and maps, which are basic but also quite helpful in understanding the battle movements.