Gallipoli

Gallipoli was a 1915 campaign in the First World War, launched by Britain in the hope of seizing Constantinople. This new history argues that the operation was flawed from the outset and was bound to collapse. The bloodshed at the initial landings was so heavy that aircraft crews could see the stained water from above. The author follows the grinding fight that came after the failed summer assaults, when the battle became a war of attrition.

The campaign's consequences reached well beyond the peninsula. It cost Winston Churchill his position in government, brought Mustafa Kemal, later known as Atatürk, to prominence as a founder of modern Turkey, and is often seen as the moment Australia began to think of itself as a nation. The account draws on previously unpublished testimony from men of every rank, not only British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers but also Turkish and French voices. These personal narratives are woven into a close, immediate retelling of the fighting and its aftermath.

The author, a historian at the Imperial War Museum who also leads battlefield tours at Gallipoli, conveys the chaos, dread and endurance of the men on the ground. He also judges the commanders severely, placing the greatest responsibility on General Sir Ian Hamilton. Hamilton's overconfidence, convoluted plans and refusal to face the true state of affairs turned a probable defeat into a catastrophe. The book conveys the drama and courage of the fighting, the moments of chivalry between opposing troops amid mass killing, and the pointlessness of the cause for which the ordinary soldiers fought, almost a century later.