Customer Reviews

Gallipoli

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Les Carlyon's new book (published in 2001 in Australia) covering the Allied campaign against Turkey in the Dardanelles is one of those books that you find hard to put down once you start. In over 540 pages of narrative we get to hear the soldiers speak of their terrible trials and tribulations fighting in a harsh environment against a formidable enemy.

The book's main focus is upon the Australian involvement but the author does not neglect the role of the other Allied contingents, soldiers and sailors of the British and French Empires. Nor does his forget the enemy, 'Johnny Turk', who many Australian soldiers later came to respect regardless of the horrific fighting that they had endured.

I suppose many people will ask why Australia continues to make such a fuss over Gallipoli. When you take into consideration that the Australia of 1914 sent out of its small population over 332,000 men to serve overseas and of those 215,000 or more became casualties, (of which 60,000 died). A casualty rate of 65 per cent. Taking those figures into consideration you get an idea of why WW1 and particular Gallipoli means so much to many Australians.

The book is well told and the author uses numerous first-hand accounts of the soldiers, from both sides, who fought during this campaign. The narrative is engrossing, full of interesting facts and stories and just pulls you along further and deeper towards an ending we all know but made more alive and new by the author's style of writing.

I don't think that this book will offer any serious readers of this campaign anything new or startling, but I think that anyone who has a passion for Gallipoli will find this a well told account and close to being the definitive book on the subject. Many aspects of the book, particularly the stories of the blunders made by the Allied High Command still make me shake my head even though I have read it all before.

"We mounted over a plateau and down through gullies filled with thyme, where there lay about 4000 Turkish dead. It was indescribable. One was grateful for the rain and the grey sky. A Turkish Red Crescent man came and gave me some antiseptic wool with scent on it... The Turkish captain with me said: "At this spectacle even the most gentle must feel savage, and the most savage must weep' ... I talked to the Turks, one of whom pointed to the graves. 'That's politics,' he said. Then he pointed to the dead bodies and said: 'That's diplomacy. God pity all us poor soldiers.'" - Captain Aubrey Herbert, ANZAC, May 1915 (taken from the inside dust-jacket of the book).

Picked up this book down in Aussie in 2002, and I fully agree with "Aussie Reader's" review. He qualifies it as the best "recent" work on Gallipoli because the battle received some very fine treatment from Alan Morehead (?? memory may be failing). More to the point, Carlyon explodes some of the myths of Gallipopli, i.e., the callous British commanders sending the "colonials" to their death, etc. etc. Certain senior officers were criminally myopic, but they can hardly be accused of being callous, and more than a few equally guilty can be found among the "colonial" key commanders and staffs. Carlyon does a superb job of laying out the roots of Gallipoli's failing, and places them at the feet of Churchill and Kitchener, but he moves on to the battle itself to detail why it failed on the ground. The responsibility for the latter lies with the commanders on the scene, as bad plans, well executed, have been known to succeed. And, if its one thing the British Navy should have been good it, it was amphibious operations. They weren't. (The USMC would not perfect this as a technique until the 1930s) He certainly raised my estimation of Kemal Ataturk and the Turkish soldier of the period. But importantly, more than any other book on Gallipoli, Carlyon's touristic view of the battlefield gives the military reader a much greater appreciation of the terrain, and the influence that the nature of the terrain had upon the battle and how it evolved.

In short, a military history of interest to any serious student of power projection operations.

I was given this book as a gift by my son. When starting out reading this comprehensive book I was feeling "gallipoli'd out" and had not intended buying another book on the subject. I have read quite a lot about Gallipoli and the first world war. There are inumerable books that tell the story from the individual (aussie)soldier's perspective, others that maintain a focus on strategy, tactics and political aspects. In many many cases these books focus very intently on the Australian and New Zealand elements (ANZACs)and neglect the broader contexts that aid a more balanced understanding of the events. What is spectacular about Les Carlyon's work is the even handed treatment of every player in the drama, it gives a balanced perspective on so many levels. It is a book of reconciliation, though maybe this would only be apparent to Australians and New Zealanders for whom the pain of the losses in WW1 still resonate, and for whom the battles in the Dardanelles hold particular national significance, even mythology. Carlyon is masterful at blending his personal description of the battlefields as they are today and the impressions one (he) has when exploring them, with the personal experience of the soldiers on both the allied and turkish sides, and the bigger picture strategic and political aspects. The personal experience of the commanders at every level and the social and political contexts in which they were moulded and in which they functioned is not neglected. Carlyon's present day descriptions do not dominate, they merely form something of a "breather" between the military detail. The style of writing is very engaging and the book on the whole is extremely accessible for a broad audience.
This is an absolutely magnificent book on it's subject.

A new version at a much higher price than existing secondhand copies has been published, claiming to be a new edition.

And yet so far it's impossible to find ANYWHERE, ANYTHING about how this new "edition" (as distinct from REPRINT) is any different.

Publishers need to be HONEST.