The Gallipoli Experience Reconsidered by Peter Liddle

Author:Peter Liddle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War I
ISBN: 9781473851092
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2015-02-27T05:00:00+00:00

In the same letter, this Otago Mounted Rifles officer made a pertinent observation on the way the campaign had developed. ‘If the Army and Navy had stuck together Gallipoli would have fallen easily. But the Navy came and went several times and gave the Turks two months to prepare defences.’

Despite the fact that July saw no major offensive at Anzac it proved a depressingly costly month, with an alarming decline in the condition of the troops. Uncovered latrines and unburied corpses provided such a breeding ground for the large green flies that diarrhoea and dysentery caused the necessary departure from the Peninsula of many men and the weakening of almost all. Unappetizing, often unsuitable food, persistently under the assault of swarms of flies, was an aid to neither health nor morale. Bully beef which could be almost poured like treacle from its tin and rock-hard biscuits flavoured with well-nigh liquid plum or apricot jam proved memorably indigestible in their unvarying repetition. A significant additional discomfort was widespread dental decay, for the treatment of which there were completely inadequate facilities. The loss of five teeth through eating hard biscuits was recorded by G.C. Kilner. These factors, together with delayed mail, parcels with spoiled contents and a growing sense of purposelessness, eroded the spirit of men who were to be called to make one more supreme effort.

So many diaries mention a daily tragedy nearby. One recorded men excitedly rushing for the newly-arrived mail and being hit by a shrapnel shell burst, others the loss of a close friend. Gruesome details like those recorded by Sergeant Cardno are phrased in an unemotional, mechanical, detailed way: ‘Lawrie was killed, blown to bits.’ A.S. Hutton was still more explicit: ‘One of our fellows had his brains blown out just in front of me, some of which went on his cap, some on my trousers and some on the ground.’18

The troops at Anzac could hardly be expected to display the confident aggression of the early weeks of the campaign, but they knew that something was afoot and that it might enable them successfully to break out of their embattled position. Their wary readiness and parsimoniously conceded optimism is expressed in Cardno’s diary entry for 5 August: ‘We are ready for the big move on the left. I don’t know what’s in store for us but I hope we pull it off.’

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