ANZAC & Gallipoli

WindSock

I went to an ANZAC Ceremony here in Dublin earlier this year. It is the first military ceremony I have ever been to. I have to say it was very moving. It sparked off my interest in the battle and in WW1 in general. I don't have any relatives who fought in WW1, only the Crimean War, Afaik. The book Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks has also been recommended to me. Has anyone read it?

arnhem44

Sorry I haven't read that one but if your interested the book pictured below is a excellent read covering Gallipoli,thats a campaign that cost many an Irishmans life.It got so bad that what was left of the Dublin Fusiliers and Royal Munsters were joined together and became known as the Dubsters,It was an horrific battle,an ill equipted army,much of it fought hand to hand with relentless Turkish attacks,the flies alone were suppose to be terrible fatening on the dead and swarming around the soldiers as they ate there rations.


Review
A supremely readable, brilliantly researched account of one of the most infamous, ill-fated campaigns of the First World War

L A Carlyon takes one of the saddest, most tragic, yet most celebrated campaigns of the Great War as the subject of this dense and oddly pitched military history. The remembrance services for the Gallipoli campaign today draw over 15,000 people to the Turkish peninsula. It was the very last of the Empire's genteel adventures, conceived in haste by Lord Kitchener, a War Minister well out of his depth, and regretted at leisure by almost 250,000 dead men, Brits and Turks, who fought to a stalemate in horrifying conditions. Carlyon, an Australian, focuses on the Antipodean role in the conflict - it is often forgotten that the Anzacs suffered the highest
Author: Carlyon, Les
Category: Battles & campaigns
Format: Paperback
Condition: NEW
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 01-Oct-03
ISBN: 553815067
ISBN-13: 9780553815061
Pages: 752

GA361

This is indeed a very interesting aspect of WW1.I recently bought a film on it called 'Gallipoli'.It stars Mel Gibson and is all about the ANZAC effort in the landings and how badly the officers dealt with the whole affair . . . Its heart-breaking to see the absolute slaughter that the soldiers were subjected to-running over the top in broad daylight knowing they were going to be milled down.From reaing articles on it it seems that many who survived went over to be slaughtered because they idn't want to seem to be a coward in front of their friends:(

The part played by the Irish men was also very important,and of course,tragic.As arnhem44 said the royal Dublins and the Munsters had to be merged because their casualties were so great.I recently read an article that said of the 1100 Royal Dublin Fusiliers that served in Galipoli,only 12 returned ''unscathed'':(

R.Dub.Fusilier

the film Gallipoli is brilliant and a must for anyone to watch . two other films worth watching are 'The Trench' with Daniel Craig and 'The Lighthorsemen' about the Australian Light Horse in the middle east .

if you want a good read in regard to the Irish involvment read 'Field of Bones' by Phillip Orr and 'The 10th (Irish) Division in Gallipoli' by Bryan Cooper.

arnhem44

It beggars belief that this campaign went ahead with such poor planing,Sir Ian Hamilton was only a lap dog to Kitchener in my own opinion,any General to be afraid to ask for men and supplies was doomed from the start,it always amazes me though how they evacuted Gallipoli undeteced and unharmed at the end of the campaign,to think that so many of those lads went back to France only to be killed there.