National Observer Home > No. 51 - Summer 2002 >Book Reviews

Gallipoli

 

By Les Carlyon

Sydney, 2001: Pan Macmillan Australia, pp. 581 and index.

It should be said at once that this is a very readable and worthwhile book. It is carefully researched, and it deals with one of the most important episodes in Australian history — Gallipoli has become central to the ethos of traditional Australia. This book brings the campaign vividly alive, and it will be read and understood by many who would not concern themselves with a drier account.

The Gallipoli campaign was badly conceived and badly executed. The British generals who planned it, under ill-informed pressure from Winston Churchill, proceeded without proper intelligence as to local fortifications and defences and without making adequate resources available. Thus the author recalls the comment by General Sir Ian Hamilton, “In matters of supply, transport and administration, our ways are amateurish”, and Hamilton’s view is noted that “the military force should have been ready before the navy began to attack.” When the naval bombardments failed to open up the Dardanelles Straits, Major-General Aylmer Hunter-Weston was amongst many who concluded that surprise had been lost, and that the peninsula had become an entrenched camp, and that there was no longer a reasonable chance of success: the expedition should in his view have been abandoned.

There will always be disagreement as to the precise merits of the various British and Australian generals who took part in the Gallipoli campaign. In the present case the author expresses his views on the matter clearly. So he says of Hamilton, “Hamilton had been a soldier, big-hearted and willing, for forty-two years; it took Gallipoli to prove that he didn’t have the temperament to be a commander-in-chief.” In contrast, he describes Brigadier-General Harold Walker as “arguably the finest of the Allied generals at Gallipoli”, and, controversially, Sir John Monash as “the greatest military commander Australia has produced”. But of Hamilton, upon whom much responsibility for the Allied loss rested, the author finally observes that “one has to wonder who could have succeeded there under the conditions Kitchener imposed”, that is, an inexcusable failure to provide the numbers of men and guns required for victory.

The author’s interesting and vivid prose, resting on careful research and erudition, is attractive and compel- ling. This book is very highly recommended.

I. C. F. Spry

 

National Observer No. 51 - Summer 2002