Product Description

This account of the Gallipoli campaign of 1915 brings an epic tragedy to life. As well as taking the reader into the trenches to witness the fear, courage and humour of the soldiers who fought there, describing their experiences, whether Australian, British, New Zealand, French or Turkish, it examines those who led them: the generals and politicians - some brilliant, some ruthless, some hopelessly incompetent - who held the lives of tens of thousands of young men in their hands. From the grand military and political strategies to the squalor of the front line, it is a haunting insight into the realities of war. The struggle for the Gallipoli Peninsula was dominated by the terrain as much as by men and steel, and here the battlefields come alive as the author guides the reader through them, evoking the landscape. Using an intimate knowledge of Gallipoli itself (his researches also took him to the UK, France, Australia and New Zealand), together with storytelling and scholarship, Les Carlyon has written an immediate account of one of modern history's defining moments.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #535301 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 599 pages

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 rates of casualty - and tells the story in a curious mix of purple prose, glib commentary and earnest factual description. Charming in its own way, it reads like a road trip through history. He collects perspectives from almost every written source from both sides of the battle to weave a dense tapestry that cares less for the usual technical details of war common to military memoirs and more for the lives of the men who fought it and the human acts that have since grown into legend. Ultimately, after conspiring in a fair amount of mythmaking himself, Carlyon acknowledges that for all the folklore that surrounds the battles of Gallipoli, it was a 'true tragedy in three acts'. The sheer incompetence displayed in its conception and execution led directly to the fall of the Lloyd George government and Winston Churchill's first exit from the Commons. Kitchener himself escaped prosecution only because he drowned in a shipwreck before an inquisition could be held. But it is perhaps a lesson that, today, none of the English, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, German, French and Turkish peoples bear anger toward the others for the lives lost on the Gallipoli peninsula. There is a deep wisdom that blames governments for the wars that ordinary men are forced to fight, and leaves the soldiers themselves as honourable comrades. (Kirkus UK)

Alan Ramsey in the 'Sydney Morning Herald'
'The book of the year...GALLIPOLI is just the most stunning account of the Anzac boneyard'

John Hamilton in the 'Herald Sun'
'A new historical tour de force...Carlyon's massive new book on this emotional subject is a deeply felt, compassionate work, beautifully written'

Customer Reviews

Gallipoli by L.A.Carlyon
Carlyon pulls no punches with this authoritative account of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. He gives no quarter to rank or reputation and the reader will left astonished at the tactics,actions and decisions as the campaign stumbles from one disaster to the next. Unfortunately these costly errors were paid for in human life and suffering. An excellent book on this campaign!

Excellent Account
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).

Excellent Account
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).