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Home , 3rd Light Horse Brigade, Albert Jacka, Anzac Cove, April 1915, August 1915, Battle of Scimitar Hill

The charge of the 3rd Light Horse at the Nek, 7 by George Lambert ART07965

Australia’s , 1915: myths and realities Carl Bridge gives us an unexpected Australian perspective on the unsuccessful landings at Gallipoli in 1915.

any Australians of my their democratic citizen soldiers were its soldiers, and indeed all of their generation, born in the ‘tried and not found wanting’ and countrymen.4 immediate aftermath of sufficient blood was shed on the ‘altar of This myth was represented in paint theM Second World War, heard at their nationhood’ to consecrate the two new by Nolan’s Gallipoli series (1963-65); in grandmother’s knee that Winston nations.3 print in Bean’s 12-volume official history Churchill, the great British war leader In the early 1960s, in the lead-up to (1921-42); in stone in the nation’s over of that later war, had as First Lord of the fiftieth anniversary of the campaign, 500 war memorials, pre-eminently in the Admiralty in the First World War that great Australian mythographer, the the Australian War Memorial, Canberra sacrificed thousands of Australian lives painter Sir Nolan, compared the (1941); and on film in Peter Weir’s needlessly on the Gallipoli Peninsula in Anzacs to the Greek classical heroes who movie Gallipoli (1981). So untouchable in 1915.1 The justification had had fought at Troy, just across the water has the Anzac myth become (it is been a futile search for ’s soft from Gallipoli, and spoke of the steep ’s Bastille, Bunker Hill and underbelly, a bid to knock Germany’s hill they confronted in the landing as a Gettysburg all rolled into one) that any ally Turkey out of the war, and the vital metaphor for all the dilemmas of life and person who dares criticise it, especially need to open an all-year supply route particularly for those encountered in the if they are British, is liable not only to to and from our Russian ally.2 In spite settling of Australia. He reflected what be universally vilified but to receive of, or perhaps partly because of, this the men of Gallipoli and their famous death threats.5 And recently, ‘Anzackery’ sacrifice, the achievements of the Anzac chronicler, C. E. W. Bean, had seen as – the abuse of the myth for political (Australian and Army the apotheosis of Australian-ness – the purposes – has been much criticised by Corps) at Gallipoli saw the birth of wry humour, bravery and resilience that some in the Australian intelligentsia for two national creation myths in which built the nation and ideally characterised its reductive masculinism, its incipient

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‘whiteness’, its militarism, its lack of inclusivity, and even its being a burden of the the current might not 3rd Australian Field Ambulance and his donkey, ‘Murphy’. Australian War Memorial ART92147 wish to carry.6 Let us now examine and deconstruct some of the myths associated in the Australian popular memory with the campaign. Bushmen naturally skilled in the arts of war? In Weir’s movie, the distorted vehicle through which most Australians today learn about Gallipoli, the two protagonists, one innocent and one experienced, leave the bush for the city to enlist, thus mirroring the public understanding that all Australian soldiers are ‘boys from the bush’ who can already shoot, ride and generally look after themselves. Actually, the vast majority of the Anzacs came from the cities – they were clerks, shop assistants, school-teachers, civil servants, tradesmen and small businessmen – and many did not know one end of a rifle from the other. Further, fully 40% of the men who landed at what became known as , on 25 , were born in the , and mostly city-slickers.7 A crucial part of the operation? In the Australian mythology the in April and the subsequent battles at and the Nek in August were central to the campaign, whose objective was to proceed up the peninsula and on to the Turkish capital, . The reality was rather more complex. the bulk were British troops, and range, with its third highest and most The initial plan was to mount a solely there were French, Indians, and some strategic point at Chunuk Bair (850 naval assault to force a fleet through the Newfoundlanders. The main landings feet).10 Narrows of the , through the on 25 April were by the British and The Turks have a story that strong , and into the . French at four beaches on the toe of swimmers were sent out to move the This would lay siege to Constantinople, the peninsula at Cape Helles. The carefully placed British marker buoys defeat Turkey, open up the supply route Anzac landing, further up the seaward north to this inhospitable spot. An to and from , persuade the Greeks, side of the peninsula, was meant to be Australian naval historical party in 1990 Romanians and Bulgarians over to the secondary, something of a diversion. The tried to re-enact the tow. They found Allied side, and permit operations up the Lancashire Fusiliers and the Munsters three things: no strong current – Turkish Danube against Germany’s principal ally, bore the brunt of the Turkish resistance, hydrographers say there never was or is -. On 18 , the former winning six Crosses one; coastal features that are impossible 16 British and French pre-Dreadnought before breakfast.9 to distinguish until one is right on them; failed to force the straits, and that it would have been impossible three were sunk and others severely Did the Anzacs land in for swimmers to lift a properly anchored damaged.8 The Turks had re-laid a the wrong place? naval buoy a mile from shore.11 cleared minefield overnight and skilfully The received story is that in the dim Further, close analysis of Hamilton’s deployed mobile Howitzer batteries pre-dawn, half-light of 25 April, as the plan shows that it was never more ashore. Only then was it decided that Anzacs crept to shore in whale boats, precise than an order for a landing north the Gallipoli Peninsula would have to a strong current carried their naval of Gaba Tepe on a 1,000 yard front. In be occupied and the Turkish batteries tows a mile to the north of the planned fact, this is what the navy delivered. silenced before the ships could proceed landing place at Gaba Tepe. Instead of Further, Anzac commander Sir William safely through the Dardanelles. As it running across the low plain to Maidos, Birdwood later admitted in his evidence happened, the navy did not get another four miles away on the Dardanelles side, to the Dardanelles Commission in chance. the Anzacs were faced with the steep 1917, that it was better they landed at General Sir Ian Hamilton’s force bluffs of Ari Burnu, leading up to the lightly defended Ari Burnu than go into was never more than a fifth Anzacs; commanding heights of the Sari Bair the ‘killing box’ further south, where

The Historian – Spring 2015 35 Graphic map of the Dardanelles State Library of NSW A good Samaritan? John Simpson Kirkpatrick was an unlikely hero. A man from South Shields, Tyneside, Simpson enlisted aged 23 in the AIF in 1914 in the Field Ambulance service. He had jumped ship in Australia in 1910 and used his second name as a surname on his attestation papers to avoid charges of desertion. On Gallipoli he braved shot and shell to bring the wounded down to the beach on the back of his donkey, variously named ‘Abdul’, ‘Murphy’ or ‘Duffy’. He quickly acquired a saintly aura, only enhanced by his being killed in action during the Turkish assault on 19 May. The publicity machine at home soon celebrated this highest form of mateship and later pronounced him ‘the spirit of Australia personified’. His Geordie the Turkish troops were massed and the Anzacs, reinforced by , accent, fiery temper and radical politics the cover much more intense. Lancashires and Warwickshires, were were effectively air-brushed out. Statues On the first day eventually over 12,000 to attempt a break-out at Chunuk Bair, of Simpson, his donkey and a wounded Anzacs faced some 4,000 Turks, but Baby 700 (the Nek) and Lone Pine. The man now grace both the Shrine of the Turks occupied the heights and inexperienced force, dehydrated Remembrance in and the looked down into an area where it was after being cooped up for too long in Australian War Memorial in Canberra, said they could even see a rabbit move. transports, were pinned down not far and a series of postage stamps portraying Strategically, the campaign was all but inland from their landing place. him was issued in 1965. Compassion is lost on the first day. Meanwhile, in a feint attack on the the acceptable face of war: Albert Jacka, ridges far above Stopford’s force, to the who won the AIF’s first VC on 19 May Ordered back from the south dismounted Australian Light for capturing single-handedly a Turkish Summit? Horse charged across the Nek. This was trench, and won an MC and Bar in Captain Joe Lalor, wielding a sword a sloping ridge barely the size of two , was a military hero nonpareil in reputedly used by his grandfather at tennis courts, with deep, precipitous Australia immediately after the war. But the Eureka Stockade rebellion on the gullies either side: 550 went ‘over the Jacka’s cult has long since waned while Australian colonial goldfields, was killed top’ in four waves; 375 of them became the undecorated Simpson’s goes from ascending the heights. A handful of casualties, 234 of these dead. Bean called strength to strength.14 Anzacs, among them it a collective act of ‘reckless obedience’.12 and Philip Robin who penetrated On Chunuk Bair, some Wellingtons furthest, actually reached the top of the and Gurkhas managed to scramble to ’s letter bluffs and glimpsed the Narrows below, the summit, but their numbers were ended the campaign? but they were checked by Turks above insufficient to make the position secure A young Australian journalist, Keith them on Chunuk Bair. Eventually, when and they were forced to retreat. At Lone Murdoch,15 was sent by , Mustapha Kemal Pine, along the trench line to the right the Australian Prime Minister who (later President Atatürk) took personal of the Nek, other Anzacs fought for had committed his country’s troops command of the reinforcements rushed three days and made a limited advance, to Gallipoli, on a confidential mission into the area, the main body of the winning an extraordinary seven Victoria to the peninsula in in Anzacs were pinned down on the reverse Crosses in the action.13 the immediate aftermath of the Suvla slope, where they were to remain for Australian myth, most recently fiasco. Under the cloak of inquiring the rest of the campaign. They were enshrined in Weir’s movie, has the Light into the AIF’s mailing arrangements, fought back, not ordered back. When the Horse being ordered to their deaths by Murdoch interviewed Hamilton, some Turks attacked in force on 19 May, the a British who stayed in the safety of his , and all of the Australian Australian trenches held firm, and the of his command post. In fact, he was an senior commanders. He also spoke to Turks suffered 10,000 casualties to the Australian colonel; and another Australian the British correspondent, Ashmead Anzacs 628. In Great War conditions, colonel led the first wave and died doing Bartlett, who entrusted him with a charging fixed positions without massive so. The film also shows the light horsemen letter to the British Prime Minister, artillery support was virtual suicide. cursing the Tommies who are sipping tea Herbert Asquith, begging him to end on the beach below at Suvla. They must the disastrous campaign. After a tip-off, Light Horsemen have had remarkable eyesight to see them Murdoch had the letter taken away from sacrificed at the Nek? five kilometres away through the morning him by the British military censors in On 6 August, with his force augmented haze! And the Tommies did more than Marseilles, whereupon he wrote his own by three divisions of Kitchener’s New have tea, as they suffered 1,700 casualties philippic to Fisher, which found its way Army, Hamilton mounted a new in making good their position. Belatedly, to Asquith. Sensing trouble, the shrewd offensive. The ‘K’ men, under General on 21 August, the regulars of the British Asquith had Murdoch’s letter printed Sir , landed five 29th attempted unsuccessfully to and circulated as a British cabinet paper. kilometres north of Anzac Cove at Suvla join up the Suvla and Anzac positions at Described as ‘lurid’ by Churchill, Bay and exploited inland across a vast the at a cost of 5,000 Murdoch’s letter accused Hamilton dried-out salt lake. Simultaneously, more casualties. of bungling the plan for the August

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Total men who fought in campaign* A group of unidentified Australian and New Zealand soldiers in a front line trench on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Force Number Number Number Australian War Memorial C03420 who fought wounded who died

British (including Indian 350,000 80,000 25,000 and Newfoundlander) French 79,000 27,000 10,000 (including colonial) Anzac 74,000 23,000 10,000 Turkish 400,000 140,000 86,000

* These figures are rounded-off estimates offensive. Hamilton had ‘completely possibility of any sally failed’ as a strategist and many of his up the Danube against staff were ‘conceited young cubs only... Austria-Hungary. playing at war’. The Kitchener men at Suvla were thought by the Australians to W(h)ither be ‘toy soldiers’, mere ‘child-like youths Anzac? without the strength to endure or brains In 1965 it was thought to improve their conditions’. The French that would called Hamilton ‘the general who lives wither and die with on the island’. In short, ‘sedition is talked the deaths of the last around every tin of bully beef on the Anzacs. Instead, it peninsula’. Murdoch’s report was biased, has been transformed but it was bias, which informed morale, into a day celebrating that Fisher had asked him to gauge. The Australian-ness and letter was a rhetorical tour de force and more march and watch added a strident Australian voice to an the rites than ever increasing litany of complaint. before. Willy nilly, Australian myth suggests it was and regardless of the Murdoch’s letter which led to Hamilton’s complexities of what sacking in October and the eventual actually happened in ending of the campaign. It was clearly 1915, it is Australia’s a factor, but much more important national day.17 were British defence supremo Lord Kitchener’s own views that the campaign REFERENCES Moorhouse, Hell’s Foundations (, 1992). was failing, the agitation in London 1 A version of this paper was presented at a 10 Koja Cheman Tepe (971 feet) and Hill Q (900 conference on ‘A Struggle on Five “Fronts”: feet) were higher, but further inland; while of Stopford the dismissed Suvla in Embassies, on Land, at Sea, at from Chunuk Bair the Anzac position could be commander, and a critical report by Home, and within Coalitions’ at the University of dominated. the British cabinet secretary, Maurice North Carolina, Chapel Hill, August 2014. Unless 11 Tom Frame, The Shores of Gallipoli (Sydney, otherwise indicated, the main sources used in 2000), chs 11-12. Hankey, who had visited the front at the this paper was C.E.W. Bean’s magisterial The 12 C.E.W. Bean, The Official History of Australia in 16 same time as Murdoch. Official History of Australia in the War of 1914- the War of 1914-1918: the Australian Imperial 1918: the story of Anzac, vols I and II (Brisbane, Force in France during the Allied offensive, 1918, 1981;first published in Sydney in 1921). vol. VI (Sydney, 1942), p.1083. Was the Anzac death 2 The best introduction to the campaign is still 13 Peter Burness, The Nek (Sydney, 1996) rate the highest? Robert Rhodes James’s classic, Gallipoli (London, and Suzanne Welborn, The Lords of Death No, they weren’t and no it wasn’t 1965). (Fremantle, WA, 1982). 3 This rhetorical nation-making is brilliantly 14 Irving Benson, The Man with the Donkey particularly high; as the figures in the analysed by K.S. Inglis in ‘The Australians at (London, 1965) celebrates the Simpson myth table above show. Gallipoli--I and II’ in Historical Studies, 15, nos 54 while Peter Cochrane, Simpson and the Donkey and 55, pp. 219-30, 361-75. (Melbourne, 1992) deconstructs it. See also Ian 4 ‘Apotheosis’ is the term used by Russel Ward Grant, Jacka VC (Melbourne, 1989). A futile campaign? in his classic work The Australian Legend 15 Later knighted, he became the proprietor of the Though the campaign failed in its main (Melbourne, 1958), ch.VIII. Melbourne Herald and is the father of Rupert 5 objective, it had a number of positive My English colleague in the History Department Murdoch, the current international media at the University of New , Professor tycoon. outcomes. Generals, officers and men David Kent, received death threats in the mail 16 The most accessible accounts are in John were tested in the crucible of battle, when he questioned the objectivity of Bean’s Robertson, Anzac and Empire (Melbourne, gaining invaluable experience which The Anzac Book (1916) in an academic article 1990), ch. 34 and Desmond Zwar, In Search of reported in the popular press. Keith Murdoch (Melbourne, 1980), ch.4. the survivors took with them to other 6 See, for example, James Brown, Anzac’s Long 17 It occupies a similar, if slightly less, place in theatres. The main Turkish forces were Shadow: the cost of our national obsession the New Zealand national imagination. For a tied up for the better part of a year and (Melbourne, 2014); Carolyn Holbrook, Anzac: perceptive, multi-national treatment of the the unauthorised biography (Melbourne, campaign’s various mythical afterlives, see Jenny the straits were closed to both sides. 2014), and Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Macleod, Gallipoli (Oxford, 2015 forthcoming). Turkish attention was diverted from What’s Wrong with Anzac: the militarisation of Australian history (Sydney, 2010). the Suez Canal. The Persian oil fields 7 As revealed by Professor Peter Dennis’s ‘First were protected. joined the war on AIF Database’ at the Carl Bridge is Professor of Australian the Allied side; and Academy. History, Department of History 8 Incidentally, this is the victory date the Turks maintained ambiguous neutrality; but celebrate in their principal monument at the and Menzies Centre for Australian ’s joining the Narrows. Studies, King’s College London. in September 1915 eliminated the 9 On the Lancashire Fusiliers, see Geoffrey

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