25 April 1915 A Day to Remember and a book to buy
On this blog I will post occasional reviews that I have written on books that I think were particularly good. Here is the first 25 April 1915 by David Cameron. It wasn’t perfect - what book is - but it was a cracking read whilst reorganising the Anzac material to give you a newish perspective of the battle there that day. I can’t wait to get back there with the army in about a month.25 April 1915: The Day the Anzac Legend was BornDavid CameronThis book is a temptation to any Gallipoli enthusiast. David Cameron’s method is simple but beguiling: he has recast Charles Bean’s magnificent geographically dominated account into a chronological narrative encompassing the whole of the events at Anzac on 25 April 1915. Into this framework he has layered in copious personal experience accounts that include key Turkish accounts. I initially was sceptical, especially on encountering the spectacularly misjudged couple of paragraphs that summed up the Allied naval assault of 18 March 1918, which contained a series of errors that undermined my confidence in the author – who by his own account is not a historian. He has no grasp of the differences between super-dreadnoughts, dreadnoughts, pre-dreadnoughts and battlecruisers. This wouldn’t really matter, but in itself the details are really not that complex and indicate a complete lack of interest in maritime affairs despite the list of naval sources that are lovingly inserted in the bibliography, but were clearly never read. The Inflexible wavers between being a battleship and a battlecruiser, the Irresistible is apparently a battlecruiser although it was actually a pre-dreadnought etc, etc. This is compounded by the irrelevant intersections throughout the book of the exploits of the AE2, these have nothing to do with ANZAC and serve only to distract from the narrative that he has gone to such efforts to create.But boy what a narrative it is!I read most of the book during a recent tour of Gallipoli in May 2007 with a British Army logistics unit, which included a full day at Anzac. Whatever doubts I had were washed away by the sheer power of the story as Cameron tells it. The chance to walk the exact ground in the footsteps of these men would entrance and enthral anyone. To teeter down the Zig Zag path from Plugge’s Plateau into Rest Valley, to climb up on to Russell’s Top, to nervously walk down a muddy Walker’s Ridge, to search for the Cup, to overlook Dead Man’s Ridge and Bloody Angle from Quinn’s Post with the voices of the dead playing in your ears. The heroism of certain individuals created a legend that Australians rightly will never forget. Names ring out like clarion bells: Loutit, Margetts, Bennett, Westamacott, Talbot Smith and Braund. Cameron’s book is a salute to their initiative, determination, endurance and all too frequent sacrifice.One thing that clearly emerges from the time-sequenced narrative is the utter brilliance of the Turks. The heroic defence of the very few men that face the initial landings. Their retirement time and time again just before their positions were overrun by massively superior numbers. The deadly accurate sniping that stripped units of first their senior officers, then the subalterns, the senior NCOs and finally of every individual that showed initiative and courage. Advance to contact is always painful, but in amidst the gullies, ridges and dense undergrowth of Anzac it was usually fatal. Significantly when the Prisk and his men on Pine Ridge came under sustained ‘friendly’ fire on falling back towards Bolton’s Ridge they suffered no casualties. Perhaps not every Australian bushman was a crack shot despite all the legends? Then when the Turkish reinforcement battalions arrived they flung themselves into battle with no thoughts of their personal survival under the inspiring leadership of Mustafa Kemal and the often forgotten Colonel Sefik Aker. The importance of artillery support, as always in the Great War is correctly emphasised time and time again.Perhaps Cameron brushes things under the carpet: the overblown accounts of the initial almost unopposed landings, who was the officer Major Bennett had to threaten with a revolver to keep him in line, the ubiquity of men drifting back to the beach is referenced, but nevertheless significantly underplayed while the incompetence of senior commanders who constantly failed to grasp the tactical situation is not really nailed to the ground. He also uses ‘decimated’ time and time again when he clearly does not mean one in ten; he thinks the Nek is of ‘strategic’ importance – the Kilid Bahr Plateau and the Narrows were of strategic importance, the Nek is just tactically significant. But this is not intended as an analytical book; it is a story and a bloody good one. In the end I loved this book and if you want to relive the battle I can recommend nothing more than you read this and the Official Australian History by the ‘Blessed Bean’ - side by side. Then visit Anzac…