As we approach the Gallipoli centenary, I have set myself the task of re – reading some of the best examples of New Zealand writing about the disastrous invasion. There are three books, Ormond E Burton’s ‘The Silent Division’, Robin Hyde’s ‘Passport to Hell’ and Alexander Aitken’s ‘Gallipoli to the Somme’, all based upon first hand experiences of New Zealanders who fought in the bloody trenches of Gallipoli. I’ll start with the horror and some images of the ‘fallen’. Here is Private J. D. Stark (8/2142, Fifth Reinforcements, Otago Infantry Battalion) describing the bodies of the dead:
But the dead who waited in No Man’s Land didn’t look like dead, as the men who came to them now had thought of death. From a distance of a few yards, the bodies, lying in queer huddled attitudes, appeared to have something monstrously amiss with them. Then the burying-party, white faced, realised that twenty four hours of the Gallipoli sun had caused each boy to swell enormously – until the great threatening carcases were three times the size of a man, and their skins had the bursting blackness of grapes. It was impossible to recognise features or expression in that hideously puffed and contorted blackness.
This powerful and disturbing image, although surely important, is actually not the dominant narrative theme of these memoirs. Although each is distinctive and different, all three agree on one central feature of the Gallipoli experience: the awful monotony, boredom and sense of meaninglessness which dominated their cramped existence inside the trenches. Aitken for example waxes lyrical about Troy, Homer and Milton when he is recounting his Lemnos memories (just before Gallipoli), but this sense of passion and meaning is completely absent from his actual Gallipoli narrative:
I set down these particulars once and for all, not to be referred to again, dull as they must seem to anyone except a New Zealand infantryman who had manned those terraces. But the greater part of modern war, when of the static type, consists precisely of such monotony, such discomfort, such casual death. And so let it be stripped of glamour and seen for what it is. (Aitken 1963)
Burton’s description of Gallipoli is mostly about the mundane and uncomfortable details: the terrible food, the lice and the unsanitary conditions:
Scorching heat, swarms of venomous flies, hosts of never-resting lice, thirst, the pervading stench of the unburied dead, and then a new experience – the frightful monotony of war. A dangerous life is not necessarily an exciting one. A man is not less bored at living in a clay ditch six feet wide and eight feet deep for week on end without being able to move more than fifty yards to the right or left, because at some unknown moment a shell may blow him to smithereens. In war danger is part of the very atmosphere. Beyond a certain point it could not be guarded against. Snipers were always busy – shrapnel burst everywhere. These dangers could not be avoided. They were exceedingly annoying – sometimes even terrifying – but as a general rule not exciting. After the fierce rush of the Landing battles, a daily routine was established. Soon nothing was new, nothing was interesting, nothing was profitable. The bully beef was always salt and stringy; the biscuits were like armour plate bruising, rasping and scraping along the tender gums, smashing gold crowns and splintering plates. Nothing mattered. One thing was just as bad as another and nothing could be worse than some of the things that had gone before. This strain and weariness reacted upon the mental tone. The bad food, the tropical heat, the flies, the smell, wore down the physical condition. Then came the spectre of disease. In June scores of men were going down with diarrhoea, dysentery and enteric; in July they were being evacuated in hundreds.
There are of course other narratives to be found: the military story which revolves around questions of strategy and seeks to explain why Gallipoli was such a disaster for the Allied forces. Burton’s famous quote ‘somewhere between the landing at Anzac and the end of the battle of the Somme New Zealand very definitely became a nation’ provides the starting point for the famous and heavily promoted narrative of national identity. These sorts of narratives strike me as somewhat desperate attempts to provide a higher meaning or purpose for an event which lacks any redeeming features. The tediousness, horror and death of Gallipoli is what stands out as the most solid and truthful aspect of these first hand accounts.
The fact that the Allies were defeated at Gallipoli can be looked at in different ways. From the Turkish perspective the victory served as a powerful source of impetus for Ataturk and Turkish nationalism. There were surely other historical aspects to this process, but Gallipoli is a part of that story. The 1915 victory was a precursor to the eventual establishment of an independent Turkey in 1923. This victorious nationalism is personified by Kemal Ataturk. If you travel through Turkey you will see statues and photos of him everywhere, often posing on top of a rearing horse. It’s a powerful, masculine and militaristic image.
This victorious story of Turkish nationalism which took place between 1915 and 1923 contains a darker side: the Armenian genocide. Estimates differ, but most historians agree on a figure of around 1.5 million deaths. Thousands of other Christian minorites were also killed. Nationalism may have a sense of pride and honour and duty, but it also tends to kill the people it excludes.
From the Allied perspective Gallipoli was merely a battle in a much larger war. The battle may have been lost but the war was won. British and French imperialism triumphed over the Ottoman Empire. Maps were redrawn, promises were made and broken, new countries were formed out of the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire. There’s a very convincing line which can be drawn from the outcomes of 1918 to the terrible conflicts we see raging across the Middle East region today. The interference of Britain and France in the region created the seeds of discontent which are still playing out in the conflicts in Iraq and Syria.
This is the truth about Gallipoli: the outcomes are all negative. Looked at narrowly, it was a cynical and callous act of power politics which claimed the lives of thousands of men fighting each other in horrible conditions on a tiny strip of coastline. Looked at from a broader perspective Gallipoli was part of a nationalistic project which in its turn claimed the lives of 1.5 million Armenians. As an aspect of British and French imperialism, Gallipoli is also a part of a terrible legacy of Western intervention in the Middle East.
With these facts in mind it is hard to resist the conclusion that the nature and character of the Anzac commemoration in 2015 is both absurd and obscene. Absurd, because in its relentless and narrow focus upon the moral qualities of the dead soldiers, and a sentimental ideology of “remembrance”, it completely ignores the fact that absolutely nothing good resulted from all of those deaths. Obscene because of the silence it fosters about parallel events which have great relevance and very real connection with Gallipoli seen from a broader historical perspective. Isolating Gallipoli from the Armenian genocide, from the conflicts in Syria and Iraq is an act of historical bad faith. The fact that the rituals of Anzac are conducted with a solemn sense of moral duty makes them even more despicable.
Tim Leadbeater is a peace activist providing alternative reflections on ANZAC Day.
World War One happened essentially because the European aristocracy had become extremely bored with the many years of peace and wanted a fight so they could prove themselves.
Reminds me of a history lecture I attended a decade ago. My lecturer began with a clip from Blackadder in which Baldrick asks Blackadder why the war began. Blackadder’s typically ironic reply was that the war started because it was too much trouble NOT to have a war. In essence that was the truth.
War War One was unnecessary and could easily have been avoided but a lot of people didn’t want to avoid it. This kind of thinking led to New Zealand’s involvement and the sorrow saga of Gallipoli.
I actually feel quite sad that so much coverage and money is invested in keeping this myth alive. I spent 24 years of my OE living in Britain where they have remembrance day. One the 11th hour or the 11th day of the 11th month the population has a minute’s silence and then we all move on. There is some coverage on the tv, but nothing like the daily bulletins we’ve seen on every news broadcast for the last week, and will be in the coming week. Young children coached in the doctrine of remembrance. I felt uncomfortable watching impressionable young children being asked to comment on the gruesome displays at the new exhibition ‘celebrating’ this event. I would rather have seen that money spent on lifting kids out of poverty.
Nobody celebrates it, it is about remembering the fallen and the folly of war.
i dont see much re: the folly of war these days – or any previous for that matter
and you need to include the ‘ ‘ when using the word celebrating- it changes the meaning to leave those out
They DO celebrate it.They verily get their rocks off on it. It’s about remembering the fallen? Who? What are their names? Who were their parents, siblings, children who greived so much for them? ‘Remembering the fallen’ and ‘Lest we forget’, the two favourites quotes currently, just make me sick, spoken by those who cannot do the first and don’t do the second. And ‘the folly of war’? Sure, when are governments going to learn THAT lesson.
I have a great uncle who came home from Gallipoli and was an inmate of Kingseat mental hospital. He suffered from what was known as ‘shell shock’ in those times and to MY great embarrassment, HE was considered an embarrassment by the rest of his family. He became so institutionalised that he spent the rest of his life there. Because of him, I always searched out articles about trench warfare so that I could try and understand what had happened to him. I do understand and there was no glory there. Was he better off than his brothers who died?
All wars are absurd and obscene. Gallipoli was only one battle of many but was the first in the ‘modern era’ of warfare for our men. To begrudge them respect for their convictions of the day is what is obscene. Whatever the politics, whatever the outcomes, it is the men who went to war filled with the jingoism of their times that deserve some consideration, if not for what they went through then for the blood that was spilled and for those who never came back. Gallipoli is a figurehead for our war remembrance; it could easily be Passchendaele or Somme but it is what it is. Forget the ‘they died for our democracy/way of life/freedoms’ b.s. and look at it purely in honouring our forebears who endured unspeakable deprivations and horrors at the front. Those that did and survived formed the beginnings of our anti-war movements. Respect.
With these facts in mind it is hard to resist the conclusion that the nature and character of the Anzac commemoration in 2015 is both absurd and obscene. Absurd, because in its relentless and narrow focus upon the moral qualities of the dead soldiers, and a sentimental ideology of “remembrance”, it completely ignores the fact that absolutely nothing good resulted from all of those deaths. Obscene because of the silence it fosters about parallel events which have great relevance and very real connection with Gallipoli seen from a broader historical perspective. Isolating Gallipoli from the Armenian genocide, from the conflicts in Syria and Iraq is an act of historical bad faith. The fact that the rituals of Anzac are conducted with a solemn sense of moral duty makes them even more despicable. – See more at: https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2015/04/19/guest-blog-tim-leadbeater-the-absurdity-and-obscenity-of-gallipoli/#.dpuf
My sentiments exactly… Ya took the words right out of my mouth.
This for this bit of well written sanity.
Oops I mean, THKS ..not this!
Essential reading on the Great Wrong War, the book of that title by Stevan Eldred-Grigg.
The Great Wrong War caused by the rivalry of the great powers of the time to redivide Europe and the overseas colonies.
Workers from all these countries were sent to war to kill one another to increase the power and wealth of the victorious powers. The end of that war prepared the ground for the next.
The response by communists who did not get sucked into this jingoism was to refuse to fight and to mobilise against their own ruling class as the ‘enemy at home’.
For all the enthusiast empire sabre rattling in NZ there was also a strong resistance to the war from organised labour and some Waikato Maori. Those Iwi who were keenest to go to war were usually those who never fought the settlers or who took the settlers side in the land wars.
The current celebration of nationhood born 100 years ago by the mass slaughter of workers for profits should be resisted today as a blatant rallying of workers to prepare to fight a Third Imperialist war on the side of the US/NATO bloc against the rival power of China and Russia.
The workers answer to imperialist wars is to take up arms but refuse to fight one another for profits and when repressed by the state to turn their guns on their own ruling classes.
Eldred-Grigg’s book is undoubtedly the best book so far on this terrible, very wrong war. It is also useful in looking at the role of Britain and France. Even when I did SC history many years ago, the textbook (by Richards, I think), clearly wrote that WW1 was precipitated by Britain “coming out of splendid isolation”, and turning attention to Europe. Both Britain and France wanted to eliminate the centuries old power of the Austrian Empire, and now the newly emerging power of an industrialised Germany, united by Bismarck 40 yrs earlier, and now a real player. Not to mention the “sick” Ottoman Empire, that they thought would be a pushover as they scrambled for booty. Support for Serbian terrorists murdering the heir to the Austrian Empire is tantamount to Britain and France supporting Al Queda after 9/11. Of course the Hapsburgs needed to pursue the matter. I never thought I’d want to argue “bring back the Hapsburgs”. But under their many centuries of rule through Europe minorities, especially Jews, were mostly protected and safe. In 2011 I was invited by a friend to an event at Theresinstad, where Jewish survivors gathered. I discussed Eldred-Grigg’s book with an elderly Austrian Jewish survivor. When I mentioned the new interest in the culpability of Britain and France she wept, and hugged me. She said “I never thought I would hear an English person admit this. It was the collapse of Austria and our safety, that caused the later rise of Hitler and the Jewish holocaust”. Sobering thoughts. But it is always the upper-classes who cause wars, and who send the workers to their death. The returned men of WW1 wanted it to be “the war to end all wars”. We have failed them by forgetting that message.
Further to the point about Maori for and against WW1 this from the NZHistory archives
Aye….that’d stick the shits right up ’em…I like that , I do.
And if any brown nosing neo liberal doesn’t like that…well, son…you better get yourself reacquainted with the American Constitution….whereby the right to bear arms wasn’t to turn it upon the common folk but ORIGINALLY put there to guard against a govt that had become out of control.
It was called the militia . And it was there to remind those would be leaders not to push the envelope too far or get any notion they were somehow above the populace that THEY SERVED .
Strange Meeting by WILFRED OWEN
Reading by Sir Alec Guinness (at 2.28) on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mNgf7H6ytk
Strange Meeting
It seemed that out of battle I escaped
Down some profound dull tunnel, long since scooped
Through granites which titanic wars had groined.
Yet also there encumbered sleepers groaned,
Too fast in thought or death to be bestirred.
Then, as I probed them, one sprang up, and stared
With piteous recognition in fixed eyes,
Lifting distressful hands, as if to bless.
And by his smile, I knew that sullen hall,—
By his dead smile I knew we stood in Hell.
With a thousand fears that vision’s face was grained;
Yet no blood reached there from the upper ground,
And no guns thumped, or down the flues made moan.
“Strange friend,” I said, “here is no cause to mourn.”
“None,” said that other, “save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also; I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour,
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here.
For by my glee might many men have laughed,
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
Now men will go content with what we spoiled.
Or, discontent, boil bloody, and be spilled.
They will be swift with swiftness of the tigress.
None will break ranks, though nations trek from progress.
Courage was mine, and I had mystery;
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery:
To miss the march of this retreating world
Into vain citadels that are not walled.
Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot-wheels,
I would go up and wash them from sweet wells,
Even with truths that lie too deep for taint.
I would have poured my spirit without stint
But not through wounds; not on the cess of war.
Foreheads of men have bled where no wounds were.
“I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I knew you in this dark: for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now. . . .”
Source: The Poems of Wilfred Owen, edited by Jon Stallworthy (W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1986)
The returned servicemen and women deserve our gratitude and respect.They did what they did in the context of what they knew at the time. There is far too much RSA bashing on this site, not only on this post. Said with sincerity.This is not the place.
“deserve our gratitude and respect”
Is that ALL?!
How cheap.
How about decent gear? And work after they leave service. Or the best care we can give for those harmed in body and mind? And the kids damaged by their fathers’ exposure to radiation or chemicals?
How about turning the ‘cannon fodder’ to better use – while still meeting the deep desire for danger and action of some – without creating ‘war’.
How about free tar and feathers for war-mongers with their eyes on the bottomless public purse that pays for shoddy materiel?
How about we ‘give a damn’ instead of creating damnation on the earth, on the conscientious objectors, and on such people as Sylvia Panckhurst and John Maclean.
“You talk o’ better food for us, an’ schools, an’ fires, an’ all:
We’ll wait for extry rations if you treat us rational.
Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face
The Widow’s Uniform is not the soldier-man’s disgrace.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot;”
Kipling.
‘Gratitude and respect’ Cheap, eh?
There was absolutely nothing in my piece which criticised the RSA. Although I’m not a big fan of the red poppy as a symbol, I think that it’s a great thing the RSA does, helping veterans who have health issues or injuries. Here’s another point to consider: last year (according to John Campbell) the RSA raised $1.8 million from poppy sales. This year, according to my reckoning, the government will spend at least $42 million on Anzac memorials and centenary activities. Given that the injuries and health effects suffered were a consequence of political decisions made by the state, surely it is the state that should be footing the bill?? Why should citizens have to pay for these decisions, especially as they NEVER get to actually vote on them?
As for whether Anzac day is ‘the time or place’ for critical reflection, I think it absolutely is. There is nothing disrespectful about this. As should be clear from my piece, I place a lot of importance on the voices of the WW1 veterans themselves. Many of these same vets, like Ormond E Burton, became very critical of the war and the associated patriotic militarism that goes along with Anzac day. There’s another tradition there – completely and staunchly opposed to Anzac day Key and Abbott want to promote – and I’m proud to belong to that.
Almost nobody doubts, these days, that World War One was pointless from beginning to end, and a terrible tragedy. However, I believe it stands in our NZ conscience partly because New Zealanders saw, for the first time, what being part of the British Empire really meant. As a result, they started identifying themselves with New Zealand rather than Britain, so as a keystone of NZ identity, yes it’s important.
As for a 100 per cent stance that all war is bad, can anyone suggest a better way to have beaten Hitler? Because quite a few different ways were tried before war was declared, including appeasement that effectively gave him license to expand his racist creed, which was incredibly damaging to many people’s who fell under his regime even before 1939.
I have little patience for pacifists who can’t see that.
Well said. WW1 was a war that never needed to happen. WW2 was an inevitable and essential response to the actions of a madman (Hitler) and a nation that followed him blindly.
I agree however Hitler was enabled by a harsh and vengeful Treaty of Versailles which created the socio/economic conditions that led to radicalisation and political extremes.
I think Voltaire sums it up nicely: “To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.”
@Quicksilver – great quote.
Great analysis.
I hate the glorification of war that Anzac brings, this article is a useful reminder of the reality as told by the troops.
Scorching heat, swarms of venomous flies, hosts of never-resting lice, thirst, the pervading stench of the unburied dead, and then a new experience – the frightful monotony of war.
I particularly hate men like John Key who glorify it, trade lives for favours and standing, and wallow in a myth of past glory to peddle more wars and occupations instead of learning from the past.
ANZAC day is not about glorifying war, it is about remembering those who gave their lives. There was and is a time for good men (and women) to stand up and be counted. WW1 was a travesty, but the folk who went to fight believed it was for freedom, and it is that belief that I commemorate.
I myself am torn between honouring the sacrifices of our forefathers even though they were used by the elite and the glorification of warmongering. Its rather disturbing the amount of money being spent on posters advertising etc in my area amping up ANZAC Day when we have the NZ forces off to Iraq. I so hope that the commercialisation is a coincidence and not politically motivated from the top down.
As Madame Rothchild stated .. ” If my sons did not want war there would be no wars”
As American General Smedley D Butler said “War is a racket, it always has been”
Institutionalized violence.
That’s all war is…
Typically , – its one 18 year old trying to bayonet another 18 year old in the guts.
Or shoot the brains out , or use a grenade to disembowel another young guy.
That’s your war for you.
And usually…brought about by so called out – of – control – adults who condescendingly should know better.
Doesn’t matter if its some pompous , mustachioed toff from 1914 or some cheesy nerd money trader from 2015 in a position of power advocating the slaughter…
The common thread is always those characters never get their hands dirty …in general.
Winston Churchill did, Blood and Guts Patton did, Adolf Hitler did , Napoleon did…down through history guys like this lead from the front it cannot be denied…
But in today’s world….where controlling the popular opinion is paramount because of world wide cynicism…it is more often leaders who would never dream of engaging the enemy themselves….them or their own children.
Far safer to let other parents kids die an agonizing death in some godforsaken place screaming for their loved ones with their intestines spilled out over the dirt…facing eternity with terror…
It matters not to me whether your an ISIS leader or a leader of a western nation mobilizing against someone else.
Your still a murdering bastard.
You have a duty to do your best to protect your families , and even your country…from invasion. It wont happen by itself…but you have no right at all to buy into a fight faraway which means the murdering of other human beings.
The very concept of war is a serious decision that needs prolonged input …and if deemed as having the wrong motives …must be shelved and national sovereignty maintained by excising that democratic principle.
This has not happened at all with Key and his unilateral decision. He had NO RIGHT or MANDATE from the NZ public to make that decision and that decision should be overturned until such democratic principle is adhered to.
Failure to do so…not only repeats history ….and secures the same anti- democratic status as the ‘ assumed’ one expecting the dominions and dependencies to rush unquestioningly to Mother England’s aid at the start of World War one… simply by replacing the British Empire of THEN with the five eyes spy network of NOW …( basically USA’s call to arms now…)…..
But also repeats history by denying due democratic process as it did at the outbreak of World War one , being so much the worse because it shows we have chosen to learn nothing since Gallipoli.
Absolutely nothing.
We are still like that generation of World War one – so easily manipulated like chess pieces by these same murderous bastards who wield power.
Worse,…as in this age of mass communication…we have no real excuse to pretend we didn’t know any better. It simply isn’t credible.
And therefore much more an indictment on this generation….who basically…don’t care enough to consider other human beings lives…
Perhaps that really IS ….the root core of the problem.
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