Letters from Gallipoli
edited by Glyn Harper Auckland University Press, $45
Glyn Harper, a former army man and now a historian with Massey University, drew upon about 600 letters he collected from archives and family collections, whittling them down to 190 for inclusion in this illuminating book.
Illuminating because it tells the
story of the terrible Gallipoli campaign in the words of those who were there.
The letters emerge in chronological chapters, and in that way the reader quickly picks up on the change, from determination during preparation to thinly-veiled despair during the worst times on the peninsula, to the eventual withdrawal with little or nothing achieved beyond bodies in the earth.
As one young soldier from the Canterbury Mounted Rifles wrote in 1915 during training in Egypt: "I am sure every one of the boys left in Egypt are not thinking or caring whether they return to New Zealand, but just thirsting to get to Gallipoli to carry on the good work started by the first lot."
Of the actual landings, an unnamed Gisborne soldier's early impressions were of awe.
"The explosion of the shells made a terrific din, you ma would have put your fingers in your ears."
He also wrote. "It's marvellous how few were shot in the boats which were coming and going."
What many of these letters show is that the Kiwi troops stoically adapted to the horror of that doomed campaign.
Corporal Mostyn Pryce Jones to his mother: "Our men were dropping one after another but then gamely stuck to it, finally gaining the firing line. I will never forget that advance ... it was awful."
This was not just a man's war either, as Private Reginald Evans noted to his grandmother. He described how he and his cobbers tracked and killed a Turkish sniper.
"She was shot before we knew she was a woman. There have been a lot of women snipers about ... they are good shots."
Some of the battlefront descriptions are quite innocently stark.
"I had men killed all round here, and it is curious the way they spin round and round before they fall just like rabbits."
So many good stories are portrayed. They include the poignant, uplifting, heartbreaking and occasionally, despite the trauma, humorous.
This excellent volume details the humanity of the Gallipoli campaign well.
