Gallipoli: The Untold Story
‘The first casualty of war is
truth’
By Gerry Docherty &
Jim MacGregor
The truth
about Gallipoli has, unlike its victims, been buried deep. Historians like
Peter Hart who describe it as “an idiocy generated by muddled thinking”1
are justified in their anger, but not their conclusions. The campaign was
conceived in London as a grotesque, Machiavellian strategy to fool the Russians
into believing that Britain was attempting to capture Constantinople for them.
The paradox of its failure lay in its success. Gallipoli was purposefully
designed to fail.
A secret
cabal of immensely rich and powerful men – the Secret Elite – was formed in
England in 1891 with the explicit aim of expanding the British Empire across
the entire globe. They planned a European war to destroy Germany as an
economic, industrial and imperial competitor and, to that end, drew France then
Russia into an alliance termed the Entente Cordiale. Their massive land armies
were needed to crush Germany. France would be rewarded with Alsace and
Lorraine, while Russia was conned into believing she would get Constantinople.2
Thereafter, seizing the Ottoman capital became a “widespread obsession,
bordering on panic” in St Petersburg.3
Had Britain
encouraged the friendship of Turkey in 1914, the disaster of Gallipoli would
never have happened.4 The Turks generally disliked the Germans and
their growing influence,5 and made three separate attempts to ally
with Britain. They were rebuffed on each occasion.6 They also
pleaded in vain with the French to accept them as an ally,7 and
protect them against their old enemy, Russia.8 Poor fools. The
French and British alliance with Russia was at the expense of the Turks, not an
alliance with the Turks to save them from Russia. Britain and France planned to
carve up the oil rich Ottoman Empire. To that end, the Turks had to be pushed
into the German camp and defeated.
In July 1914
the majority of the Turkish cabinet was still well disposed towards Britain,9
but their faith was shattered by the seizure of two battleships being built for
them in England. As an essay in provocation it was breathtaking.10
“If Britain wanted deliberately to incense the Turks and drive them into the
Kaiser’s arms she could not have chosen more effective means.”11
Winston Churchill (a loyal servant of the Secret Elite) seized the dreadnoughts
because they were “vital to Britain’s naval predominance.”12 The
truth ran much deeper.
Back in
February, Russia laid plans for her Black Sea fleet to take Constantinople by
landing 127,500 troops and heavy artillery from Odessa. Arrival of the
dreadnoughts from England would destroy this plan.13 Russia’s
Foreign Minister Sazonov issued a thinly veiled warning to London on 30 July:
“It is a matter of the highest degree of importance that… these ships must be
retained in England.”14 Fearful that Russia would renege on her
commitment to war should the ships be released, the Secret Elite withheld them.
It kept Russia on board and helped drive Turkey into the German camp (they
signed a treaty on 2 August), but it created a major problem. How to prevent
the Russian Black Sea fleet from seizing Constantinople? Two German warships
provided the answer. On 4 August, while off the coast of Algeria, the battle
cruiser Goeben
and attendant light cruiser Breslau
received orders to head for Constantinople.
Vastly
outnumbered (73 to 2) by French and British warships, the escape of the German
cruisers to Constantinople, 1,200 miles away, is described as a “fiasco of
tragic errors” by “fumbling” British Admirals.15 The British
Admiralty supposedly had no idea where they were heading, but the reality was very
different. On 3 August, Kaiser Wilhelm telegraphed King Constantine to say that
both warships would be proceeding to Constantinople. This information was
transmitted to London,16 and to the British naval mission in Athens.17
Naval Intelligence in London had intercepted and decrypted the actual encoded
message from Berlin to Goeben:
“Alliance concluded with Turkey. Goeben
and Breslau
proceed to Constantinople.” The Admiralty knew,18 but relayed
information to the Mediterranean fleet that “was either useless or inaccurate.”19
Goeben and Breslau were allowed to
escape in order to neutralise the Russian Black Sea fleet. Foreign Secretary
Sazonov was outraged that the Royal Navy had failed to prevent it.20
The Ottoman
Ambassador in Berlin summed it up perfectly: “Considering the displeasure and
complications which a Russian attack on Constantinople would produce in
England, the British navy having enabled the German ships to take cover in the
Sea of Marmora, has, with the Machiavellianism characteristic of the Foreign
Office, foiled any possibility of action by the Russian Black Sea Fleet.”21
Safe arrival of the Goeben
rendered a Russian amphibious operation well-nigh impossible,22 and
the British Ambassador at Constantinople admitted that their presence served
British interests, since “they protected the straits against Russia.”23
On 9
September Admiral Arthur Limpus, head of the British naval mission in Turkey,
was recalled. Turkey, although still neutral, closed and mined the Dardanelles.
In late October Goeben
and Breslau
bombarded Sevastopol and other Black Sea ports. Infuriated, Tsar Nicholas
insisted on war with Turkey and the seizure of Constantinople for Russia.
British and French fears that he would make peace with Germany if Constantinople
was denied him gave the Tsar overwhelming diplomatic leverage, and it was
agreed that Turkey must now be brought into the war.24
War Declared & the Secret Elites Initiate
Gallipoli Campaign
On 2
November Russia declared war on Turkey. Britain and France followed suit three
days later.
“November 1914 brought a kind of holy war fever to the Russian Foreign
Ministry.”25 With over one million Russian casualties for no gain,
anti-war protests and revolution stalked the streets of Petrograd. In London,
fear of Russia signing a peace treaty with Germany loomed large. How was Russia
to be kept in the war with the promise of Constantinople, without actually
allowing it? The solution, an attack on Gallipoli, was fraught with pitfalls.
The Tsar had to be tricked into believing Britain was generously responding in
his hour of need by mounting an all-out effort to take Constantinople for
Russia.
The
Gallipoli campaign supposedly arose from an urgent call for help from the
Russian commander-in-chief Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich on 31 December. Would
Britain create a diversion to relieve pressure on Russian troops fighting in
the Caucasus?26 This widely held view is wrong. The suggestion came
not from Nikolaevich, but from the British military attaché at Petrograd, Sir John
Hanbury-Williams. Intimately linked to the Secret Elite and their leader Lord
Alfred Milner,27 Hanbury-Williams was frequently in close contact
with Nikolaevich. He expressed anxiety about Russia’s domestic morale, but
never even mentioned the Dardanelles. It was Hanbury-Williams who planted the
idea of a British demonstration against the Ottoman Empire.28 Next
day this was presented to the British War Council and magically transformed
into a desperate plea for help from Russia.
Having
already decided their strategy to keep the Russians out of Constantinople, the
Secret Elite now cleverly made it appear that the idea came from Russia. It was
all pre-planned, “long before any kind of military imperative in the Ottoman
theatre was apparent.”29 The Secretary of the Committee for Imperial
Defence, Maurice Hankey, proposed a solution that met all requirements, and it
is no coincidence that Hankey was himself a member of the Secret Elite.30
The Gallipoli campaign would be mounted as a sop to the Russians, but set up to
fail.
Days later
the military dynamic changed. The Turkish 3rd Army was decimated in
the Caucasus and, irrespective of whose suggestion it had been, there was no
need whatsoever for any British intervention to help Russia. Nonetheless, on 20
January Britain informed Russia that she would undertake not just a
demonstration, but a complete operation to penetrate the Dardanelles and
Gallipoli. The Russians desperately wanted to take part, but were told to
concentrate all efforts against Germany on the Eastern Front. The Secret Elite
moved into top gear. An objective that required long months of careful
preparation was rushed ahead at breakneck speed with disregard for the basic
prerequisites for success.
Churchill
assumed command and chose men for their ineptitude rather than ability. He
turned to Vice-Admiral Sackville Carden, recently appointed commander of the
Mediterranean Squadron after years in a desk-bound job, as superintendent of
the Malta dockyards. Slow and ineffective,31 Carden was tasked with
drawing up a plan for a naval attack on the Dardanelles, and relaying it to
Churchill within days for presentation to a War Council meeting.32
On 15 January Carden was informed that his
plan had been accepted33 and that he would be in command. What had
happened? The ‘plan’, rapidly cobbled together on the back of an envelope by a
second rate officer, was to be used as the blueprint for the Gallipoli
campaign. The reluctant Carden was given no option other than to get on with
it,34 and was effectively set up to take the blame when it failed.
For fail it must.
Rear-Admiral
Arthur Limpus, an eminently more experienced and knowledgeable man who had spent
years in Turkey advising on all naval matters, including the defence of the
Dardanelles, was overlooked.35 Here was the man “who knew the Turks
and the Dardanelles intimately,”36 yet Churchill shunned him because
“the Turks might be offended” and it would be “unfair and unduly provocative”
to place in command a man with an inside knowledge of the Turkish fleet.37
Limpus “knew all their secrets,”38 and more about the Dardanelles
and the Turkish navy than any other naval officer, yet we are asked to believe
that he wasn’t given command because it was considered ungentlemanly – “not
quite cricket.”39 Limpus had been sent to the Malta dockyards to sit
at Carden’s old desk. Outrageous stupidity or cold calculation?
Limpus was
opposed to Churchill’s plan,40 stressing that the first stage must
be an amphibious landing, not a naval attack.41 He was not alone in
his opposition. In 1906, naval chiefs considered a naval assault too risky.42
Any attack on Gallipoli would “have to be undertaken by a joint naval and military
expedition,”43 and Churchill himself stated in 1911 that it was “no
longer possible to force the Dardanelles.”44 Rear-Admiral Carden was
ignorant of the fact that any chance of success at Gallipoli was absolutely
dependent on a combined naval and military operation. Without long, detailed
joint planning, and a sufficient number of troops, it was impossible. Lord
Kitchener, the British Secretary of State for War, refused to make troops
available and Carden was ordered to proceed with a naval attack.
The Russians
were turning the screw. Pressure for immediate action influenced the War
Council’s decision.45 On 14 February, Sazonov stated that the time
for moderation had passed. Tsar Nicholas agreed, informing the French
ambassador that his people were making terrible sacrifices in the war without
reward. Constantinople must be incorporated into his empire.46
Sazonov implied to the British ambassador that he would resign, and be replaced
by Sergei Witte, a pro-German sympathiser who would immediately seal a treaty
with Germany.47 All warnings against a purely naval attack were
ignored. The navy’s objective was to “bombard and take the Gallipoli peninsula
with Constantinople as the objective.”48 After the disastrous
failure the Dardanelles Commission asked, “How can a fleet take a peninsula?
And how could it have Constantinople as its objective? If this meant… that the
Fleet should capture and occupy the city, then it was absurd.”49 It
was all absurd.
Naval
bombardment of the outer forts of the Dardanelles began on 19 February and ran
for six days. It caused some damage but destroyed all hope of surprise and
merely led the Turks to strengthen their defences.50 The main naval
attack took place on 18 March. On the previous day Vice-Admiral De Robek had to
take charge when Carden suffered a nervous breakdown. It was no surprise. He
was never fitted for the task and felt completely undermined by the Admiralty’s
refusal to provide custom-built minesweepers. They were utterly essential but
he was given only North Sea trawlers that could barely make headway against the
strong 5-6 knot current. Eight powerful destroyers, which could have been
fitted with sweeps, remained idle that fateful day while the officers sat
playing cards,51 and only two out of a total of 387 mines were
cleared.52 A fleet of 16 British and French battleships bombarded
the coast, but were unable to penetrate the minefield and six battleships were
sunk or disabled by mines. The Bouvet
sank within two minutes with over 600 men trapped inside. It was the disaster
predicted as far back as 1906.
A Campaign That Could Never Succeed
Orchestrated
chaos shrouded a campaign that could never succeed. Kitchener meantime
had changed his mind and agreed to make troops available for a combined attack,
but the naval assault had gone ahead before their arrival. Maurice Hankey,
acting more as strategic adviser to the War Council than its Secretary,53
stated, “combined operations require more careful preparation than any other
class of military enterprise. All through our history such attacks have failed
when the preparations have been inadequate.”54 He listed ten points
to be met if a joint attack was to succeed. Was he saying, “it will fail as
long as we do not take the following measures”? According to the War Council
minutes, Hankey’s plan was not even discussed.55 In the event, every
point he made was studiously ignored.
Military
leadership, like naval, was barely functional. General Sir Ian Hamilton, a man
in the twilight of his career who “knew little of the Dardanelles, the Turkish
army or of modern warfare,” was chosen to command.56 Scared of
Kitchener, and hamstrung by his long-subservience,57 he noted in his
diary, “It is like going up to a tiger and asking for a small slice of
venison.” During the Boer War he had witnessed Kitchener respond to an
officer’s appeal for reinforcements by taking half his troops away.58
The genial Hamilton, like poor Carden, was a scapegoat made to order.
Summoned by
Kitchener on 12 March, Hamilton was brusquely informed, “We are sending a
military force to support the fleet now at the Dardanelles and you are to have
command.” Hamilton was stunned, later admitting, “My knowledge of the
Dardanelles was nil, of the Turk nil, of the strength of my own forces next to
nil.” When asked if a squadron of modern aircraft with experienced pilots and
observers could be made available, Kitchener testily replied, “Not one.”
150,000 men was the minimum required strength for the task, but Kitchener
insisted that “half that number” would do handsomely.59 No attempt
was made to co-ordinate intelligence about the defences at Gallipoli, not even
at strategic level.60 Hamilton was given a cursory briefing, two
small tourist guidebooks and old, inaccurate maps.61 Detailed
reports from Admiral Limpus and Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Cunnliffe-Owen,
another officer with considerable knowledge of Gallipoli, were kept from him.62
Hamilton set off within 48 hours, together with some inexperienced members of
staff who did not even know “how to put on their uniforms.”63 So
much for detailed preparation.
The chaos
continued. There was no discussion, no plan, no naval/military coordination.
Indeed, it was a worse situation than preceded the naval operation.64
Gallipoli was to be invaded with a mixed force of 80,000 men from Britain,
France and the Empire. Raw Anzac troops and unseasoned French recruits were to
be thrown into battle for the first time. Marshall Joffre, the French
commander-in-chief, was profoundly opposed to the whole operation and initially
refused to provide troops. Political expediency forced his hand.65 A
French army Colonel who had spent years in Constantinople also opposed the
attack, but like everyone else with intimate knowledge of the area, its
topography and defences, he was dismissed.66 Lieutenant-Colonel
Cunnliffe-Owen, the British military attaché at Constantinople in 1914, who had
personally conducted a detailed survey of Gallipoli, was likewise deliberately
overlooked. In London when staff were being scratched together for Hamilton’s
team, Cunnliffe-Owen was passed over. His detailed reports on the peninsula
were never shown to General Hamilton.67
Kitchener
agreed to the deployment of 18,000 men from the British army’s 29th
Division. Its commander, Shaw, had served with distinction at Mons and was
considered a highly competent and “impressively professional soldier.” Two days
before leaving for Gallipoli, when continuity was all-important, Shaw was
inexplicably replaced by Major-General Hunter-Weston. He immediately rejected
his allocated ship because it lacked first class accommodation, and was
transferred to the luxury liner Andania.68
Major-General Shaw suffered the same fate as Admiral Limpus. A competent,
knowledgeable man was rejected in favour of Hunter-Weston, a laughing-stock in
the British Army,69 spectacularly incompetent, and “one of the most
brutal commanders of the First World War.”70 Ask yourself, what was
going on?
Hamilton
arrived to find his army scattered in confusion over much of the Mediterranean.
Some battalion commanders couldn’t trace their companies. Ships came from
Britain with such poorly written orders that captains did not know their
destination.71 On their arrival at Mudros, the ships were found to
be loaded in a shambolic fashion, and had to be taken 700 miles to Egypt to be
unloaded and repacked.72 Such was the lack of preparation that even
the simplest questions could not be answered. “Was there drinking water on
Gallipoli? What roads existed? Were troops to fight in trenches or the open?
What sort of weapons were required? What was the depth of water off the
beaches? What sort of boats were needed to get the men, the guns and stores
ashore? What casualties were to be expected? How were they to be got off to the
hospital ships? It was simply a case of taking whatever came to hand and hoping
for the best.”73
An “Amateurish, Do-It-Yourself Cock-Up”
You couldn’t
make it up. There was a shortage of guns, ammunition, aircraft and, above all,
troops.
Hamilton’s requests for additional supplies and reinforcements were either
ignored or refused.74 Gallipoli veteran Charles Watkins described
the campaign as an “amateurish, do-it-yourself cock-up.”75 It was
designed to be exactly that. The quality of preparation and leadership
guaranteed it. General Ian Hamilton was the Secret Elite’s Patsy-in-Chief,
unwittingly abetted by the incompetent Admiral Carden. These were the men
chosen to fail.
The
Gallipoli landings went ahead on 25 April 1915 with the terrible slaughter and
wounding of many incredibly brave young men, dispensable pawns on Imperial
Britain’s chessboard. Despite the fleet now having some thirty powerful
destroyers equipped to sweep the mines, and many officers totally confident
that the fleet could now get through, no further attempt was made to force the
Dardanelles. The navy would play no further part other than ferrying the men ashore,
taking off the wounded, and providing a safe haven off-shore for the likes of
Hunter-Weston. Successful mine sweeping had always been the key to a successful
naval assault, and with the new minesweepers and a clear run through to the
Straits, the fleet could have greatly assisted the army with controlled
bombardments of Turk positions from within the channel. It would, of course,
also have been able to cripple Goeben
and Breslau. For
the above stated reasons, that would not be allowed to happen.
For years
knowledgeable men had insisted that a well planned and resourced combined naval and
military attack was the only type of operation that might succeed, but never at
any point in the entire Gallipoli campaign was a joint assault carried out. The
elites in London ordered the shambolic attack by the navy when they knew it was
bound to fail, and now ordered an equally shambolic attack by the army in the
full knowledge that it too could never succeed.
Gallipoli
was a lie within the lie that was the First World War. The campaign ended in
military defeat, but geo-strategic victory for the British Empire. By late
1915, with Russian forces pushed back on the eastern front and any likelihood
of their intervention in Constantinople gone, the British government began
planning withdrawal from the corpse strewn peninsula. The last Allied troops
were taken off on 9 January 1916, leaving behind 62,266 of their comrades. The
majority of the dead on both sides have no known graves. Many of the 11,410
Australians and New Zealanders who died76 suffered unspeakable
deaths, deliberately sacrificed on the altar of British imperialism.
A Myth Obscures the terrible Truth
Over the
last century, in both Britain and Australia, Gallipoli has been turned into a
heroic-romantic myth,77
a myth promoted by court historians and pliant journalists in order to hide the
stark truth. It was a ruse, a sop to the Russians to keep them in the war in
the belief that allied forces would capture Constantinople on their behalf. Put
into the hands of incompetent generals and admirals, starved of troops,
determined leadership, ill-equipped, ill-advised and certain to fail, the
attack on Gallipoli as an integral part of the imperial strategy was a stunning
success.
We are aware
of at least one renowned Gallipoli historian and writer in Australia who agrees
with our thesis. Like us, he proposes that “it was the intention of the British
and French governments of 1915 to ensure that the Dardanelles and the Gallipoli
campaign would not succeed” and was “conceived as a ruse to keep the Russians
in the war…” He believes that while the proposition has circumstantial evidence
to support it, there is “little or no documentary evidence.”78 He is
very unlikely to find it. As revealed in our book Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War,
masses of crucial documents relating to the First World War were shredded or
burned, or have been kept hidden away to this very day in a high security
establishment at Hanslope Park in England. The individuals responsible for the
war, responsible for Gallipoli, were many things, but they weren’t so stupid as
to leave incriminating evidence lying around. Historians in Australia and New
Zealand must stop protecting their comfortable careers and start acknowledging
the terrible truth about Gallipoli. Peddling mythology as truth is an insult to
the memory of those brave young men.
Just as in
Britain, the Government of Australia seeks to be the guardian of public memory,
choreographing commemoration into celebration,79 ritually condemning
war while the rhetoric gestures in the opposite direction.80 The War
Memorial in Sydney’s Hyde Park proudly exhorts, “Let Silent Contemplation Be
Your Offering,” yet the deafening prattle of political expediency mocks the
valiant dead with empty words and lies. Don’t be fooled. Those young men died
for the imperial dreams of wealthy manipulators, not for ‘freedom’ or
‘civilisation’. They died deceived, expendable, and in the eyes of the
power-brokers, the detritus of strategic necessity. Remember that.
To read
exclusive extracts from their book Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the
First World War, including their latest research on Gallipoli, please visit the
authors’ blog at firstworldwarhiddenhistory.wordpress.com.
Hidden History is available from all good bookstores and online retailers.
The authors
contributed the article “The Secret Origins of the First World War” to New Dawn Special Issue Vol 9 No 1.
If you appreciated this article,
please consider a digital
subscription to New Dawn.
Footnotes
1.
Peter
Hart, Gallipoli,
vii
2.
David
Fromkin, A Peace to End All
Peace, The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle
East, 138; Niall Ferguson, The
Pity Of War, 61
3.
Sean
McMeekin, The Russian
Origins of the First World War, p.28.
4.
J
Laffin, The Agony of
Gallipoli, 3
5.
Robert
Rhodes James, Gallipoli,
8
6.
Hew
Strachan, The First World
War, 102
7.
Friedrich
Stieve, Isvolsky and the
World War, 177
8.
W
W Gottlieb, Studies in
Secret Diplomacy, 34
9.
Dan
Van Der Vat, The Dardanelles
Disaster, 28
10.
L
A Carlyon, Gallipoli,
42
11.
Gottlieb,
Studies, 42
12.
W.S.
Churchill, The World Crisis,
221-2
13.
Sean
McMeekin, The Russian
Origins of the First World War, 30-34
14.
Ibid.,
102
15.
Ulrich
Trumpener, ‘The Escape of the Goeben and Breslau’, Canadian
Journal of History, September 1971, 171
16.
Ibid.,
178-9
17.
Geoffrey
Miller, The Straits,
ch. 16
18.
Alberto
Santini, ‘The First Ultra Secret: The British Cryptanalysis in the Naval
Operations of the First World War’, Revue
Internationale d’Histoire Militaire, Vol. 63, 1985, 101
19.
Ulrich
Trumpener, ‘The Escape of the Goeben and Breslau’, Canadian
Journal of History, September 1971, 181-7
20.
Gottlieb,
Studies, 45
21.
Ibid.,
46
22.
McMeekin,
The Russian Origins, 105-106
23.
Strachan,
The First World War,
Vol. 1, 674
24.
McMeekin,
The Russian Origins,
96-97
25.
Ibid.,
115
26.
Ronald
P Bobroff, Roads to Glory,
Late Imperial Russia and the Turkish Straits, 125
27.
Carroll
Quigley, The Anglo-American
Establishment, 56
28.
McMeekin,
The Russian Origins,
129-30
29.
Ibid.,
121
30.
Quigley,
Anglo-American Establishment,
313
31.
Tim
Travers, Gallipoli,
20-21
32.
Laffin,
The Agony, 21-22
33.
Robin
Prior, Gallipoli, The End of
A Myth, 22
34.
Ibid.,
52
35.
Rhodes
James, Gallipoli,
63
36.
B.
H. Liddell Hart, History of
the First World War, 213
37.
Laffin,
The Agony, 9
38.
Alan
Moorehead, Gallipoli, 60
39.
Michael
Hickey, Gallipoli,
27
40.
Harvey
Broadbent, Gallipoli, The
Fatal Shore, 21
41.
Laffin,
The Agony, 9
42.
Memorandum
by the General Staff, 19 December 1906, National Archives, PRO. CAB/4/2/92
43.
Hickey,
Gallipoli, 28
44.
James,
Gallipoli, 3-4
45.
Broadbent,
Gallipoli, The Fatal Shore,
28
46.
Ronald
P Bobroff, Roads to Glory,
Late Imperial Russia and the Straits, 126-131
47.
McMeekin,
The Russian Origins,
130-131
48.
Laffin,
The Agony, 15-22
49.
Moorehead,
Gallipoli 40
50.
Laffin,
The Agony, 31
51.
Travers,
Gallipoli, 29
52.
Prior,
Gallipoli, 53
53.
Stephen
Roskill, Hankey,
Vol. 1, 156
54.
Ibid.,
163
55.
War
Council Minutes, 19 March, 1915, CAB 42/2
56.
Prior,
Gallipoli, 67
57.
Peter
Hart, Gallipoli,
63
58.
Laffin,
The Agony, 39
59.
Ibid.,
30
60.
Ibid.,
19
61.
Ibid.,
31
62.
Hickey,
Gallipoli, 67
63.
Laffin,
The Agony, 31
64.
Prior,
Gallipoli, 70
65.
Laffin,
The Agony, 35
66.
Edmond
Delage, The Tragedy of the
Dardanelles, 109
67.
Laffin,
The Agony, 12-13
68.
Hickey,
Gallipoli, 57-58
69.
Denis
Winter, Haig’s Command, 140
70.
Prior,
Gallipoli, 80
71.
Laffin,
The Agony, 31
72.
Moorehead,
Gallipoli, 90
73.
Prior,
Gallipoli, 242
74.
Moorehead,
Gallipoli, 117
75.
Laffin,
The Agony, 217
76.
Prior,
Gallipoli, 242
77.
Jenny
Macleod, Reconsidering
Gallipoli, 7-14
79.
James
Brown, Anzac’s Long Shadow, 19-22
80.
Marilyn
Lake and Henry Reynolds, What’s
Wrong With Anzac? The
Militarisation of Australian History, 8
.
GERRY DOCHERTY was born in 1948. He
graduated from Edinburgh University in 1971 and was a secondary school teacher
by profession. He taught economics and modern studies, developed a keen
interest in the theatre and has written a number of plays with historical
themes. One of these plays was the powerful story of two cousins from his home
town of Tillicoultry who were both awarded the Victoria Cross at the Battle of
Loos in 1915. Energised by the research he had undertaken to write this play,
he was intrigued by Jim Macgregor’s work on the First World War, and their
mutual interest developed into a passion to discover the truth amongst the lies
and deceptions that the official records contained.
JIM MACGREGOR was born in Glasgow
in 1947 and raised in a cottage in the grounds of Erskine Hospital for war
disabled. There he witnessed the aftermath of war on a daily basis and,
profoundly affected by what he saw, developed a life-long interest in war and
the origins of global conflict. Jim graduated as a medical doctor in 1978, and
left the practice in 2001 to devote his energies full-time to researching the
political failures in averting war. His numerous articles have been published
on subjects such as miscarriages of justice, the Iraq War, global poverty, and
the rise of fascism in the United States. His powerful anti-war novel The Iboga
Visions was published to critical acclaim in 2009.
© New Dawn Magazine and the respective
author.
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It was perhaps the high point for
Germany in World War II.
France lay prostrate under the boot of the German war machine. The only
thing that stood between England and Germany was the Royal Air Force. Or
so it seemed.
