"The Gallipoli Campaign can be viewed from very different
perspectives… on a broad view, it had almost no chance of
success.
"It required an amphibious invasion, which to succeed needs long
preparation and great resources – neither of which the British had at
their disposal. And the defender possessed on this occasion, even greater advantages than
were usual. The Gallipoli peninsular, with its narrow beaches and sheer cliffs and
commanding ridges and high peaks, happens to be a defender's dream.
"The only chance of the British attack succeeding was if the Turks could be taken by surprise
or were already highly demoralized. Neither was the case. An invading force could not be
assembled in the Eastern Mediterranean without its object being painfully clear. And
although Turkish forces sometimes fought badly in the far-flung parts of their empire, they
would ferociously defend their homeland and their capital, Constantinople.
"If we narrow the focus to what was happening on the ground – that is, among the fighting
men – it seems a different story of courage and endurance and even purpose. Let it be said,
the Gallipoli operation was not a comfortable experience.
"The climate of what the British Prime Minister thought was the 'gorgeous
East' … was often very inhospitable.
"It proved insufferable hot in summer – a soldier opening a tin of jam
would find it smothered in blowflies before he could get a spoon of it to
his mouth, and large numbers of men fell victim to dysentery – and
freezing in winter. And the distances between the opposing trenches
were so limited that it was perilous to risk even a swift look over the
parapet.
Gallipoli trench
system,
contemporary
"Yet soldiers proved adaptable to this situation, and resourceful.
Australian and New Zealand troops (ANZACS) converted empty jam
tins into home-made bombs, and created periscope rifles so as to get a sight on the enemy
without exposing themselves. The determined fighting in a succession of gripping but illrewarded offensives won great attention, not only at home in Australia and New Zealand,
but in the newspapers of Britain and elsewhere.
"So although the Gallipoli Campaign may be judged a doomed undertaking from the start,
nevertheless, the positive qualities revealed by the forces engaged in it have caused it to be
remembered as heroic. For example, in Australia and New Zealand, Anzac Day – 25 April,
the day of the first landings – is a national holiday and the principal occasion for
remembrance of war and its sacrifices."
The Battle of Passchendaele:
August 1917
"Passchendaele was not a
campaign designed by the British
command in terms of what had
been learned by this stage of the
war.
"Some things the British army
could now do. Six weeks before
this campaign started, it captures
Messines ridge as a preliminary
operation. To do it, Haig's forces
made careful calculations about
weapons and weather and
objectives.
"This did not happen during the Passchendaele Campaign. Haig's objectives, as I have said
already, were ridiculously wide-ranging: the sweep all the way to the Belgian coast. And
operations were not geared to take account, even, of factors such as the weather.
"Weather is a fundamental factor.
"Artillery can do things in fine weather that it cannot do in bad weather. If you are to succeed
in landing your shells – you must have observation from the air. In this war, the air force is
absolutely vital for just one thing: as an adjunct to the artillery. It sees where the enemy
positions are, it photographs them, it reports where your shells are landing, it tells you to
correct the range. You've got to have your flyers up there, observing.
"Correspondingly, you must have fighter planes up there protecting your observers, because,
otherwise, enemy fighters will come and shoot them down. So you must have your planes in
the air.
"The great Passchendaele Campaign is a three-month campaign; and two months of it
are fought in pouring rain.
"The airplanes can't go up, so your artillery can't hit the enemy guns. Your shells land in the
mud, so they don't explode effectively. Your troops that are supposed to be moving forward,
behind the creeping barrage, are caught in the mud, and so, can't keep up with it. The whole
thing is simply inappropriate to the lessons that have been learned – quite apart from the fact,
as I have said, that the objectives were those far-off positions that no attack in WWI was ever
going to be able to achieve."
DULCE ET DECORUM EST
1
By: Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we
cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares2 we turned our
backs
And towards our distant rest3 began to
trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their
boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame;
all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots4
Of tired, outstripped5 Five-Nines6 that
dropped behind.
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless
sight,
He plunges at me, guttering,11 choking,
drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too
could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his
face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted
lungs,
7
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud12
fumbling,
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent
8
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
tongues,
But someone still was yelling out and
My friend, you would not tell with such
stumbling,
high zest13
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime9 . To children ardent14 for some desperate
..
glory,
10
Dim, through the misty panes and thick
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
green light,
1 DULCE ET DECORUM EST - the first words of a Latin saying (taken from an ode by Horace). The words were widely
understood and often quoted at the start of the First World War. They mean "It is sweet and right." The full saying ends the poem: Dulce et
decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is a wonderful and great honour to fight and die
for your country
2 rockets which were sent up to burn with a brilliant glare to light up men and other targets in the area between the front lines
3 a camp away from the front line where exhausted soldiers might rest for a few days, or longer
4 the noise made by the shells rushing through the air
5 outpaced, the soldiers have struggled beyond the reach of these shells which are now falling behind them as they struggle away
from the scene of battle
6 Five-Nines - 5.9 calibre explosive shells
7 poison gas. From the symptoms it would appear to be chlorine or phosgene gas. The filling of the lungs with fluid had the same
effects as when a person drowned
8 the early name for gas masks
9 a white chalky substance which can burn live tissue
10 the glass in the eyepieces of the gas masks
11 Owen probably meant flickering out like a candle or gurgling like water draining down a gutter, referring to the sounds in the
throat of the choking man, or it might be a sound partly like stuttering and partly like gurgling
12 normally the regurgitated grass that cows chew; here a similar looking material was issuing from the soldier's mouth
13 high zest - idealistic enthusiasm, keenly believing in the rightness of the idea
14 keen
Anthem for Doomed Youth
By: Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Annotations
Passing-bells: A custom in England dating back many centuries was to ring a bell when a person was
dying. Those who heard it were to pray that the person's soul would pass on to the light of heaven when he
or she died—hence, the term passing bell. Today, churches traditionally toll bells at funerals.
Cattle: The comparison of the soldiers to slaughtered cattle underscores the inhumanity of war; it treats
men as mere animals.
Orisons (OR ih zuns): Prayers.
Wailing shells: It is ironic that the killers, the shells, are also personified mourners.
Candles: Held by altar boys, the candles represent to Owen ritualistic, artificial funereal trappings. More
appropriate to him is the sad glimmer in the eyes of these boys.
Pall: The cloth, usually black, covering the coffin at a funeral. To Owen, it is, like the candles, an artificial
funereal trapping. More appropriate as a pall is the pallor (paleness) on the faces of girls.
Drawing-down of blinds: This simple phrase allows the reader to picture the behind-the-scenes suffering
of the loved ones after the burial of a soldier.
War Sonnets
By: Rupert Brooke (1887-1915)
I. Peace
Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping,
Glad from a world grown old and cold and weary,
Leave the sick hearts that honour could not move,
And half-men, and their dirty songs and dreary,
And all the little emptiness of love!
Oh! we, who have known shame, we have found release there,
Where there's no ill, no grief, but sleep has mending,
Naught broken save this body, lost but breath;
Nothing to shake the laughing heart's long peace there
But only agony, and that has ending;
And the worst friend and enemy is but Death.
V. The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
In Flanders Fields
By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)
Canadian Army
In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
“AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM” (ON THE
SIGNING OF THE ARMISTICE, NOV 11, 1918)
By: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
There had been years of Passion-scorching,
cold,
And much Despair, and anger heaving high,
Care whitely watching. Sorrow manifold,
Among the young, among the weak and old,
And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered,
“Why?”
Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught
Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like
blindness,
Philosohies that sages long had thought,
And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought
And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at
Lovingkindness.
The feeble folk at home had grown full-used
To “dug-outs,” ”snipers,” ”Huns,” from the
war-adept
In the morning heard, and a evetides perused;
To day-dreamt men in millions, when they
musedTo nightmare-men in millions when they slept.
Walking to wish existence timeless, null,
Sirius they watched above where armies fell;
He seemed to check his flapping when, in the
lull
Of night a boom came thence wise, like the
dull
Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.
So, when old hopes that earth was bettering
slowly
Were dear and damned, there sounded “War is
done!”
On morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and
lowly,
“Will men some day be given to grace? yea,
wholly,
And in good sooth, as our dream used to run?”
Breathless they paused. Out there men raised
their glance
To where had stood those poplars lank and
lopped,
As they had raised it through the four years’
dance
Of Death in the now familiar flats of France:
And murmured, “Strange, this! How ? All
firing stopped?”
Aye; all was husband. The about-to-fire fired
not,
The aimed – at moved away intrance-lipped
song.
One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot
And turning. The Spirit of Irony smirking out,
“What?”
Spoiled peradventures woven of Rage and
Wrong?”
Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray,
No hurtling shook the dewdrop from the thorn,
No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray;
Worn horse mused: ”We are not whipped today”;
No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s
thin horn.
Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency;
There was peace on earth, and silence in the
sky;
Some could, some could not, shake off misery:
The Sinister Spirit sneered: “ It had to be!”
And again the Spirit of Pity whispered,
“Why?”
The Second Coming
By: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?