Eleven decades on from the horrors of Gallipoli, I am yet to see a thunderous piece of writing saying what needs to be said.
Just as it has been for the last 11 decades, many emotions will resonate – reverence, respect and remembrance.
The commentariat counterattacks on Keating went for days, with the broad theme being that by denying the nobility of the Great War, he was spitting on the graves of the Australians who died.And I will too, because after doing books on this stuff over the last couple of decades, of wading through diaries and letters and the overwhelming grief of those left behind, I feel it too strongly not to say it, and back it.
The first Australian general to wrestle with the plan was the great Melburnian Pompey Elliott. He realised the whole idea of this thrust had been formed by two English officers, General Sir Richard Haking and General Sir Charles Monro, who had not eventhe ground they were ordering the Australians to attack, and this resulted “in selection of unsuitable ground commanded everywhere by enemy observation and fire”.
Fourteen hours later, this was the scene, and, again, for those Diggers all these years later, we all should read it and“The sight of our trenches that next morning is burned into my brain,” Corporal Hugh Knyvett of the 15th Brigade would recount. All those Australian deaths because of a plan the English knew would result in a “holocaust”! Across our brown land, that meant 1850 “death knocks”, the cable boy delivering those devastating telegrams: “It is my painful duty to have to inform you the sad news of the death of your son, Private …”
Nor at the Nek, where 372 were killed or wounded in minutes, charging in four waves straight at Turkish guns across just 50 yards. Nor at the First Battle of Bullecourt, which I have been writing about recently for a book on Albert Jacka, VC. In the first attempt to attack heavily defended German lines, our blokes were given just a few hours’ notice they would be working with tanks.
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