Voices From Gallipoli

Gallipoli, 1915. Before the legend came the darkness, the boats, the fear-and the men waiting to step ashore.

On 25 April 1915, Allied troops approached the Gallipoli Peninsula in crowded landing craft. Ahead lay steep ridges, Ottoman defenders and a campaign that would become one of the defining episodes of the First World War.

Voices From Gallipoli: Poems and Historical Contexts tells that story in a distinctive way-through original poetry placed alongside carefully researched history.

Each poem captures a human moment within the campaign: a last mug of cocoa before the landing, a rope ladder descending into darkness, a rifle clogged with sand, a precious water bottle, a stretcher on a narrow track, a cigarette exchanged between enemies, a letter delayed on its way home, or the silence of the final evacuation.

Every poem is followed by a Historical Context explaining the real events, evidence and circumstances that inspired it.

The book follows the campaign from training in Egypt and the landings of 25 April through the struggle for the Anzac heights, the exhausting months of heat, thirst, sickness and trench warfare, the battles of August, and the eventual withdrawal from the peninsula.

But Gallipoli was never the story of one nation alone.

Australian, New Zealand, British, Indian, Newfoundland and French forces all served there, while Ottoman soldiers fought to defend their homeland. Sailors, signallers, medical personnel, labourers and stretcher-bearers also carried the burden of a campaign sustained from the sea.

Drawing upon diaries, official histories, military records, photographs, personal testimony and later scholarship, Voices From Gallipoli brings the reader closer to the individuals too easily hidden behind maps, casualty figures and famous place names.

This is not a celebration of war.

It is a book about courage, endurance, friendship, failure, sacrifice and remembrance.

Perfect for readers interested in Gallipoli, First World War history, military history, battlefield remembrance and war poetry.

The campaign ended. Its consequences did not.

Honour the courage. Remember the cost.

Book Three in the Voices From World War One series, following Voices From Loos and Voices From Vimy Ridge.