Every Australian old enough to read and write has heard of Gallipoli, yet how many of us have encountered anything beyond the Australian viewpoint. This account from a Turkish perspective broadens our knowledge of these tragic events.

The noted historian’s decisive and devastating history of the WWI Battle of Gallipoli “sets a new standard for assessing the Allied Dardanelles campaign" (Mustafa Aksakal, American Historical Review). The Gallipoli campaign of 1915–16 was an ill-fated Allied attempt to take control of the Dardanelles, secure a sea route to Russia, and create a Balkan alliance against the Central Powers. A failure in all respects, the operation ended in disaster, and the Allied forces suffered some 390,000 casualties. In this conclusive study, military historian Robin Prior assesses the many myths about Gallipoli and provides definitive answers to questions that have lingered about the operation. Prior proceeds step by step through the campaign, dealing with naval, military, and political matters and surveying the operations of all the armies involved: British, Anzac, French, Indian, and Turkish. Relying on primary documents, including war diaries and technical military sources, Prior evaluates the strategy, the commanders, and the performance of soldiers on the ground. His conclusions are powerful and unsettling: the naval campaign was not “almost” won, and the land action was not bedeviled by “minor misfortunes.” Instead, the badly conceived Gallipoli campaign was doomed from the start. And even had it been successful, the operation would not have shortened the war by a single day. Despite their bravery, the Allied troops who fell at Gallipoli died in vain. A Wall Street Journal Best Book of 2009

The men were huddled in lifeboats. Some prayed that their legs would work. Some smiled to show they weren't scared. They peered into the darkness ahead and saw nothing. Then, the dark shape of a man standing on a hill. A shout from the shore. A single shot rang out and a bullet hissed overhead. The Gallipoli campaign had begun. Anzac soldiers fought on Turkish soil a century ago. So why do we still care about what happened there? Why do we celebrate a battle lost? The Gallipoli Story takes young people on an unforgettable and tough journey deep into the heartland of war. Patrick Carlyon digs past the myths to explore the lives and choices of the men -- soldiers, politicians and generals alike -- who found themselves caught up in a battle fought far from home. A powerful piece of storytelling that brings history to life -- and shows us the human faces behind the grand story. The CBC Honour Book.

The definitive work and national bestseller "The book of the year" Alan Ramsey, Sydney Morning Herald Les Carlyon's Gallipoli is the epic story of the fighting men who forged the legend of Anzac in 1915. Taking the reader behind the lines and into the trenches, Gallipoli not only brings an infamous battlefield to vivid life but puts poignant breath in the bones of the ordinary heroes who lived and died there. War stories are rarely this personal but Carlton's meticulous research and mesmeric storytelling take readers up-close with the conflict like never before, poetically evoking an ancient landscape rooted in myth, a theatre for Alexander the Great, St Paul and the Trojan Wars, and then intimately populating it with soldiers, generals and politicians from the Allied and Turkish forces. A century on from the Anzac landing on 25 April 1915, Les Carlyon's Gallipoli endures, a masterpiece every bit as haunting and heartbreaking as the events it records. Once read, it is never forgotten.

Gallipoli: the mere name summons the story of this well-known campaign of the First World War. And the story of Gallipoli, where in August 1915 the Allied forces made their last valiant effort against the Turks, is one of infamous might-have-beens. If only the Allies had held out a little longer, pushed a little harder, had better luck—Gallipoli might have been the decisive triumph that knocked the Ottoman Empire out of the First World War. But the story is just that, author Rhys Crawley tells us: a story. Not only was the outcome at Gallipoli not close, but the operation was flawed from the start, and an inevitable failure. A painstaking effort to set the historical record straight, Climax at Gallipoli examines the performance of the Allies’ Mediterranean Expeditionary Force from the beginning of the Gallipoli Campaign to the bitter end. Crawley reminds us that in 1915, the second year of the war, the Allies were still trying to adapt to a new form of warfare, with static defense replacing the maneuver and offensive strategies of earlier British doctrine. In the attempt both the MEF at Gallipoli and the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front aimed for too much—and both failed. To explain why, Crawley focuses on the operational level of war in the campaign, scrutinizing planning, command, mobility, fire support, interservice cooperation, and logistics. His work draws on unprecedented research into the files of military organizations across the United Kingdom and Australia. The result is a view of the Gallipoli Campaign unique in its detail and scope, as well as in its conclusions—a book that looks past myth and distortion to the facts, and the truth, of what happened at this critical juncture in twentieth-century history.

"First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Profile Books"--T.p. verso.