Field Of Bones: The Gallipoli Campaign

by Philip Orr

During August and September 1915 almost three thousand young volunteer Irish soldiers died on the killing fields of Gallipoli on the Turkish Aegean. A division of Kitchener’s Army, at Suvla Bay they fell to gunshot-wounds and shellfire, while thirst, sunstroke and dysentery reduced their chances of survival. Hundreds were burned alive in raging bush-fires. In post-war Ireland political revolution led to the removal of Gallipoli from memory. One popular ballad told the volunteers, ‘you fought for the wrong country; you died for the wrong cause, when the greatest war was at home’. Here, in heart-breaking detail, built from letters, diaries and archival sources, is the story of the 10th Irish Division, many of whom still lie today in Suvla Bay’s deserted field of bones.

268 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Nicholas Whyte]

http://nhw.livejournal.com/833659.html[return][return]I think this is a pretty good effort. Orr has very much gone for the soldier's-eye-view of the Suvla Bay campaign (with a minor excursion to follow the Irish soldiers detached to support the Anzacs further south).Of course, it seems that in this case the geopolitical or wider strategic aspects of the campaign would not make a lot of sense; he is deliberately concentrating on the experience of the 10th (Irish) Division, not the Allied forces as a whole. Also his source material is vivid stuff and he has put it together well. I think my biggest criticism is that he does not make as much as he could of the military failure of the campaign: the total failure of the landing to achieve any of its objectives, ie holding the high ground around the bowl-like bay from which the Turks eventually shelled them out, linking up effectively with the Anzacs a few miles to the south, let alone pushing up the peninsula to Istanbul over 200 km away.[return][return]Orr also reflects on the way in which the Suvla Bay campaign has been ignored by later Irish historians, in total contrast to the nation-forging effect of the Anzac landings on the people on the far side of the world. He credits Shane McGowan of the Pogues for doing more than anyone else to raise public awareness of it in the most recent period. The problem was that the 10th Division was too broad-based in its membership; within a year of its landing at Gallipoli, more exclusive military myths had been generated by each side much closer to home (the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme). And while there have certainly been greater efforts made of late by the Irish state to recognise the Irish contribution to the first world war, it has tended to concentrate on the Western Front rather than events further east. This readable book will help to redress the balance.