What do you think?
Rate this book
'Goodbye Cobber, God Bless You'
On August 7th 1915, men of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade staged one of the most tragic, brave and futile charges of the First World War.
Seeking to break out of the Anzac position at Gallipoli they attempted to storm an extraordinarily strong Turkish position, defended by artillery, machineguns and thousands of men, using nothing but fixed bayonets and raw courage.
The first wave of Light Horsemen were killed within seconds of leaving their trench, yet over the course of the next few minutes, three more lines went over the top, across the bodies of their dead and dying comrades, only to be instantly cut down themselves. All of them knew they were about to die. None held back. It was a massacre immortalised in Peter Weir's film, Gallipoli.
Just before the order was given to send the third line, Trooper Harold Rush turned to his mate standing next to him and said Goodbye cobber. God bless you'. These words appear on his headstone, in the little cemetery near the scene of the charge.
John Hamilton's book follows the men who fought and died in this action from the recruiting frenzy of August 1914, to their training camps, to Egypt, to the peninsula itself, to that fatal morning. It is a work of meticulous research and detail, which puts flesh on the bones of long dead men and boys. We see through their eyes the excitement, fear and horror of a generation encountering the carnage of modern war for the first time.
'Goodbye cobber, God bless you' is compelling, personal and painfully moving.
Seeking to break out of the Anzac position at Gallipoli they attempted to storm an extraordinarily strong Turkish position, defended by artillery, machineguns and thousands of men, using nothing but fixed bayonets and raw courage.
The first wave of Light Horsemen were killed within seconds of leaving their trench, yet over the course of the next few minutes, three more lines went over the top, across the bodies of their dead and dying comrades, only to be instantly cut down themselves. All of them knew they were about to die. None held back. It was a massacre immortalised in Peter Weir's film, Gallipoli.
Just before the order was given to send the third line, Trooper Harold Rush turned to his mate standing next to him and said Goodbye cobber. God bless you'. These words appear on his headstone, in the little cemetery near the scene of the charge.
John Hamilton's book follows the men who fought and died in this action from the recruiting frenzy of August 1914, to their training camps, to Egypt, to the peninsula itself, to that fatal morning. It is a work of meticulous research and detail, which puts flesh on the bones of long dead men and boys. We see through their eyes the excitement, fear and horror of a generation encountering the carnage of modern war for the first time.
'Goodbye cobber, God bless you' is compelling, personal and painfully moving.
365 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2004
6 people are currently reading
45 people want to read
About the author
John Hamilton
3 books2 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Born in England and migrated to Western Australia with his family at the age of eight. He has been a reporter and foreign correspondent for more than 30 years. He was White House Correspondent and Chief Correspondent and European Editor for the Herald and Weekly Times group of newspapers.
He won the Walkley two years in succession and also received the National Press Club Canadian Award of Journalistic Merit.
Born in England and migrated to Western Australia with his family at the age of eight. He has been a reporter and foreign correspondent for more than 30 years. He was White House Correspondent and Chief Correspondent and European Editor for the Herald and Weekly Times group of newspapers.
He won the Walkley two years in succession and also received the National Press Club Canadian Award of Journalistic Merit.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
July 12, 2020
This book is less of a 'Military History,' and more of a mainstream history about a military event.
The book is about the early history of the Australian Light Horse, from the recruitment at the outbreak of war to one of the most significant and regiment-defining events, the fatal charge at The Nek. This is a fantastic part of history that makes for a very intriguing study. Told mostly through letters and diary entries from the soldiers of the Light Horse, it has profound insight into another time, and into the way soldiers thought about the business of war and how those expectations of glory and fun in the early days of recruitment were met with the realities of arguably the first industrialised war. Really, this is one of those moments in history that is far more revealing and meaningful than it sounds on the face.
But ultimately, I have no idea who the target audience of this book is. It doesn't contain enough background information on the First World War and the broader Gallipoli campaign to fully contextualise what is going on to the every-day reader, but nor does it contain enough depth of discussion and attention to detail to interest the hobby historian, let alone a professional one.
The recurring problem with this book is scope. The subtitle and back-cover blurb heavily promote the book as focusing on the August 7th Charge at The Nek, but even the best author would be hard-pressed to write an entire 350+ page book about a single infantry charge. To compensate, the author has traced the history of the Light Horse from its beginnings.
I was tempted to give up on the book at this early stage. The first several chapters focus on giving background to the 'Main characters' of the book - several officers and men who left lots of personal literature to draw upon, making it possible to tell the story of the Light Horse from their diaries and letters. However, Hamilton gives an extensive, lengthy life-history of each of these men from the moment they were born to the moment they signed up for the regiment, and most of it is utterly irrelevant and frankly boring. The book is a terrible slog to start unless you are interested in the random minutae of people's lives back then - what school they went to, what adolescent football club they played for - and so on. This is a habit Hamilton sticks with throughout the book, and although it's not as bad as the first several chapters once the boys make landing in Egypt, the introduction of any new person is always followed by a paragraph version of their life-story. It is very important to know what school they graduated from, and what their pre-war occupation was, and the rest of the book can grind to a halt for it.
This comes to an astonishing climax right at the very climax of the book - the charge at The Nek, where Hamilton pauses to flow of a fast-paced battle to, in paragraph form, list the name, place of birth, school of graduation, and pre-war occupation of several pages worth of soldiers. The charge grinds to a halt.
In general, throughout the book, Hamilton is quite happy to labour and draw out any particular point he is making, quoting extensively from letters and diaries even if they many of the quotes say pretty much the same thing. Having chosen a few 'favourites' to follow, Hamilton feels obliged to quote them all on every event. Where the different social status, rank, and position gave the different soldiers a different viewpoint or take this is entirely valid and worthwhile. When they all say the same thing, it's too much.
And that's a shame, since aside from the two criticisms above, this is a good book and well written. It really does come down to scope - and I think the concept of a book about the charge at The Nek was a bit too thin, even when broadened out to include the history of the regiment prior to august 7th, 1915. A book covering the whole history of the Light Horse in the First World War, written in this style and drawing from letters and diaries could be a fantastic addition to any bookshelf, but the small scope and padding/filler content included here to bring the book to size prevents me from recommending this one.
The book is about the early history of the Australian Light Horse, from the recruitment at the outbreak of war to one of the most significant and regiment-defining events, the fatal charge at The Nek. This is a fantastic part of history that makes for a very intriguing study. Told mostly through letters and diary entries from the soldiers of the Light Horse, it has profound insight into another time, and into the way soldiers thought about the business of war and how those expectations of glory and fun in the early days of recruitment were met with the realities of arguably the first industrialised war. Really, this is one of those moments in history that is far more revealing and meaningful than it sounds on the face.
But ultimately, I have no idea who the target audience of this book is. It doesn't contain enough background information on the First World War and the broader Gallipoli campaign to fully contextualise what is going on to the every-day reader, but nor does it contain enough depth of discussion and attention to detail to interest the hobby historian, let alone a professional one.
The recurring problem with this book is scope. The subtitle and back-cover blurb heavily promote the book as focusing on the August 7th Charge at The Nek, but even the best author would be hard-pressed to write an entire 350+ page book about a single infantry charge. To compensate, the author has traced the history of the Light Horse from its beginnings.
I was tempted to give up on the book at this early stage. The first several chapters focus on giving background to the 'Main characters' of the book - several officers and men who left lots of personal literature to draw upon, making it possible to tell the story of the Light Horse from their diaries and letters. However, Hamilton gives an extensive, lengthy life-history of each of these men from the moment they were born to the moment they signed up for the regiment, and most of it is utterly irrelevant and frankly boring. The book is a terrible slog to start unless you are interested in the random minutae of people's lives back then - what school they went to, what adolescent football club they played for - and so on. This is a habit Hamilton sticks with throughout the book, and although it's not as bad as the first several chapters once the boys make landing in Egypt, the introduction of any new person is always followed by a paragraph version of their life-story. It is very important to know what school they graduated from, and what their pre-war occupation was, and the rest of the book can grind to a halt for it.
This comes to an astonishing climax right at the very climax of the book - the charge at The Nek, where Hamilton pauses to flow of a fast-paced battle to, in paragraph form, list the name, place of birth, school of graduation, and pre-war occupation of several pages worth of soldiers. The charge grinds to a halt.
In general, throughout the book, Hamilton is quite happy to labour and draw out any particular point he is making, quoting extensively from letters and diaries even if they many of the quotes say pretty much the same thing. Having chosen a few 'favourites' to follow, Hamilton feels obliged to quote them all on every event. Where the different social status, rank, and position gave the different soldiers a different viewpoint or take this is entirely valid and worthwhile. When they all say the same thing, it's too much.
And that's a shame, since aside from the two criticisms above, this is a good book and well written. It really does come down to scope - and I think the concept of a book about the charge at The Nek was a bit too thin, even when broadened out to include the history of the regiment prior to august 7th, 1915. A book covering the whole history of the Light Horse in the First World War, written in this style and drawing from letters and diaries could be a fantastic addition to any bookshelf, but the small scope and padding/filler content included here to bring the book to size prevents me from recommending this one.
September 29, 2025
I understand some of the criticisms of this book, but I liked it. It served my purposes (writing research) beautifully, and I'm way more interested in the social history side of things anyway. I WANT to know who the people were, where they went to school, et cetera. If I wanted to read about nothing but troop movements and generals, I'd pick up something else. The author does go off on tangents at times, but it wasn't enough to bother me. I preferred this to the other Light Horse history I read (the Roland Perry one) by FAR, because it wasn't a thinly disguised biography of the top brass. I thought this was also far less "rah rah nationalism!" than the Perry book, which invariably turns me off a military history. The end is a hard slog because of the content, but that's what you're getting into with this sort of thing. I somehow keep reading, half hoping that there's *something* vaguely positive before the end, even though I know there won't be. It's bleak as hell. It's definitely not a criticism of the book, just of my own desperate hope for things not to turn out the way I know they did.
I went through an entire highlighter on this book. It gave up within the last ten pages. A dubious honour, but it shows how relevant it was for me!
Bonus points for including a paragraph that was basically lifted from a letter I have from Gallipoli, from Frank Weygang to my great uncle Bill. It was about being in the front line of trenches looking out across No Man's Land, and seeing all of the Australian skeletons left out there from The Nek. I damn near threw the book across the couch in excitement. It's not plagiarised or anything like that, very few people have even seen this letter, but even the exact phrasing was SO close. When this book was published, the letter was buried deep in a WWI officer's trunk in my granny's spare room, amongst hundreds of other letters, and totally forgotten since at least 1989. I only found it in 2017.
(Said letter is going to be donated to the State Library of NSW in the next month or so, along with others. I'm always happy to send digitised copies for anyone who wants one, so if you see this and do, hit me up. I have quite a few.)
I went through an entire highlighter on this book. It gave up within the last ten pages. A dubious honour, but it shows how relevant it was for me!
Bonus points for including a paragraph that was basically lifted from a letter I have from Gallipoli, from Frank Weygang to my great uncle Bill. It was about being in the front line of trenches looking out across No Man's Land, and seeing all of the Australian skeletons left out there from The Nek. I damn near threw the book across the couch in excitement. It's not plagiarised or anything like that, very few people have even seen this letter, but even the exact phrasing was SO close. When this book was published, the letter was buried deep in a WWI officer's trunk in my granny's spare room, amongst hundreds of other letters, and totally forgotten since at least 1989. I only found it in 2017.
(Said letter is going to be donated to the State Library of NSW in the next month or so, along with others. I'm always happy to send digitised copies for anyone who wants one, so if you see this and do, hit me up. I have quite a few.)
December 19, 2021
The Glorious Dead is the subject of this book. The waste of human life on an extraordinary scale. The book is about Australians going to the first world war and perishing in Gallipoli. The book is well written and goes into great detail on whose these men were. The only problem I have is that is glorifies war. There is no question that these men were brave, but it also reveals an incompetent officer corps. In less than an hour, the troops were decimated approaching and surpassing, in some cases a 50% casualty rate. All of WWI was this enterprise and I am also reminded of Cold Harbor in the Civil War.
November 11, 2019
Recommended if you're an Australian history buff like me. A thorough exploration of the West Australian and Victorian light horse regiments who charged the Turkish guns at The Nek in August 1915 and were almost completely wiped out. It was maddening to read the callous loss of life of so many young Australians, hundreds of miles from home. Hamilton's book is a fitting tribute to the men who fell with their faces to the foe.
June 10, 2021
The Australian Light Horse is now attacking Gallipoli. This was a disaster of a campaign and it cost Churchill his job but back to the Aussies. The title of the book is endearing as a farewell tribute from one mate (cobber) to another during the course of the futile (one of many) attacks. Sad but heroic to read.
May 8, 2016
This book largely examines the charge at The Nek. It starts just before the war is declared in Australia and talks about the enthusiasm and eagerness men had to enlist and serve their country and then follows the experience of several men. Using words from their diaries and letters wherever possible – this gives it a more intimate feel.
It describes a world and attitude very different from today – an example of that is a man who was rejected because he had a deformed toe and came back a week later, asking if they’d take him now – he’d had the offending toe amputated.
I learnt more about the charge and war in general than I already knew; which I was grateful for. Reading the way the charge was planned and then executed was dismaying and, even though I knew the outcome, as I read I still had this ridiculous hope that it could be different.
War is always a horrible thing but this kind of murder/suicide is just a tragic waste. I felt a deep sadness and also a deep sense of pride in the ANZACs and being Australian as I read.
I found it a moving and rewarding read.
It describes a world and attitude very different from today – an example of that is a man who was rejected because he had a deformed toe and came back a week later, asking if they’d take him now – he’d had the offending toe amputated.
I learnt more about the charge and war in general than I already knew; which I was grateful for. Reading the way the charge was planned and then executed was dismaying and, even though I knew the outcome, as I read I still had this ridiculous hope that it could be different.
War is always a horrible thing but this kind of murder/suicide is just a tragic waste. I felt a deep sadness and also a deep sense of pride in the ANZACs and being Australian as I read.
I found it a moving and rewarding read.
September 1, 2015
Excellent book which gives the full version of what happened from the inception of the 3LH till the battle of the Nek. Those familiar with the movie Gallipoli will roughly know the story of the West Australians, however whilst they lost fearfully the 8th Regiment made up of Victorians lost even more. The book finishes at with the battle of the Nek.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews