{"id":20439,"date":"2015-05-16T08:00:57","date_gmt":"2015-05-15T22:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=20439"},"modified":"2015-05-15T17:10:04","modified_gmt":"2015-05-15T07:10:04","slug":"alan-mooreheads-gallipoli","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/","title":{"rendered":"Alan Moorehead\u2019s Gallipoli"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Living<\/a><\/p>\n

There have been at least seventy books by individual authors published under the title Gallipoli<\/em> in as many decades. From the British Poet Laureate John Masefield in 1916 to Australia\u2019s Les Carlyon in 2001 and on to Peter FitzSimon\u2019s vast populist saga of 2014, they have collectively left no stone, landmark, battle, strategy, leader, fighters, gains, defeats, or lived experience unturned. Yet, for me, none can surpass the masterly, elegiac, and widely interpretative Gallipoli <\/em>published by Australian expatriate, Alan Moorehead, in London in 1956 and reissued in many editions and several translations until today. Why?<\/p>\n

A former journalist of the Melbourne Herald <\/em>who left Australia in 1936 for wider scenes, Moorehead was acclaimed the Daily Express<\/em>\u2019 \u2018Prince of War Correspondents\u2019 for his cover of the British campaign in North Africa and his reporting of the war in Europe, topics he turned into his two books: African Trilogy<\/em> and Eclipse. <\/em>Settled in Tuscany in the post-war, he wrote twenty more books including his brilliant The White Nile<\/em>, The Blue Nile<\/em> and Cooper\u2019s Creek<\/em>. None, however, surpassed Gallipoli<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Yet, as an Australian schoolboy exposed to the medals in the school\u2019s corridors and the annual talks in the memorial hall, Moorehead had come to hate the story of Anzac. As a member of the next generation, \u2018we thought all these old men boring\u2019, he wrote and when he left Australia, he swore that he \u2018would never think again or expose myself to the idea of Anzac and Gallipoli\u2019.<\/p>\n

But after the war, when shown a diary of the campaign by an English friend, he was \u2018absolutely captivated\u2019 and gathering the private papers of British and Australian soldiers, studying the historical sources, and rounding up military archives and maps specially prepared for him by the Turks, he toured the Gallipoli Peninsula. He then became aware that \u2018there could be no other story like it\u2019 andretired to the Greek Island of Spetses in the Aegean Sea \u00a0to write.<\/p>\n

Alan Moorehead\u2019s long first-hand experience of battle, his feeling for the soldiery, his overarching perception of policy and planning of the contributing role of international participants\u2014the British, Irish, French, the Imperial Indian, African, and Anzac troops\u2014together with his calm evocative style and analytical skills, placed him in the forefront of other writers.<\/p>\n

\u2018A strange light plays over the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915\u2019, he wrote,<\/p>\n

\u2018Hardly anyone behaves on this day as you might have expected him to do. There was a certain clarity about the actions of Mustafa Kemal on the Turkish side, but for the others the great crises of the day appear to have gone cascading by as though they were some natural phenomenon, having a monstrous life of its own. For the soldiers in the front line the issues were, of course, brutally simple. Confronted by some quite impossible objective, their lives suddenly appear to them to be of no consequence at all; they get up and charge and die\u2019.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As with his World War Two despatches, there is an urgency and compelling presence in Moorehead\u2019s descriptions of the hard-fought battles and of \u2018the ant heap life\u2019 of the soldiers: breathing, eating, sleeping, climbing, fighting, dying and burying their dead.<\/p>\n

\u2018They were not fatalists\u2019, he contends. \u2018They believed that a mistake had been made in the landing at Gaba Tepe and that they might easily have to pay for it with their lives\u2019 But there was \u2018an extraordinary cheerfulness and exaltation\u2019 among the men at the frontline. Living with the prospect of death, all the normal anxieties and jealousies of life deserted them, \u2018the past receded, the future barely existed, and they lived as never before upon the moment, released from the normal weight of human ambitions and regrets\u2019. And with his painterly eye, he observes, there were always \u2018the recurring moments of release and wonder at the slanting luminous light in the early mornings and the evenings, in the marvellous colour of the sea\u2019.<\/p>\n

With its wide analysis, his sense of its \u2018hesitant leaders, its lack of coherent planning and its fierce losses on both sides\u2019, Moorehead cast the Gallipoli campaign in a strikingly positive light. He didn\u2019t see it as a blunder or a reckless gamble, but as \u2018the most imaginative conception of the war\u2019 with potentialities almost beyond reckoning. Militarily its influence, he believed, was enormous. \u2018It was\u2019, he wrote, \u2018the greatest amphibious operation which mankind had known up till then\u2019 and it took place in circumstances where \u2018everything was experimental\u2019. This included the use of submarines and aircraft, the trial of modern naval guns against artillery on the shore, the manoeuvres of landing armies in small boats on a hostile coast, the use of radio, the aerial bomb, the land mines and much more. Importantly, in itself, Moorehead saw this highly complex combined operation by land, sea and sky (unlike the battles in France) as providing a practical and far reaching basis and understanding for the Allied victory of World War Two. \u2018The old men were right\u2019, he concludes, \u2018it was the military event of the century\u2019<\/p>\n

Moorehead\u2019s Gallipoli<\/em> riveted world attention and won a number of British literary prizes including the inaugural Duff Cooper Memorial Prize for which the winner could nominate the award\u2019s presenter. He chose Winston Churchill whose original planning of the Dardanelles campaign he had come to respect. In turn, Churchill wished the author a much greater success with the book than he had had with the campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There have been at least seventy books by individual authors published under the title Gallipoli in as many decades. From the British Poet Laureate John Masefield in 1916 to Australia\u2019s Les Carlyon in 2001 and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":20462,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1267],"tags":[44,799,678,207],"class_list":["post-20439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-australia-and-the-great-war","tag-australian-defence-force","tag-gallipoli","tag-world-war-i","tag-world-war-ii"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAlan Moorehead\u2019s Gallipoli | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alan Moorehead\u2019s Gallipoli | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There have been at least seventy books by individual authors published under the title Gallipoli in as many decades. From the British Poet Laureate John Masefield in 1916 to Australia\u2019s Les Carlyon in 2001 and ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-05-15T22:00:57+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-05-15T07:10:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/awm.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"638\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"381\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ann Moyal\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ann Moyal\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/awm.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/awm.png\",\"width\":638,\"height\":381,\"caption\":\"Living in Gallipoli\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/\",\"name\":\"Alan Moorehead\u2019s Gallipoli | The Strategist\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2015-05-15T22:00:57+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-05-15T07:10:04+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/cba9c37e703ec8ab9e7abd2c27650a2c\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Alan Moorehead\u2019s Gallipoli\"}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/cba9c37e703ec8ab9e7abd2c27650a2c\",\"name\":\"Ann Moyal\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/050f471fd2fc7d9e214764a79fbee228?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/050f471fd2fc7d9e214764a79fbee228?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Ann Moyal\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/author\/ann-moyal\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Alan Moorehead\u2019s Gallipoli | The Strategist","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Alan Moorehead\u2019s Gallipoli | The Strategist","og_description":"There have been at least seventy books by individual authors published under the title Gallipoli in as many decades. From the British Poet Laureate John Masefield in 1916 to Australia\u2019s Les Carlyon in 2001 and ...","og_url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/","og_site_name":"The Strategist","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org","article_published_time":"2015-05-15T22:00:57+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-05-15T07:10:04+00:00","og_image":[{"width":638,"height":381,"url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/awm.png","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Ann Moyal","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@ASPI_org","twitter_site":"@ASPI_org","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Ann Moyal","Est. reading time":"5 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/","name":"The Strategist","description":"ASPI's analysis and commentary site","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-AU"},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-AU","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/awm.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/awm.png","width":638,"height":381,"caption":"Living in Gallipoli"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/","name":"Alan Moorehead\u2019s Gallipoli | The Strategist","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2015-05-15T22:00:57+00:00","dateModified":"2015-05-15T07:10:04+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/cba9c37e703ec8ab9e7abd2c27650a2c"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-AU","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/alan-mooreheads-gallipoli\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Alan Moorehead\u2019s Gallipoli"}]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/cba9c37e703ec8ab9e7abd2c27650a2c","name":"Ann Moyal","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-AU","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/050f471fd2fc7d9e214764a79fbee228?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/050f471fd2fc7d9e214764a79fbee228?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Ann Moyal"},"url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/author\/ann-moyal\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20439"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20439"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20464,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20439\/revisions\/20464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20462"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}