Foolhardy mission
ONE of the most striking things about the campaign in Gallipoli in 1915 was the conditions of combat. They were horrid. Dysentery was rife. As Peter Hart records in his stirring account of the invasion of the Turkish peninsula, within a few months half of the 100,000 men serving were unfit for duty.
The fighting was fierce and relentless. Corpses in No Man’s Land lay unburied. Others were used, unwittingly, as pillows. Flies were a scourge. Indeed, the war poet Rupert Brooke died during the campaign from an insect bite on the lip.
