Wartime Issue 47 - Spring 2009

Gallipoli: The August Offensive revisited

Featured articles:

• A chain of disasters by Peter Burness. The battle at Lone Pine was only part of a series of attacks in August 1915
• The August offensive at ANZAC by Robin Prior.  A re-examination of the strategy behind these famous battles.
• Bloody Ridge: the assault on Lone Pine by Ashley Ekins.  Questions remain over whether the seizing of Lone Pine was a tragic miscalculation.
• Chunuk Bair: A New Zealand epic by Ian McGibbon.  The New Zealanders’ assault on Chunuk Bair was not a lost opportunity.
• Gallipoli revisited: a journey to the battlefields, 1919 by Janda Gooding.  When the war was over, Charles Bean’s major work was just beginning.
• Nolan: the first great drama by Lola Watkins.  A little-known series of paintings on the Gallipoli campaign was inspired by the story of ancient Greek heroes.
• A quiet hero by Peter Burness.  Already a hero of the Antarctic, a gifted man’s life was wasted at Gallipoli.
• The Agent Orange story is not over by Graham Walker.  Sceptics should not be allowed the last word on the medical problems of Vietnam veterans.
• Not all heroes by Michael Hammerston.  Determined to be a part of the Great War, Trooper Britten of the 8th Light Horse Regiment had a brief but troubled life of military indiscipline.
• The spirit of the bayonet by Aaron Pegram.  An outdated weapon still played an important psychological role during the First World War.
• Out of the line of fire by Deborah Beck.  Some of our best-known artists took part in a unique training scheme after the Second World War.
• An Australian ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ by Stuart Braga.  A little-known group of Chinese spies, organised and led by an Australian, operated behind Japanese lines in occupied China during the Second World War.
• Shooting gallery: G-George over Germany.  Letters from Adrian Marks, a crew member on a Lancaster bomber, tell of the drama of bombing raids over Germany.