Wartime 34 - Autumn 2006

Gallipoli Courage

Featured articles:

• Return to Gallipoli by Bruce Scates. The first Australian pilgrimages to ANZAC Cove were no easy feat.
• Ottoman artillery bombardment by Peter D. Williams. Little remarked in histories of the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli is the artillery bombardment they endured, one comparable in intensity to those on the Western Front.
• Bulair: the attack that didn’t happen by Peter Londey. German general Otto Liman von Sanders miscalculation at Bulair deprived the Turkish defenders of men during the Gallipoli assault.
• Courage at Lone Pine by Andrew Gray. The fierce contest for possession of the Turkish front-line trenches on Gallipoli is told in a famous Australian War Memorial diorama.
• First to fight by Walter Kudrycz. Even before Gallipoli, the men of the AIF were in action fighting the Turkish infantry at Kantara on the eastern bank of the Suez Canal.
• The youngest ANZAC? by John Woodcock. Not all soldiers in the first AIF met the minimum age requirement, such as Alick James Bryant and James Martin who were both under 15 years.
• Allies in adversity by Walter Kudrycz, Nick Fletcher and Sarah Cowan. Two new exhibitions at the Australian War Memorial commemorate the important, though often overlooked, contribution of the Dutch to winning the Pacific war.
• Kapyong captured by Brad Manera. An interview with Korean war commando Ray Parry unearths some priceless photographs.
• A happy lot on Tarakan by John Hore-Lacy and Peter Stanley. They may have been the “Mad Mortar Section”, but Punchy Hanson’s Commandos broke up one of the most determined Japanese counter-attacks.
• Men of Pozières by Peter Burness. Ninety years ago, in a small corner of northern France, Australian troops “fell more thickly than on any other battlefield of the war”.
• Death on the record by Anne-MaArie Condé. The pain of not knowing a soldier’s fate made war even more unbearable for families.
• ‘Fire-eater’ by Michael Molkentin. Seven days with the Royal Flying Corps was a short, harsh apprenticeship in aerial combat for  young Australian Owen Lewis on the Western Front.
• The mutiny that wasn’t by Peter Stanley. A wartime stigma has persisted for the men of the HMAS Pirie down the years.
• Tragedy in Moreton Bay by Peter Nunan. Friendly fire killed three crewmen of HMAS Tambar in 1942. The familiar simple stones of the Australian War Graves bearing the Royal Australian Navy crest identify two of the men’s graves. The third is more difficult to find. They were Able Seaman Archibald Bartsch, Warrant Officer Henry Theeman and Steward Eric Harrison.
• Before the storm by Richard Osgood, Martin Brown and Lucie Hawkins. Practice made perfect for the Australian 3rd Division on Salisbury Plain in the First World War.
• Bardia by Corporal Francis (Frank) George Atkins, 2/11th Battalion, AIF.