Gallipoli 1915: a century on
An international conference hosted by the Australian War Memorial and the Australian National University
Llewellyn Hall, Australian National University, Canberra
18-20 March 2015
The Gallipoli campaign of 1915 was one of the most controversial campaigns of the First World War. The major allied powers aimed at shortening the war by eliminating Turkey, but the campaign ended in complete failure and over 140,000 allied casualties.
One hundred years later, the campaign still generates mythology and debate over the strategy and planning, the real or illusory opportunities for success, and the causes of failure. The campaign involved military and naval forces from many nations around the world, and the lingering memory of Gallipoli continues to play a central role in the national narratives of Australia, New Zealand, and Turkey.
On the centenary of Gallipoli, Australia’s national memorial and museum of war joins with Australia’s national university to host this major international conference. Leading historians from all the countries who contributed forces to the campaign will present the most current perspectives on the many faces of Gallipoli.
Themes to be covered will include:
- The planning and conduct of the campaign on land and sea
- The impact of Gallipoli on the societies involved
- Myth, memory, and nationalism
- The legacies and heritage of the Gallipoli peninsula
- Gallipoli today.
Program
Tuesday 17 March, 2015
6.00 pm - 8.00 pm |
Reception Welcome: Turkish Ambassador His Excellency Reha Keskintepe; Director of the Australian War Memorial Dr Brendan Nelson; Australian National University Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young AO |
Wednesday 18 March, 2015
Theme 1 | Planning and Landing Venue: Llewellyn Hall, The Australian National University |
8.00 am | Registration and coffee |
9.00 am |
Opening: The Honourable Kevin Andrews MP, Minister for Defence Keynote address: 1915: searching for solutions Professor Sir Hew Strachan (Chichele Professor of the History of War, University of Oxford) |
10.30 am | Break |
11.00 am | Naval overtures Prelude to Gallipoli: the naval campaign to force the Dardanelles Professor Christopher Bell (Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada) A most necessary footnote: navigation and the grounding of the Gallipoli campaign Professor Tom Frame (University of New South Wales, Canberra) Echoes from the deep: the wrecks of the Dardanelles campaign Mr Selçuk Kolay OAM (undersea researcher, Kolay Marine) and Mr Savas Karakas (documentary film producer, Iz TV) |
1.00 pm | Lunch |
2.00 pm | Panel: Why did the landings fail? Chair: Professor Robin Prior (Flinders University) The Anzac landings Brigadier Chris Roberts AM CSC (Retd) (independent author) The British landings at Cape Helles Professor Keith Jeffery (Queen’s University, Belfast) The British landings at Suvla Bay Mr Jeff Cleverly (Office of Australian War Graves) Turkish responses Mr Kenan Çelik OAM |
4.00 pm | Break Transport to the Australian War Memorial |
4.30 pm | Last Post Ceremony Followed by special tours of the new First World War galleries |
6.30 for 6.45 pm |
Conference dinner Dinner speech: Gallipoli and the mists of ages |
Thursday 19 March, 2015
Theme 2 | Fighting Venue: Llewellyn Hall, The Australian National University |
8.30 am | Coffee |
9.00 am |
Forgotten allies Keynote address: A colonial expedition? French soldiers’ experience at the Dardanelles From the jewel in the crown of empire: the Indian army on Gallipoli |
10.30 am | Break |
11.00 am |
The forgotten campaign: Newfoundland at Gallipoli “Twas better to die 'neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sed el Bahr”: Irish national identity and Gallipoli. |
12.00 pm | Lunch |
Lunchtime Seminar: The experiences of Indigenous and colonial troops Heroism and cowardice? The Maori Contingent on Gallipoli |
|
1.00 pm |
Surviving I "A want of organisation and supervision": the medical services at the Dardanelles Shell shock, Gallipoli, and the memories of war |
2.00 pm |
Surviving II Executing justice: military discipline and punishment on Gallipoli Enduring imprisonment: Australians captured on Gallipoli – another side of Anzac |
3.00 pm | Break |
3.30 pm |
On the home fronts The other volunteer Army: the Australian Red Cross and the Gallipoli campaign The birth of a divided nation: Gallipoli and the home front |
4.30 pm | Break |
5.15 pm |
Gallipoli and film The Hero of the Dardanelles, Alfred Rolfe (July 1915) With the Dardanelles Expedition: Heroes of Gallipoli, Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett (August 1915) Discussions with director and audience Q&A (full program TBA) Christopher Lee, Screenwriter |
7.00 pm | Reception – drinks and canapés Venue: Llewellyn Hall, The Australian National University |
Friday 20 March, 2015
Theme 3 | Remembering Venue: Llewellyn Hall, The Australian National University |
8.30 am | Coffee |
9.00 am |
Gallipoli remembered through material culture Anzac treasures 1: the Gallipoli collection of the Australian War Memorial Anzac treasures 2: the remnants left on Turkish soil |
10.30 am | Break |
11.00 am |
Gallipoli remembered through art A beautiful graveyard: painting Gallipoli 1915-22 Gallipoli remembered through archaeology Secrets of a silent landscape
Gallipoli remembered through music Frederick Septimus Kelly: Australia’s forgotten soldier-composer |
12.30 pm | Lunch |
1.20 pm | Address: Senator the Hon. Michael Ronaldson, Minister for Veterans’ Affairs, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Centenary of Anzac |
1.30 pm |
Memory and commemoration Keynote address: Who owns the memory of Gallipoli? Australia’s influence on the commemoration of the Gallipoli campaign |
2.15 pm |
Panel discussion: How Australia Remembers Chair: Professor Joan Beaumont (Australian National University) Professor Bruce Scates (Monash University) Professor Peter Stanley (University of New South Wales-Canberra) Mr James Brown (University of Sydney) |
3.30 pm | Break |
4.00 pm |
Concluding address Does Gallipoli matter? |
4.45 pm |
Closing of conference Closing musical performance: The Lost Gallipoli Sonata of Frederick Septimus Kelly Christopher Latham, violin Caroline Almonte, piano |
Speakers and abstracts
Tuesday 17 March 2015 - Welcome address
Welcome by Dr Brendan Nelson, Director of the Australian War MemorialThe Australian War Memorial welcomes delegates and speakers to this important history conference, Gallipoli 1915 a century on. This event marks the centenary of that tragic campaign. It also represents the culmination of a valued partnership between the Australian War Memorial and the Australian National University, further forging links between Australia’s leading research-intensive university and our world-renowned war museum, shrine, archive and research facility. Gallipoli remains both a pivotal historical event and a compelling epic story. It continues to draw writers, film-makers, artists, historians, archaeologists and researchers across diverse fields. A part of the appeal of the Gallipoli saga undoubtedly lies in its spectacular Aegean setting and the remote and rugged landscape of the timeless battlefields. Gallipoli was also distinctive for its intermingling of soldiers drawn from many nations and the intensity of the fighting at close quarters on that confined peninsula, lending the campaign a human dimension that was overshadowed by the dehumanising ‘industrialised’ warfare of the Western Front. In conceiving and developing the program for this conference, the principal organisers, Professor Joan Beaumont of the Australian National University and Ashley Ekins, chief historian of the Australian War Memorial, have aimed to capture that diversity. Their intent has been to provide international perspectives on many aspects of the campaign. These objectives converge in three main themes: the strategic conception and conduct of the campaign on land and sea, the military experience of soldiers from many nations, and the memory, legacies and heritage of the Gallipoli campaign. This conference provides a rare opportunity for this international gathering of eminent historians, authors and specialists from various disciplines to examine aspects of the campaign, exchange discoveries, and bring fresh insights drawn from their original research. This will greatly enhance our understanding of the many and diverse faces and facets of the enduring Gallipoli story. Participants are fortunate indeed to be able to absorb and share their knowledge and insights. I especially thank our partner, the Australian National University, along with our sponsor Qantas, whose support has made this possible. I warmly welcome all those attending the conference. This will be a stimulating, engaging, educative, and memorable experience. |
Welcome by Professor Ian Young AO, Vice-Chancellor, Australian National UniversityThe Australian National University is delighted to host this important conference in collaboration with the Australian War Memorial. Over the past century Gallipoli has assumed a central role in Australia’s political culture. In the centenary year, we welcome the opportunity to generate new debate and discussion about this controversial campaign. As Australia’s pre-eminent research institution, the Australian National University, since its establishment in 1946, has conducted research and teaching which is of enduring significance in the life of the Australian nation, which supports the development of national unity and identity, which improves Australia's understanding of itself and its neighbours, and which contributes to economic development and social cohesion. The university is renowned nationally and internationally for research excellence in Australian military history and defence studies, hosting the leading think-tank, the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, the Official History of Peacekeeping, Humanitarian and Post–Cold War Operations and the Official History of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). We are delighted to welcome to the campus the conference’s distinguished international and national speakers and an audience of Australians from diverse sections of our society eager to learn more about our national history. In particular, we value the chance to collaborate with the Australian War Memorial, whose mission is to assist Australians to remember, interpret and understand the Australian experience of war and its enduring impact on Australian society. Our partnership with this important national institution in convening this conference promises to continue to develop as a rich and productive one. |
Wednesday 18 March 2015 - Planning and Landing |
Keynote address |
1915: searching for solutionsProfessor Sir Hew Strachan, University of Oxford Professor Sir Hew Strachan has been Chichele Professor of the History of War at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of All Souls College since 2002, and was Director of the Oxford Program on the Changing Character of War between 2003 and 2012. He also serves on the Strategic Advisory Panel of the Chief of the Defence Staff and on the UK Defence Academy Advisory Board, as well as being a Trustee of the Imperial War Museum, a Commonwealth War Graves Commissioner, and a member of both the UK and Scottish Committees for the Centenary of the First World War. He sits on the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and since 2010 has been a specialist adviser to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on the National Security Strategy. He is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2003, and was awarded an Hon. D. Univ. by the University of Paisley in 2005. In 2010 he chaired a task force on the implementation of the Armed Forces Covenant for the Prime Minister. In 2011 he was the inaugural Humanitas Visiting Professor in War Studies at the University of Cambridge. He is a Brigadier in the Queen’s Bodyguard for Scotland (Royal Company of Archers). In December 2012, Foreign Policy magazine included him in its list of top global thinkers for the year. He was knighted in the 2013 New Year’s Honours, and was appointed Lord Lieutenant of Tweeddale in 2014. Some of his recent books are: To Arms (2001), the first of three volumes on the First World War; The First World War: A New Illustrated History (2003), derived from the Channel 4 series of the same name and retransmitted in 2014 by the BBC; Clausewitz’s On War: A Biography (2007); The Direction of War (2013); and as joint editor, The Changing Character of War (2011); How Fighting Ends: A History of Surrender (2012); and British Generals and Blair’s Wars (2013). |
Naval overtures |
Prelude to Gallipoli: the naval campaign to force the DardanellesChristopher M. Bell, Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada The Anglo-French naval campaign to force a passage through the Dardanelles Straits is usually treated as little more than a short, futile prelude to the battles that followed on the Gallipoli peninsula, but the naval offensive was originally conceived as an entirely independent operation. This paper will examine the origins and course of the naval campaign, which did not initially include plans for the employment of troops ashore. Particular attention will be paid to the main developments in British grand strategy in 1914 and early 1915; the decision-making process within the British Admiralty; the role of Britain’s controversial First Lord of the Admiralty, Winston Churchill; and the reasons why the British War Council decided in January 1915 to proceed with an assault by ships alone. It will show that British leaders made a series of mistaken assumption about how a naval offensive was likely to develop, including an underestimation of Turkish resolve, of the effectiveness of naval guns against Turkish defences, and of the ease with which minefields could be swept. The paper will also provide an overview of the naval operations and the reasons for their failure. It will conclude by looking at the reasons why the naval assault was suspended following the heavy losses incurred on 18 March 1915; and the decision-making process that led to the landing of troops on the Gallipoli peninsula to make possible the passage of the allied fleet through the Straits. Professor Christopher M. Bell is Professor of History at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He received his PhD from the University of Calgary in 1998. After two and half years at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, USA, he moved to Dalhousie University. Dr Bell has written widely on modern naval and strategic history. His books include Churchill and Sea Power (2012 – winner of the Canadian Nautical Research Society’s Keith Matthews Award for Best Maritime Book); The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy between the Wars (2000); and as co-editor, At the Crossroads between Peace and War: The London Naval Conference of 1930 (2014); and Naval Mutinies of the Twentieth Century: An International Perspective (2003). He is currently working on an edited volume on the Battle of the Atlantic and a new book on the Dardanelles campaign, tentatively titled Winston Churchill and the Dardanelles: A Study in Myth, Memory, and Reputation, now under contract with Oxford University Press. http://christophermbell.ca/ |
A most necessary footnote: navigation and the grounding of the Gallipoli campaignTom Frame, University of New South Wales, Canberra While Australian naval participation in the Gallipoli campaign has become more widely known and more closely studied over the last two decades, the operational difficulties faced by units of both the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy operating off the peninsula with poor charts and inadequate navigational aids has not been the subject of close or sustained attention. This paper draws on little-known records held in the UK and Australian Hydrographic Offices, operational reports, and unpublished personal correspondence. It examines navigational preparations for the Gallipoli campaign, the inadequacies of pre-1915 hydrographic surveys, the unreliability of bottom soundings, the inaccuracies of charts and the challenges of position-fixing in the Aegean, the Dardanelles and the Sea of Marmara. It demonstrates that these navigational difficulties had a direct impact on the Australian landings and a continuing influence on the course and conduct of the naval campaign. Professor Tom Frame joined the Royal Australian Navy College, HMAS Creswell, as a 16-year-old, junior entry cadet midshipman in January 1979. He served at sea and ashore, including a posting as Research Officer to the Chief of Naval Staff, and completed a PhD at UNSW Canberra before leaving the Navy in 1993 to train for the Anglican ministry. After parish work in Australia and England he was Bishop to the Australian Defence Force (2001–07) and then Director of St Mark’s National Theological Centre (2007–14). He has been a Visiting Fellow in the School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University (2000–03), Patron of the Armed Forces Federation of Australia (2002–06) and a member of the Council of the Australian War Memorial (2004–07). He judged the inaugural Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History (2007). A graduate of the Universities of New South Wales, Melbourne and Kent, he was appointed Director of the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society (ACSACS), University of New South Wales, Canberra, in July 2014. He has been commissioned to produce a 50-year commemorative history of the partnership between the University of New South Wales and the Department of Defence. Tom Frame is the author or editor of 26 books including Where Fate Calls: The HMAS Voyager Tragedy (1992); HMAS Sydney: Loss and Controversy (1993); Living by the Sword? The Ethics of Armed Intervention (2004); The Life and Death of Harold Holt (2005); Losing My Religion: Unbelief in Australia (2009); and The Shores of Gallipoli: Naval Aspects of the Anzac Campaign (2000). He lives on a farm near Tarago, New South Wales, with his wife, Helen. He has two daughters and two grand-daughters. |
Echoes from the deep: the wrecks of the Dardanelles campaignSavaş Karakaş, Documentary film producer, IZ TV (Istanbul, Turkey) and Selçuk Kolay OAM, Undersea researcher, Kolay Marine (Istanbul, Turkey) Why is there such a lack of detailed information about the wrecks of the Dardanelles campaign, a pivotal First World War naval battle, and why are these wrecks not readily open to exploratory diving? If we consider the geographical position of the Dardanelles, numerous reasons may be offered: the heavy sea traffic, strong currents, wrecks situated at extreme depths exceeding 50 metres, and some located within prohibited military zones. Indeed, the wrecks are found not just within the Dardanelles Straits, but also in the Aegean Sea near the Anzac area and in the Sea of Marmara. The research presented here covers 33 wrecks from all of these areas, and includes the discovery of the French ocean liner Carthage, the British submarine E14, and the British minesweeper Renarro, all of which were located during a recent expedition, captured on film for the first time, and surveyed using the new, sophisticated technology of 3D Multibeam Sonar Imaging. Prior to this, owing to the limited underwater visibility, it had never been possible to obtain the image of an entire wreck, but with this new technology, it has been possible to produce a single image of each wreck in its current condition. This joint presentation attempts to answer numerous questions regarding the wrecks and provides missing data and clues to further discoveries. Savaş Karakaş was born in 1968 in Ankara and holds a BA in Economics. His television career started in 1995 and he is today an award-winning documentary producer/director who continues also to pursue the story of his grandfather who fought with Turkish forces on Gallipoli in 1915. Gallipoli: History in the Depths (1998), Gallipoli: War Beneath the Waves (2006), and Echoes from the Deep (2013) are the most famous of his many documentary productions focusing on the war wrecks of Gallipoli. He has also recounted the dramatic stories of sponge divers to submariners, and from dancing bears to dolphins in captivity in his documentary films. Savaş Karakaş currently works for Turkish documentary channel Iz TV and hosts the international dive series, Traces on Water. He is co-author with Selçuk Kolay of the authoritative book, Echoes from the Deep: Wrecks from the Dardanelles Campaign (published in Istanbul and issued with a companion DVD, 2013). Selçuk Kolay OAM was born in Istanbul in 1948. He was educated at the German School in Istanbul until 1967 and at the Technical University of Berlin until 1974, when he graduated as an industrial engineer. After compulsory national service in the Turkish Navy, he joined the Koç Group, the biggest industrial conglomerate in Turkey, as an industrial manager. In 1981 he was made a director in the Koç Group, becoming active in the automotive industry, and in 1991 he was appointed as a board member of the Rahmi M. Koç Museum and Cultural Foundation. As the director of the Rahmi M. Koç technology museum he worked on numerous research, salvage, and restoration projects between 1996 and 2000. In 2000 he founded his own company and is active in international trade and underwater exploration. He has been engaged in underwater research since 1974, concentrating mainly on steam-age wrecks, and he has located, dived on, and identified over 100 shipwrecks in Turkish waters. He is the discoverer of many significant vessels, including the Ottoman First World War light cruiser Midilli (ex-German Breslau), the Second World War Turkish submarine Atılay in the Aegean Sea (confirming the belief that the boat had struck a mine), the steam ferry Rehber, the Turkish gunboat Nur-ül Bahir, the steam ship Bosphorus, and the submarines E7, E15, Mariotte, Joule, and the scuttled German submarines U-19, U-20 and U-23 in the Black Sea. In 1995 he initiated a project to locate the Australian submarine AE2 which was scuttled in the Sea of Marmara in April 1915 after becoming the first allied submarine to penetrate the Dardanelles, and he successfully located the wreck in June 1998. In 2000 he was awarded an Honorary Order of Australia in recognition of his services to Australia’s maritime history. In 2010 he joined the Gallipoli Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey team in the archaeological survey of the Anzac Cove area. Selçuk Kolay is a board member of the Turkish Institute of Nautical Archaeology (TINA) and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA) at A&M University of Texas. He lives and works in Istanbul, speaks both German and English, is married and has a 34-year-old son. He is co-author with Savaş Karakaş of the authoritative book, Echoes from the Deep: Wrecks from the Dardanelles Campaign (published in Istanbul and issued with a companion DVD, 2013). |
Panel: Why did the landings fail? |
Chair: Professor Robin Prior, Flinders University Professor Robin Prior is Professor of History at Flinders University in Adelaide. He was inaugural Head of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of New South Wales, Australian Defence Force Academy, where he taught for 22 years. He has also been a farmer, storekeeper, and librarian. He has written six books on the First World War (many with Professor Trevor Wilson), including: Command on the Western Front: The Military Career of General Sir Henry Rawlinson 1914–1918 (1992); Passchendaele: The Untold Story (1996); The Somme (2005); and an illustrated book, The First World War (1999). He was a major contributor to the Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (1995, second edition 2008) and to the three-volume Cambridge History of the First World War (2014). His particular expertise is in the field of Britain, Australia, and the First and Second World Wars. His most recent book, Gallipoli: The End of the Myth (published by Yale University Press and University of NSW Press, 2009), has done nothing to end the myth. His forthcoming book, When Britain Saved the West: The Story of 1940, is due for release in early 2015. He is now working on a book on the Normandy invasion of 1944 and one on Winston Churchill as grand strategist. He has been involved in various projects commemorating the centenary of the First World War, including a documentary film on Gallipoli to be screened by the ABC on Anzac Day 2015. |
The landing at Anzac: a battle mis-portrayedChris Roberts, Independent scholar For a century the landing at Anzac has been wreathed in myths and misconceptions. The popular view has the Anzacs thrown ashore on the wrong beach under murderous machine-gun fire against strong Turkish opposition. Suffering heavy casualties, they clambered up the cliffs, and fought their way inland through terrible terrain to gain a precarious toehold on the heights beyond Anzac Cove. Yet evidence from both sides, including photographs, indicates they landed in approximately the right place, against light opposition, suffering light casualties, and overwhelmed the thin Turkish screen. The reasons given for the Anzacs to achieve even their initial objectives have been varied and contradictory – the most favoured being the misplaced landing a mile north of the intended site, the terrible terrain that served to disorganise the troops and the speed with which the Turks reacted to the landing. A closer examination of the battle shows these explanations to be false. Unfortunately, these misconceptions have deflected the focus away from early Australian decisions that determined the fate of the operation. Brigadier Chris Roberts AM CSC (Rtd) served 35 years in the Australian Army, including operational service in South Vietnam with 3 SAS Squadron. More senior appointments included Commanding Officer of the SAS Regiment, Commander Special Forces, Director General Corporate Planning – Army, and Commander Northern Command. He then spent seven years in executive appointments with the Multiplex Group, including Executive Chairman, Multiplex facilities Management. He later worked as a volunteer in the Military History Section of the Australian War Memorial. Chris has written several articles on Gallipoli, and is the author of Chinese Strategy and the Spratly Islands Dispute (1996); and The Landing at Anzac, 1915 (published by Army History Unit, 2013). With Dr Peter Pedersen he co-authored Anzacs on the Western Front: The Australian War Memorial Battlefield Guide (2012). He is a graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, the University of Western Australia (BA Honours in History), the Army Staff College, the United States Armed Forces Staff College, and the Australian College of Defence and Strategic Studies. |
The British landings at Cape HellesProfessor Keith Jeffery, Queen’s University, Belfast Professor Keith Jeffery is Professor of British History at Queen’s University, Belfast, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is author or editor of 14 books, including A Military History of Ireland (1997); Ireland and the Great War (2000); The GPO and the Easter Rising (2006); and a prize-winning biography of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. His ground-breaking official history, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909–49, was published in 2010. He is currently working on a global history of 1916, scheduled for publication in the northern autumn of 2015. |
More than a sideshow: a reassessment of the British landings at Suvla BayJeff Cleverly, Office of Australian War Graves The landing of the British army’s IX Corps at Suvla Bay as part of the August offensive is perhaps the most controversial aspects of the Gallipoli campaign. The long-held myth that the poor performance of Lieutenant General Frederick Stopford’s IX Corps was to blame for the failure of the August offensive has recently been scotched by historians, who have shown that Suvla’s subsidiary nature made it irrelevant and inconsequential. This paper will challenge this now accepted view. While superficially correct and enough to debunk the “Stopford as a scapegoat” myth, the view of Suvla as only secondary to Anzac does not tell the whole story. More importantly, however, the assessment of Suvla’s inconsequential importance is not accurate and fails to account for the context in which Hamilton’s thinking evolved during the conduct of GHQ’s planning. Suvla was far more important to Hamilton than is currently acknowledged. This reappraisal of GHQ’s planning will reveal how Hamilton changed his expectations for the August offensive and Suvla’s role within it. Hamilton came to consider the landing at Suvla to be intimately woven within a combined Anzac–Suvla offensive that he believed would end the entire Gallipoli campaign. This vision was at odds with Hamilton’s planning staff, for whom the landing at Suvla was always a distinct and limited operation designed only to provide a base for later operations. This divergence between Hamilton and his planning staff has been the source of the confusion and controversy that has dogged Suvla ever since. Jeff Cleverly is currently researching the landings at Suvla Bay as part of his doctorate with the Australian National University. He graduated from the Royal Military College, Duntroon, in 1988 and in early 1997, after 10 years’ commissioned service in the Australian Army, he joined the British Army as an infantry officer. Since then he has served on operations in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, and the Falkland Islands. He has also seen combat in Afghanistan, where he was seriously wounded in action against the Taliban. After commanding the 3rd Battalion, The Royal Welsh, he completed his final posting as an exchange British Army instructor at the Australian Defence College. He left the British Army in March 2014 and has settled with his wife and three young boys in Canberra, where he now manages domestic operations for the Office of Australian War Graves. He is a graduate of the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College and has a Master’s degree in Defence Studies from King’s College London. He has been a regular visitor to the Gallipoli Peninsula, where he has led numerous battlefield tours. |
Turkish responsesMr Kenan Çelik OAM, Independent scholar and guide to the Gallipoli battlefields Kenan Çelik OAM is one of Turkey’s leading experts on the Gallipoli campaign. For over 25 years he has worked as a professional guide to the battlefields of the Gallipoli Peninsula and has acquired an exhaustive knowledge of the significant historical sites of the region. After completing his education in Turkey, Kenan studied under a Fulbright scholarship at Oregon State University in the United States. He was awarded an MA degree in English literature for his work on British Edwardian poet Rupert Brooke, who famously died en route to Gallipoli in 1915. Since retiring in 2001 from his position as a lecturer in English language and literature at Onsekiz Mart (18th of March) University in Çanakkale, he has devoted himself full-time to guiding visitors over the Gallipoli battlefields and writing accounts of various aspects of the campaign. He has shared his knowledge of the battlefields and the events of 1915 with tens of thousands of people from all walks of life, guiding Australian and New Zealand backpackers and heads of state, prime ministers, presidents, and service chiefs from Britain, Commonwealth countries, and other nations. He has also been historical consultant to historians and researchers, and appeared in numerous documentary film and television programs. In 2000 and 2010, Kenan was a visiting scholar at the Australian War Memorial. In 2000 he was awarded an honorary Order of Australia, in recognition of his services to Australian history and Australian–Turkish relations. Kenan Çelik’s most recent publications include, “'There will be no retreating’: Turkish soldiers’ reactions to the August offensive”, chapter 7 in Ashley Ekins (ed.), Gallipoli: A Ridge Too Far (2013); and his article, “Turkish–Australian rapprochement in light of the Gallipoli campaign”, Turkish Policy Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 1, Spring 2014: http://turkishpolicy.com/dosyalar/files/vol_13-no_1-celik.pdf |
Dinner speech |
Gallipoli and the mists of agesMr Les Carlyon AC, independent author and Australian War Memorial Council member Mr Les Carlyon AC was born in northern Victoria in 1942 into a family steeped in horses and racing. He has had a distinguished career in journalism, having been editor of The Age, editor-in-chief of the Herald and Weekly Times group, a frequent contributor to The Bulletin, and visiting lecturer in journalism at RMIT University. As one of Australia’s most respected journalists, he has received both the Walkley Award (1971 and 2004) and the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award (1993). He has also won the Carlton & United Best Australian Sports Writing Award three times. He has written a number of books on sport and Australian history. His history book, Gallipoli (2001), was a bestseller in Australia and Britain. His successor volume, The Great War (2006), recounted the story of Australian forces on the Western Front in France and Belgium. It was joint winner of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History in June 2007 and was awarded both the Australian Book Industry’s Book of the Year and the Non-fiction Book of the Year prize in July 2007. Les Carlyon was appointed a member of the Council of the Australian War Memorial in June 2014 for a three-year term, having previously served on the Council for two three-year terms from May 2006 and April 2009. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in June 2014 for “eminent service to literature through the promotion of the national identity as an author, editor and journalist, to the understanding and appreciation of Australia’s war history, and to the horseracing industry”. |
Thursday 19 March 2015 - Fighting
Forgotten allies |
A colonial expedition? French soldiers’ experience at the DardanellesJohn Horne, Trinity College Dublin French participation in the allied expeditionary force to the Dardanelles had more in common with traditional colonial campaigning than with the dominant French experience during the Great War of national mobilisation to defend the nation’s frontiers. Moreover, a significant proportion of the French troops involved in the Dardanelles campaign were colonial. Yet the logic of the campaign derived both from the European conflict, as the most distant front in the siege warfare that encircled Europe, and from Anglo-French imperial collaboration (and rivalry) in the last great colonial carve-up, that of the Ottoman Near East. This paper will explore the experiences and perceptions of the French forces engaged in the Dardanelles at the interface between the colonial and the national. Professor John Horne is Professor of Modern European History at Trinity College Dublin, of which he is a Fellow. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and the executive board of the International Research Centre of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, Péronne, France. He serves on the official French Mission du Centenaire and chaired the scientific committee of the exhibition, Vu du Front, organised by the Musée de l’Armée and the Musée d’Histoire Contemporaine (October 2014-January 2015). He has published widely on the history of modern France and on the comparative history of the First World War, including A Companion to World War One (2010), and (with Robert Gerwarth), War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the First World War (2010). In 2012–13 he was a Senior Visiting Fellow in History at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany. |
From the jewel in the crown of empire: the Indian army on GallipoliRana Chhina, United Service Institution of India The Gallipoli campaign saw soldiers of many nations flung together by a world at war. While the experiences of the soldiers who fought in this campaign assumed great significance for some of the belligerents and their participation has been adequately covered in various histories of the campaign, not much has been said of the Indian military contribution to this theatre of the Great War. The Indian soldiers who fought at Gallipoli were all pre-war regulars. Though not large in numerical terms, their contribution to the fighting, both at Helles and at Anzac, was significant for the conduct and outcome of the operations. This paper contextualises their role and involvement within the framework of the larger Indian experience of the Great War. It also seeks to locate the role of memorialisation in a postcolonial narrative of history and the fragmented manner in which the tenuous links to a colonial past are kept alive in the context of the Indians who fought and died at Gallipoli. Rana T.S. Chhina is a retired squadron leader who served in the Indian Air Force as a helicopter pilot. A recipient of the prestigious Macgregor Medal for best military reconnaissance in 1986, he had the distinction of carrying out the highest landing in the world by a medium-lift class of helicopter. He was responsible for organising the Indian Air Force archives at Air Headquarters and is currently Secretary and Editor of the United Service Institution of India Centre for Armed Forces Historical Research and Vice President of the Indian Military Historical Society, UK. He is also a member of the IAF Aerospace Museum Apex Steering Committee and the Government of India’s Archival Advisory Board. The author of a number of publications, he has also edited a number of official war histories, the latest being For the Honour of India: A History of Indian Peacekeeping (2009) by Lieutenant General Satish Nambiar and Chandar S. Sundaram. He is presently a member of the joint USI–MEA Steering Committee responsible for coordinating international and national commemoration of India’s participation in the First World War in connection with the centenary of the conflict. |
The forgotten campaign: Newfoundland at GallipoliMark Humphries, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario with Tim Cook, Canadian War Museum, Ottawa In September 1915, the Newfoundland Regiment joined the British 29th Division on Gallipoli, served in the trenches for four months and then participated in the rearguard actions during the withdrawal from the peninsula in December–January. During the Great War, Newfoundland was an independent dominion of the British Empire and its regiment was the smallest national force contributed to the British Expeditionary Force by any of the settler colonies. But little is known outside the island, which is now a province of Canada, about this unit’s contribution to the war effort, even though its experience provides a useful point of comparison. The Newfoundlanders’ experience was not unique: the raising of an overseas regiment was fraught with politics; colonial troops from an isolated fishing colony struggled for acceptance in a regular army division; and their performance on the battlefield was spirited but uneven. However, while Gallipoli was an important focus of myth-making activities in Newfoundland during the first two years of the war, the campaign was quickly forgotten after the war as the regiment’s massacre at Beaumont Hamel on the first day of the Somme became the focal point of memory and commemoration efforts. This remained true until the recent past when a resurgent Newfoundland sense of nationalism saw renewed interest in Gallipoli: it was the only campaign in which the Newfoundland Regiment participated but the Canadian Corps did not. The authors explore both the untold story of Newfoundland at Gallipoli and the forces which shaped post-war memories of the island’s role at the Dardanelles. Professor Mark Humphries holds the Dunkley Chair in War and the Canadian Experience at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, and is Director of the Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies. He taught at Memorial University of Newfoundland for three years before moving to Wilfrid Laurier University and he has served on the Regimental Advisory Council for the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. He earned his PhD from the University of Western Ontario in 2008 and taught at Mount Royal University and Memorial University of Newfoundland before moving to Wilfrid Laurier University in 2014. He has published five books and more than a dozen peer-reviewed articles in Canadian and international journals on the social, medical, and operational history of the Great War. He is co-editor of the series of translations from the German official history of the Great War on Germany’s Western Front, and won the 2010 Canadian Historical Review prize for his work on shell-shock in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Although he is not a Newfoundlander, he developed an interest in the history of the regiment during three years at Memorial University in St John’s, where he sat on the Regimental Advisory Council, supervising several Master’s theses on the history of that unit. He has been featured in programs by the BBC and History Television and profiled by National Geographic Magazine. He is currently working on a book on shell-shock in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Dr Tim Cook is an historian at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa and Adjunct Research Professor at Carleton University. He has published seven books, including the acclaimed two-volume history of Canadians fighting in the Great War, At the Sharp End: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1914–1916 (2007), which won the 2007 J.W. Dafoe Prize and 2008 Ottawa Book Award; and Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War 1916–1918 (2009), which won the 2009 Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction. His book, The Madman and the Butcher: The Sensational Wars of Sam Hughes and General Arthur Currie (2010), was a finalist for several writing awards, including the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, the J.W. Dafoe Prize, and the Ottawa Book Award. Warlords: Borden, Mackenzie King and the Canada’s World Wars (2013) was a finalist for the 2013 Charles Taylor prize. His newest book is The Necessary War: Volume One: Canadians Fighting the Second World War 1939–43(2014). He lives in Ottawa and is a frequent commentator in the media. Unfortunately, he is unable to attend the conference owing to ill-health. |
“’Twas better to die ’neath an Irish sky than at Suvla or Sed el Bahr”: Irish national identity and GallipoliKeith Jeffery, Queen’s University, Belfast Irish formations of the British army were deployed on Gallipoli from the very start. Regular battalions of the Royal Inniskilling, Dublin, and Munster Fusiliers landed at Cape Helles on 25 April 1915, the latter two units suffering heavy casualties. In August, the 10th (Irish) Division, part of Lord Kitchener’s “New Army” raised from August 1914, took part in the fighting at Suvla Bay, also with significant losses. While all these soldiers left from a country in which both Unionists and Nationalists were broadly committed to the allied war effort, by the time the survivors returned, Ireland was a very different place. Irish separatist republicans had become the predominant force in Irish Nationalism and, from the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin, they had begun a violent campaign for independence. This paper will discuss the motivations of Irish Great War recruits to the British army, the deployment of Irish units to Gallipoli and the reception at home of news of their exploits and losses. It will also explore the extent to which, in the longer-term “memory” and commemoration of the war, these troops were multiply marginalised, and until very recently remained a neglected and forgotten component of Ireland’s engagement with the First World War. Professor Keith Jeffery is Professor of British History at Queen’s University, Belfast, and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is author or editor of 14 books, including A Military History of Ireland (1997); Ireland and the Great War (2000); The GPO and the Easter Rising (2006); and a prize-winning biography of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson. His ground-breaking official history, MI6: The History of the Secret Intelligence Service, 1909–49, was published in 2010. He is currently working on a global history of 1916, scheduled for publication in the northern autumn of 2015. |
Seminar: The experiences of Indigenous and colonial troops |
Chair: Professor Mick Dodson AM Professor Mick Dodson AM is Director of the National Centre for Indigenous Studies at the Australian National University and Professor of law at the ANU College of Law. He completed a Bachelor of Jurisprudence and a Bachelor of Laws at Monash University. Professor Dodson also holds an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of New South Wales. He worked with the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service from 1976 to 1981, when he became a barrister at the Victorian Bar. He joined the Northern Land Council as Senior Legal Adviser in 1984 and became Director of the Council in 1990. From August 1988 to October 1990, he was Counsel assisting the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody. He has been a member of the Victorian Equal Opportunity Advisory Council and secretary of the North Australian Legal Aid Service. He is the current Chair of Council of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). He is the former Chairman of the National Aboriginal Youth Law Centre Advisory Board, and has been a member of the National Children’s and Youth Law Centre Board and the advisory panels of the Rob Riley and Koowarta Scholarships. Mick Dodson has been a prominent advocate on land rights and other issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as well as a vigorous advocate of the rights and interests of indigenous peoples around the world. He was the Co-Deputy Chair of the Technical Committee for the 1993 International Year of the World’s Indigenous People and was chairman of the United Nations Advisory Group for the Voluntary Fund for the Decade of Indigenous Peoples. He participated in the crafting of the text of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations (WGIP), and the Inter-sessional Working Group of the Human Rights Commission, which was adopted overwhelmingly in 2007 by the United Nations General Assembly. In 2009, he was named Australian of the Year by the National Australia Day Council. From September 2011 to February 2012, he was at Harvard University, where he was the Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam Harvard Chair in Australian Studies and a Visiting Professor, Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, based at the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy in the John F. Kennedy School of Government. |
Australian aboriginal soldiers on GallipoliMr Garth O’Connell, Curator, Australian War Memorial and Mr Gary Oakley, Curator, Indigenous Liaison Officer, Australian War Memorial Garth O’Connell was raised and educated in Redfern, Moree, and south-west Sydney. In 1995 he joined the Royal Australian Infantry Corps becoming the fourth successive generation in his family to serve in the Australian Army. He specialised as a Direct Fire Support Weapons team leader. With the Army he has deployed on peacekeeping operations to the Solomon Islands, the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympics security team, and Malaysia and Singapore. He continues to serve with the Army History Unit at the Royal Military College, Duntroon. Since he was a child he had wanted to work at the Australian War Memorial and, to achieve that aim, in 1999 he completed a Bachelor of Applied Science degree in Cultural Heritage Management. He joined the Memorial full-time immediately after graduation, working as a Curator with the Military Heraldry and Technology section. Proud of his cross-cultural family roots to County Tipperary and the Gamilaraay people of north-western New South Wales, his research and interests are diverse, including the service history of Indigenous Australians in the Australian Defence Force, the Guadalcanal campaign of 1942–43, and the Vancouver Canucks ice hockey team. He is also National Secretary of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Veterans and Services Association (ATSIVSAA). Gary Oakley was born in Katoomba, New South Wales, and his people are the Gundungurra. He is the first Indigenous Liaison Officer employed at the Australian War Memorial and National President of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Veterans and Services Association of Australia (ATSIVSAA). His connection with the military started as a member of the cadet corps at high school. He later joined the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) as a Junior Recruit in 1969 and after 12 months at HMAS Leeuwin went on to serve in HMAS Duchess, Sydney, Perth, Stuart, and Stalwart and in the submarines HMAS Oxley and Ovens. While at HMAS Platypus he became curator of the 1st Australian Submarine Squadron Museum; on leaving the RAN, he took up a curatorial position at the Australian War Memorial in 1991. He has been a curator at the Bavarian Army Museum in Ingolstadt, Germany, and studied Cultural Heritage Management and Museum Studies at the University of Canberra. |
Heroism and cowardice? The Maori Contingent on GallipoliMonty Soutar, New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage Do you know you Maoris were withdrawn because you were no good and that the officers had no control over the men. Yes you can talk about your Australian and New Zealand fighters but the fiercest fighters on the peninsula were those glorious Maori lads. Two comments from two different officers, the first a New Zealander, the latter British. This paper examines the experience of the 500-strong Maori Contingent on Gallipoli and the circumstances, particularly during the assault on Chunuk Bair, that led to the breaking up of the contingent and the ordering home of four of its officers in disgrace. It reviews the Maori reaction both at home and abroad and analyses the subsequent political response that led to the reinstatement of the officers and the reforming of the Maori Contingent and its reinforcements into a Pioneer Battalion. Dr Monty Soutar (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Awa) is an ex-serviceman and historian with the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage. For the past few years he has been the coordinator of the 28th Maori Battalion website. He is also the World War One Historian in Residence at the Auckland War Memorial Museum. He has significant experience in historical research, in particular oral history. In the 1990s he led a team who interviewed over 100 Maori veterans and widows about their experiences in the Second World War. Following on from the success of the book he wrote on the Maori Battalion in the Second World War, Nga Tama Toa: The Price of Citizenship (2008), he is currently working on a publication about the Maori contribution to the war effort during the First World War. He has also presented and contributed to a number of television documentaries, including the critically acclaimed The Italian Campaign, which aired in New Zealand on Anzac Day in 2014. He is a member of New Zealand’s World War One Centenary Panel and its Waitangi Tribunal. |
Surviving I |
“A want of organisation and supervision”: the medical services at the DardanellesMichael Tyquin, Consulting historian and independent author The medical services of the combatants engaged in the Dardanelles campaign in 1915 were largely responsible for the allies’ ability to remain engaged with the Ottoman Fifth Army for so long. This presentation looks at some of the health aspects of the campaign. This includes the medical and casualty evacuation arrangements; and some of the workings of the official Dardanelles inquiry of 1917. It also provides brief insights into life on the peninsula, the medical assets of the combatants, and the human cost of the campaign. Dr Michael Tyquin is a consulting historian based in Canberra. He has published extensively in the areas of Australian social, medical, and military history. He is a serving reserve officer in the Australian Army and is the official historian of the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Australian Military and Veterans’ Health in the School of Population Health at the University of Queensland. His numerous publications include the following books on Gallipoli and medical matters: Gallipoli: The Medical War: The Australian Army Medical Services in the Dardanelles Campaign of 1915 (1993); Madness and the Military: Australia’s Experience of the Great War (2006); and Gallipoli: An Australian Medical Perspective (2012). |
Shell-shock, Gallipoli, and memories of warJay Winter, Yale University The incidence of shell-shock in all combatant forces in the Great War has been significantly underestimated in official statistics and in most previous studies of casualties of the conflict. In this paper, I will try to present some evidence that this is so with respect to allied casualties in the war against Ottoman Turkey, and then explore the ways in which we can find shadows of these shell-shocked men in later accounts and reflections on the conflict. Professor Jay Winter is Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale University. He received his PhD and DLitt degrees from the University of Cambridge, where he taught as a Fellow of Pembroke College from 1979 to 2001. He is primarily a scholar of the First World War and its impact on the 20th century and is the author of over a dozen books, including: The Great War and the British People (1986); The Experience of World War I (1988); Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (1995); and (with Blaine Baggett) 1914–1918: The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th century (1996). He won an Emmy award in 1997 as co-producer and co-writer of the BBC/PBS eight-hour television series, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century (1996), which was shown in 28 countries. He is a founder and member of the comité directeur of the research centre of the Historial de la Grande Guerre, the tri-national museum of the Great War, inaugurated in 1992 in Péronne, Somme, France. Most recently, he was editor-in-chief of the three-volume Cambridge History of the First World War, published in 2014. He is a Visiting Professor at Monash University, and has been awarded honorary degrees by the University of Graz, the University of Leuven, and the University of Paris. |
Surviving II |
Executing justice: military discipline and punishment on GallipoliAshley Ekins, Australian War Memorial Everyone who has seen a battle knows that soldiers do very often run away; soldiers, even Australian soldiers, have sometimes to be threatened with a revolver to make them go on … Not very many will actually shoot their fingers off to escape from the front, but even this is not uncommon even among Australians. So Australia’s official war correspondent Charles Bean confided his frank observations to his diary on Gallipoli in late September 1915. By then, the campaign had been stalled in static trench warfare for months and all attempts to break the deadlock had failed with costly losses on both sides. Tens of thousands of men remained dug in on their confined enclaves on the exposed peninsula. Fighting their enemy at close quarters and worn down by extremes of climate, disease, malnutrition, and constant physical labour, almost half of them became casualties. With no safe rear areas for allied soldiers to find respite from the dangers and hardships, morale plummeted. There were periodic outbreaks of self-inflicted wounds as soldiers sought to escape front-line duty, as well as instances of combat refusals and even attempts at desertion. Gallipoli severely tested the endurance of soldiers and their commanders in all armies. Among the influences that are believed to have sustained and motivated men were the bonds of unit cohesion, strong leadership by junior commanders, a shared belief in their cause, and a common spirit of nationalism and patriotism. But underlying all these were the harsh sanctions of an unyielding system of military discipline. Some commanders resorted to harsh punishments, including death sentences, and men were shot for military offences. This paper will explore the maintenance of discipline and the application of the military justice system on Gallipoli and question its effectiveness through an examination of courts-martial records and by a comparative approach to national systems of military justice. Ashley Ekins is Head of the Military History Section at the Australian War Memorial. A graduate of the University of Adelaide, he specialises in the history of the First World War and has published widely on the role of Australian soldiers in the Great War. He has led the Memorial’s annual battlefield tours to Gallipoli since 1996 and he has explored the battlefields on some 30 separate visits with experts from Britain, Australia and Turkey. His publications on the First World War include 1918 Year of Victory: The End of the Great War and the Shaping of History (edited), published in 2010, and runner-up for the Templer Medal for that year; and War Wounds: Medicine and the Trauma of Conflict (co-edited with Elizabeth Stewart, 2011). He also compiled and wrote the introduction to the special third edition of C.E.W. Bean’s classic anthology of soldiers’ writings and works of art created on Gallipoli, The Anzac Book (1916), published by the Memorial in 2010. His most recent book, Gallipoli: A Ridge Too Far (2013, second edition 2015), is a multinational study of the pivotal battles of August 1915 that are generally regarded as the turning point in the Gallipoli campaign, presenting the perspectives of distinguished historians from the principal participating nations, Britain, France, India, Germany, Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand. Ashley Ekins is also an authority on Australian military involvement in the Vietnam War. As an author of the Australian official histories, he has written extensively on Australian Army ground operations in Vietnam. He researched and wrote two volumes of the official history: On the Offensive: The Australian Army in the Vietnam War, 1967–1968 (co-authored with the late Dr Ian McNeill, 2003); and Fighting to the Finish: The Australian Army and the Vietnam War 1968–1975 (2012). |
Enduring imprisonment: Australians captured on Gallipoli – another side of AnzacKate Ariotti, Australian War Memorial On 25 April 1915 waves of Australian troops landed on the shores of the Gallipoli peninsula as part of the Allied attempt to break through the Dardanelles and seize the Ottoman capital of Constantinople. Within hours of the dawn assault, the war was already over for hundreds of men as they were killed or wounded by Turkish defenders. By the end of the day the war was also over for four other Australians: Bugler Frederick Ashton, Private Reginald Lushington, Sergeant William Elston, and Captain Ron McDonald. Unlike their comrades these four men had been neither killed nor wounded and removed from the battlefield. Instead they had been taken prisoner by their Turkish enemy, earning them the dubious distinction of being the first Australians captured in the First World War. During the course of the war, 196 Australians became prisoners of the Turks. The majority were light horsemen captured in Palestine, as well as pilots and air mechanics of the Australian Flying Corps caught in Palestine and Mesopotamia. Sixty-nine soldiers—including Ashton, Lushington, Elston, and McDonald, and the entire crew of the submarine AE2 – were taken prisoner during the Gallipoli campaign. Despite being at the vanguard of Australian prisoner-of-war experiences, and certainly the first Australians to experience captivity at the hands of a radically different enemy, theirs is a story that is often overlooked in the greater narrative of the war. For various reasons, including their small number, particularly in comparison with the unprecedented number of casualties evident by war’s end, and their awkward place within the heroic narrative of the Australian soldiering experience that developed during and after the war, the prisoners of the Turks have received only limited attention in Australia. The result is that little is known of their time in captivity. This paper sheds light on this aspect of Australian military history by providing an overview of the captivity experiences of the Australian soldiers and submariners taken prisoner by the Turks at Gallipoli. It explores the Australians’ reaction to capture and how they managed the cultural shock of captivity in Turkey. In doing so, it considers the idea that the prisoners of war were not passive recipients of the prisoner experience, but rather, they actively responded within the constraints of their situation to modify, mitigate, and essentially cope with the many physical and psychological challenges they faced. Such analysis adds to our appreciation of Australian prisoner-of-war experiences, and also highlights another, less understood, side of Gallipoli and Anzac. Dr Kate Ariotti completed a PhD at the University of Queensland and joined the Australian War Memorial’s Military History Section in 2014. Her research explores the experiences of and impact on Australians of wartime imprisonment during the First World War; specifically, how those affected by captivity in Turkey coped with the many challenges it posed. She also has longstanding interests in the history of the home front during the First World War and in the social and cultural impact of war, particularly relating to gender and the work of women, grief and mourning, and memory and commemoration. She has a number of publications related to Australian prisoners of the Turks, and has previously worked as a lecturer in Australian history at both the University of Queensland and the University of Southern Queensland. Her chapter, “'At present everything is making us most anxious’: families of the prisoners of the Turks”, will be published in the book by Joan Beaumont, Lachlan Grant, and Aaron Pegram (eds), Beyond Surrender: Australian Prisoners of War in the Twentieth Century (forthcoming 2015). |
On the home front |
The other volunteer army: the Australian Red Cross and the Gallipoli campaignMelanie Oppenheimer, Flinders University One of the lesser-known stories of the Gallipoli campaign was the significant support provided to the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) by the array of voluntary war charities or patriotic funds, as they were known in Australia. Mobilised from the beginning of the war and operating both on the home front and in Egypt, the large support network of individuals and organisations varied from sandbag funds and provision of recreational equipment and hostel accommodation to foodstuffs and medical supplies. This paper takes as its focus the emerging Australian Red Cross, formed on the outbreak of war in August 1914, and traces its considerable contribution through the Dardanelles campaign as a humanitarian organisation focusing on sick and wounded soldiers. The paper features the work of key Red Cross workers such as Lady Helen Munro Ferguson and Vera Deakin, Commissioners Adrian Knox and Norman Brookes, and explores the nascent beginnings of the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Bureau in Egypt and the Australian states – a program that still exists one hundred years on. Professor Melanie Oppenheimer holds the Chair of History at Flinders University in Adelaide, South Australia. Her most recent book, The Power of Humanity: 100 Years of Australian Red Cross, was published by HarperCollins in August 2014. She is currently completing a history of First World War soldier settlement in New South Wales, The Last Battle, co-authored with Bruce Scates, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 2016. |
The birth of a divided nation: Gallipoli and the home frontJoan Beaumont, Australian National University The landing at Gallipoli is often described as constituting “the birth of the Australian nation”. In this narrative, 1915 is remembered as a year of formative national achievement, even though the Gallipoli campaign itself was a failure. However, events on the home front in 1915 tell a different story. Faced with the first large war casualty lists, Australians shifted gear in their mobilisation for war. The pressure on “eligible” men to form a “second wave” of voluntary recruits became intense, and on both sides of politics the issue of jettisoning voluntarism in favour of conscription began to be fiercely debated. This issue did not come to a head until 1916–17, but it was in 1915 that the open fracturing of Australian society along lines of ideology, class, and sectarianism became apparent. In many ways, therefore, if the Australian nation was born with Gallipoli, it was born divided, a bitter legacy of the war to rival that of the huge loss of men in battle. Professor Joan Beaumont is Professor of History in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, the Australian National University, Canberra. She is an internationally recognised historian of Australia in the two world wars, Australian defence and foreign policy, the history of prisoners of war and the memory and heritage of war. Her publications include the critically acclaimed Broken Nation: Australians and the Great War (2013), joint winner of the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Award (Australian History), winner of the 2014 NSW Premier’s Prize (Australian History), winner of the 2014 Queensland Literary Award (History); and shortlisted for the 2014 WA Premier’s Prize (non-fiction) and the 2014 Council for the Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences Prize for a Book. Her other publications include Australia’s War, 1939–45 (edited, 1996); Australia’s War, 1914–1918 (edited, 1995); Gull Force: Survival and Leadership in Captivity, 1941–1945 (1988); and Comrades in Arms: British Aid to Russia, 1941–45 (1980). In 2011–13 she led the research team for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs commemorative website, Hellfire Pass. |
Gallipoli and film |
Tolga Örnek OAM, Director/Producer, Gallipoli: The Front Line Experience (2005) Tolga Örnek OAM studied at Robert College and graduated from Istanbul Technical University with a degree in Engineering. He started his filmmaking career writing, producing and directing the award-winning documentaries, Atatürk, Fenerbahçe, Mount Nemrud: The Throne of the Gods, The Hittites, and Gallipoli. In recognition of the excellence of his 2005 documentary film, Gallipoli: The Front Line Experience (narrated by Jeremy Irons and Sam Neill), he was awarded an honorary Order of Australia. In 2008 he released his first feature film, Cars of the Revolution, based on the true story of the production of the first Turkish car in 1961. The film received critical acclaim and has won many awards. His next film, The Losers’ Club, was released in 2011. The film was inspired by a radio show from the 1990s, which developed a cult following by breaking all the rules of conventional broadcasting. His third feature film, Labyrinth, a modern-day espionage thriller, supported by Eurimages, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Hessen Invest Film, was released in Turkey and several European countries in 2012 . It has received critical and popular acclaim and paved the way for his upcoming project, entitled The Forger, a thriller he is producing in association with Fox International. He has lived in New Port, Florida, Washington DC, New York, London, and Italy. He currently splits his time between Los Angeles and Istanbul.
Christopher Lee, Screenwriter Christopher Lee, former journalist and foreign correspondent, is one of Australia's most accomplished screenwriters. He was creator and writer of the ABC drama series Stringer, head writer, then script executive of the ABC/BBC drama series Police Rescue, and co-writer of the ABC mini-series The Bodysurfer, for which he won an AFI Best Screenplay Award. As head writer, he wrote four of the six Cody telemovies for the Seven Network. He was co-creator and head writer of the Network Ten drama series Big Sky, wrote the SBS teleplay That Man’s Father and co-wrote the ABC telemovie Secret Men’s Business. He was a script executive for the Showtime drama series Love My Way. He wrote the 2011 mini-series Paper Giants: The Birth of Cleo for the ABC, and Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War for the Nine Network in 2012. Most recently, he wrote the adaptation of Les Carlyon’s Gallipoli for the seven-part television mini-series produced by Southern Star and the Nine Network, broadcast in February/March 2015. Christopher is a four-time AWGIE Award winner: for the documentary Saturday, Saturday; the SKY UK-Seven Network four-hour mini-series Do or Die; the telemovie pilot for the TEN/Channel 4 UK drama The Secret Life of Us; and for an episode of the Ten Police drama Rush which he co-created and script produced. He has written drama-documentaries for BBC Radio and worked as a script consultant in New Zealand, Singapore and New York. He has lectured in screenwriting at Canberra University, the National Institute for Dramatic Art (NIDA) and the Australian Film, Television and Radio School. He is an award-winning short story writer, author of the novel Bush Week, and writer of the book Howzat! Kerry Packer’s War, published by University of New South Wales Press. He is a recipient of the Centenary Medal for services to Australian television and the Queensland Premier’s Literary Award. In 2009 he received the Foxtel Fellowship for excellence in screenwriting. His most recent book is his Gallipoli novel, Seasons of War (published by Penguin), a haunting account of a young Australian soldier’s personal journey through the experiences of surviving the Gallipoli campaign.
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Friday 20 March 2015 - Remembering
Gallipoli remembered through material culture |
Anzac treasures 1: the Gallipoli collection of the Australian War MemorialPeter Pedersen, Consultant historian for centenary commemorative projects on the Australian battlefields of the Western Front. Few book titles have been less prophetic than Gallipoli: The Fading Vision, John North’s study of the Gallipoli campaign, which appeared in 1936. Far from fading, the story of Gallipoli has burgeoned. Every generation has felt the need to tell it, particularly in Australia, where the Anzac Landing and the eight months of fighting that followed soon became the stuff of legend. When the Australian War Memorial decided to produce a major publication to commemorate the Anzac centenary, it faced the problem that the Anzac chronicle was hardly new. Differentiating the Memorial’s publication from the many books on Anzac already published, and the many that would be published as the centenary approached, became the key issue. The solution lay in the Memorial’s Gallipoli collections, perhaps the most important Gallipoli-related ones in the world. This paper examines the process by which, in Anzac Treasures, the story of Anzac was told through the collection, something that had never been done before. Entailing much more than the usual historical recounting, that approach enabled Anzac to be brought to life in a way that was both fresh and evocative. It also allowed the fascinating story of how the collection was amassed to be described. Dr Peter Pedersen joined the Military History Section at the Australian War Memorial as a Senior Historian in 2008, before becoming Head of the Research Centre and then Acting Assistant Director of the Memorial and Head of the National Collection Branch. He has written nine books on the First World War and made contributions to several others, and written numerous articles on campaigns from the Second World War, the Vietnam War, and battlefields worldwide. During the 75th anniversary commemoration of the Gallipoli campaign in 1990, he guided then Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Bob Hawke over the Gallipoli battlefields. He has also guided many tours to the Western Front and other battlefields in Europe and Asia, which included leading and organising the first British tour to Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. A graduate of the Royal Military College, Duntroon, the Australian Command and Staff College, and the University of New South Wales, Dr Pedersen commanded the 5th/7th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, and was a political/strategic analyst in the Australian Office of National Assessments. His publications include Monash as Military Commander (1985), Images of Gallipoli (1988), Hamel (2003), Fromelles (2004), Villers-Bretonneux (2004), The Anzacs: Gallipoli to the Western Front (2007, paperback edition, 2010), Anzacs at War (2010), Anzacs on the Western Front: the Australian War Memorial Battlefield Guide (2011), and Anzac Treasures: The Gallipoli Collections of the Australian War Memorial (2014). He is currently consultant historian for the Australian government’s centenary commemorative projects on the Australian battlefields of the Western Front. |
Anzac treasures 2: the remnants left on Turkish soilHaluk Oral, Koç University, Istanbul This presentation will focus on two examples of objects left behind on Gallipoli after the deaths of the owners. The first one is a map that belonged to Lieutenant Penistan James Patterson of the 12th Battalion, 3rd Infantry Brigade, Australian Imperial Force (AIF). This map was signed by three Turkish officers, including Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), and was presented as a gift to Esat Pasha, Commander of the Ottoman Third Army Corps. In his memoirs Esat Pasha writes about the map. By the help of the signatures and other documentary records, I concluded that Patterson was killed on the 25th of April near the feature known as Baby 700 at Anzac. The other object is a flask that belonged to Lieutenant Burdett Philip Nettleton of B Squadron, 1st Australian Light Horse Regiment. Nettleton was killed in action on Pope’s Hill at Anzac. I have located the exact place where he was killed through the help of the report of the Turkish officer who was responsible for that area. Another surprise was that Nettleton’s field notebook was given to Major Izzettin, the senior staff officer on Mustafa Kemal’s headquarters, who wrote his memoirs in it. Professor Haluk Oral was born in 1957. He graduated from the Mathematics Department of Istanbul University’s Faculty of Arts and Science in 1978. After receiving his Master’s degree from Boğaziçi University, he went on to study at Simon Fraser University (Canada), where he completed his PhD studies in 1989. He was a visiting member of the faculty at Auburn University, Alabama, USA, for one year. He returned to Boğaziçi University (Istanbul) as a faculty member in 1990 and became a full professor in 1997 and retired in 2010. He currently teaches mathematics at Koç University, Istanbul. His publications include several articles on mathematics, Turkish history and literatures, and six books. He has been an avid collector of objects and documents from the Gallipoli campaign for more than 20 years. Using these relics as historical sources, he has delivered presentations and published more than 20 articles on the campaign. His two major books on the campaign are: Gallipoli 1915: Through Turkish Eyes, translated from the original Turkish by Amy Spangler and published by Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları, Istanbul, 2007; and Gallipoli (co-authored with Julian Thompson and Peter Pedersen) published by Carlton Books and Hardie Grant Books, 2015. |
Gallipoli remembered through art |
A beautiful graveyard: painting Gallipoli, 1915–22Margaret Hutchison, Australian National University Gallipoli captured artists’ imagination from the moment soldiers set foot on its beaches. This paper explores the diverse and vivid ways they represented the peninsula in their work from the landing in April 1915 to the years immediately following the conflict, whether in the intimate sketches of Ellis Silas, the lyrical watercolours of Horace Moore-Jones or the sweeping canvases of George Lambert. Drawing on a wealth of correspondence between artists and their patrons and the rich collection of visual material in the archive, this paper examines the role images have played in shaping a collective memory of the First World War and provides an insight into the commemoration of the war in art. Margaret Hutchison is a PhD candidate in the School of History at the Australian National University. Her research focuses on the construction of a national memory of the First World War in Australia’s official war art scheme. She has taught and published on war art and the First World War and is the recipient of several international grants and awards, including a Russell F. Weigley Graduate Student Travel Award from the Society for Military History in 2013 and an International Council for Canadian Studies Student Grant in 2012. |
Gallipoli remembered through archaeology |
Secrets of a silent landscapeTony Sagona AM, University of Melbourne and Richard Reid, Gallipoli Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey In one of his last Anzac despatches, Charles Bean wrote that the common experience of Gallipoli was not that of “continuous bomb fighting, bayonetting and bombarding” but rather “the digging of miles of endless sap”. One hundred years on, significant sections of those miles of endless sap survive at Anzac. Between 2010 and 2014 a team of Turkish, Australian, and New Zealand archaeologists and historians – the Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey (JHAS) – have mapped portions of these trenches and positions, especially along the old front line, as well as collecting a sample of the other battlefield artefacts that still litter the area. In this anniversary year the most significant achievement of the Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey could be said to be the recovery of the battlefield itself, especially in areas where there has been little public interaction with the site. Historical and museum interpretation of the campaign has focused, not surprisingly, on the dramatic elements of battle and general conflict rather than the more mundane, but constant, demands of daily activities like trench construction and maintenance. The trenches, however, were the essential element of survival for both sides at Anzac. They now constitute the largest single human artefact of the campaign and their future presents a challenge to both heritage management and on-site battlefield interpretation. Professor Antonio (Tony) Sagona AM FSA FAHA is Professor of Archaeology in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. He has also led the Gallipoli Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey (JHAS). He is an archaeologist of the ancient Near East, with expertise in Anatolia and the Caucasus, and has written a number of books on the subject, including Ancient Turkey (2009), co-authored with Paul Zimansky. Recently, his research interests have extended to conflict archaeology through his investigations of the Gallipoli battlefield. He is a Member of the Order of Australia, an Elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, and an Elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He is also editor of the journal Ancient Near Eastern Studies.
Dr Richard Reid has worked for more than 40 years as a high-school teacher, museum educator, historian, and museum curator. Thirty of those years were spent in Canberra, working for institutions such as the Australian War Memorial, the National Museum of Australia, the Senate and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. He has written widely on the subject of Australia at war and on the story of the Irish in Australia; in relation to both those subjects, he has led tours to Ireland, the Western Front in France and Belgium, and Gallipoli. Recently retired from the public service, he is still involved in an archaeological and historical survey of the Anzac area on the Gallipoli peninsula and is currently preparing a book on the emigration of Irish orphan girls to Australia during the Great Famine of 1845–50. Dr Jessie Birkett-Rees is a Lecturer in archaeology in the Centre for Ancient Cultures at Monash University, Melbourne. Her fieldwork and research have focused on the changing relationships between people and landscape in Turkey, the Caucasus and Australia. Jessie has expertise in landscape archaeology, employing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and spatial analyses to integrate the results of archaeological research with spatial data sourced from environmental records, historical documents, digital terrain models and satellite imagery. She is interested in the archaeology of conflict and commemoration and served as an archaeologist and geospatial specialist on the tri-nation Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey team investigating the northern Gallipoli battlefields (2010-14). |
Gallipoli remembered through music |
Frederick Septimus Kelly: Australia’s forgotten soldier-composerChristopher Latham, Pro Musica, Canberra The Australian soldier-composer Frederick Septimus Kelly has fallen between two stools. Australian-born but residing in London and working as a professional musician before the First World War, he enlisted in the Royal Naval Division (RND). He was viewed by the British as a colonial, and by Australians as an Englishman, perhaps understandably as he won a gold medal in the London 1908 Olympics, rowing for England. He served on Gallipoli with an extraordinary group of Royal Naval Division officers known as the Latin Club, including famously, the poet Rupert Brooke, Ock Asquith (the British prime minister’s son), the composer William Denis Browne, and Bernard Freyberg (who would be awarded a Victoria Cross on the Western Front in 1916 and then command New Zealand forces in the Second World War, eventually serving as Governor-General of New Zealand), and many more of England’s finest intellectuals. Kelly was one of the most prolific composers of music in the trenches in the Great War. The works he wrote at Gallipoli include his Elegy for String Orchestra: In Memoriam Rupert Brooke for whom he acted as pall-bearer when Brooke died on Skyros two days before the Gallipoli landings. The scene of Brooke’s burial is perfectly captured in this nine-minute masterwork. Originally written in his head only, Kelly first notated it in Alexandria on 27 June 1915, while convalescing from wounds incurred on Gallipoli. During the second half of the campaign he wrote a violin sonata for the prominent Hungarian virtuoso, Jelly d’Aranyi, with whom he had a piano trio together with Pablo Casals. Kelly was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions in January 1916, during the Gallipoli evacuation, and was believed to be among the last three officers to leave the peninsula. In November 1916, he was killed in action during the battle of the Ancre on the Western Front while leading soldiers of the Hood Battalion in an attack on a German position and is buried in Martinsart Commonwealth War Graves cemetery. This talk will also touch on Kelly’s friendship with his fellow soldier-composer in the Royal Naval Division, William Denis Browne, who was killed during the Third Battle of Krithia in June 1915. Browne was Rupert Brooke’s oldest friend and almost certainly his lover. Brooke was the first person Churchill requested to be signed up as an officer with the RND, and Brooke insisted he would only join if Browne also was commissioned alongside him. The story of Browne’s legacy is particularly tragic, as his music professor, Edward Dent, who had control of Browne’s music manuscripts, burnt all but 11 works in a misguided attempt to protect his posthumous reputation. The talk will feature extracts from Kelly’s war diaries, excerpts of the music he wrote during the Gallipoli campaign and a brief overview of the extraordinary members of the Latin Club, all of whom were seriously wounded or killed during their military service. Christopher Latham trained as a violinist, studying in the United States for a decade before joining the Australian Chamber Orchestra in 1992. After seven years of national and international touring, he then worked as editor for Peter Sculthorpe and other leading Australian composers, while overseeing the Australian office of Boosey & Hawkes (1998–2004). Since2002, he has worked as an artistic director for the Four Winds Festival (Bermagui 2004-08), the Australian Festival of Chamber Music (Townsville 2005-06), the Canberra International Music Festival (CIMF, 2009–14) and Voices in the Forest (Canberra, 2011–present). In November 2013, during the Centenary of Canberra year, City News and the Canberra Critics’ Circle named him Canberra’s Artist of the Year. His final CIMF program highlighted the cultural cost of war by focusing on the music of composers who served in war. During a decade of research in Europe and Australia, he recovered many lost works including the Gallipoli Sonata by Australian composer F.S. Kelly. He has also spent a decade working as music director of The Gallipoli Symphony, one of the largest cultural diplomacy projects ever undertaken. Ten renowned composers from Turkey, Australia, and New Zealand have been commissioned to tell the story of Gallipoli in this hour-long symphony, which will premiere in its entirety in Istanbul, Turkey, in August 2015, and subsequently tour Australia and New Zealand. |
Memory and commemoration |
Who owns the memory of Gallipoli? Australia’s influence on the commemoration of the Gallipoli campaignJenny Macleod, University of Hull, England The twenty-first century’s revival of interest in the First World War is mirrored in the evangelical turn that the memory of Gallipoli has taken. Australia has been a pervasive and vital influence in this process. Yet each country’s memory has followed its own path. New Zealand’s commemorations have closely followed in Australia’s footsteps, but have had their own distinctive characteristics. Australia’s and New Zealand’s deep interest in commemorating events at Anzac Cove have influenced the growing interest in the memory of the Ottoman victory at Gallipoli in Turkey. The position of Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk)’s reputation as the hero of the campaign and magnanimous statesman afterwards has been a prominent part of all three countries’ commemorations. Yet Atatürk’s speech regarding “those heroes that shed their blood” seems only to have become well known since the 1980s, and lately Kemal’s special position has been diluted in Turkey by the AKP government. Meanwhile, over the past century, the British role in the campaign has been marginalised in the commemoration of Gallipoli – willingly so at first – such that today it is primarily remembered in local pockets within Great Britain , and often those places that do remember 25 April do so because of an Anzac rather than a British connection. In Ireland, Gallipoli along with the rest of the First World War was forgotten for decades. Where the campaign has been remembered, it was often under the cover of its Anzac connection. The Australian response to the campaign has been profoundly influential in the commemoration of Gallipoli in New Zealand, Turkey, Great Britain, and Ireland. Anzac Day may be Australia’s greatest export. Dr Jenny Macleod is a Lecturer in 20th Century History at the University of Hull. From 2003 to 2006 she was a research fellow at the Centre for the Study of the Two World Wars at Edinburgh University, and previously worked for King’s College London at the Joint Services Command and Staff College, and at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies. She is a graduate of Edinburgh and Pembroke College, Cambridge. In 2004 she published two books on the cultural history of the Gallipoli campaign: Reconsidering Gallipoli and an edited volume, Gallipoli: Making History. Her edited volume, Defeat and Memory, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2008. In 2010 she published two journal articles on the Scottish National War Memorial as part of her wider interest in British national identity. A further article on the national war memorials in Britain and Ireland will shortly be published by the Journal of Contemporary History. she is the co-founder and treasurer of the International Society for First World War Studies which comprises more than 250 academics and postgraduates in 27 countries; and she is Associate Editor of the journal First World War Studies. Her current project is her volume, Gallipoli, which will be published by Oxford University Press for the centenary. |
Panel: How Australia remembers |
Chair: Professor Joan Beaumont, Australian National University |
Professor Bruce Scates, Monash University Professor Bruce Scates is the Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies at Monash University. His publications include Return to Gallipoli: Walking the Battlefields of the Great War (2006); A Place to Remember: A History of the Shrine of Remembrance (2009), and Women and the Great War (co-authored with Rae Frances, 1997). His most recent book, Anzac Journeys: Returning to the Battlefields of World War Two (2013), involves a collaborative study of pilgrimage and memory. His novel, On Dangerous Ground (2012), retraces C.E.W. Bean’s journey across Gallipoli. It was been listed in the first national curriculum for literature and received special commendation in the Christina Stead Awards. He has chaired the Military and Cultural History Panel advising the Anzac Centenary Board, was a member of an expert panel convened to recover the bodies of men missing from the battle of Fromelles, and has led several study tours to First World War battlefields. His current projects include Australian Research Council–funded studies on soldier settlement, Second World War pilgrimage, and an international collaboration exploring the history of Anzac Day. He also leads the 100 Stories project, a critical history being prepared to mark the Anzac Centenary. |
Professor Peter Stanley, University of New South Wales, Canberra Professor Peter Stanley, formerly Principal Historian at the Australian War Memorial (where he worked from 1980 to2007), became Research Professor at UNSW Canberra in 2013 after heading the National Museum of Australia’s Centre for Historical Research. He has published 26 books, most in Australian military social history, such as Tarakan: An Australian Tragedy (1997); Invading Australia: Japan and the Battle for Australia, 1942 (2008); Men of Mont St Quentin: Between Victory and Death (2009); and Digger Smith and Australia’s Great War (2011), but including books on surgery, British India, battlefield research and bushfire. His Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny, Murder and the Australian Imperial Force (2010) was jointly awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History in 2011. He published three books in 2014, the most recent, The Cunning Man, is an historical novel set in British India. Gallipoli has been the subject of four of his books: Quinn’s Post, Anzac, Gallipoli (2005), Simpson’s Donkey (2011); Lost Boys of Anzac (2014); and his next book, Die in Battle, Do Not Despair, will be the first on Indians on Gallipoli. He often appears in television documentaries, such as The War That Changed Us, and as President of Honest History has become a critic of “Anzackery” in the centenary of the Great War in Australia. He was recently elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. |
Mr James Brown, University of Sydney James Brown is the director of Alliance 21, a multi-year project examining the future Australia–US relationship, based at the United States Studies Centre within the University of Sydney. He previously served as an Australian Army officer, with operational experience including command of a cavalry troop in southern Iraq, service on the Australian task force headquarters in Baghdad, and a tour attached to coalition Special Forces in Afghanistan. He was awarded a commendation for work in the Solomon Islands and as an operational planner at the Australian Defence Force Headquarters, Joint Operations Command. He has also instructed at the Army’s Combat Arms Training Centre. From 2010 to 2014 James was the Military Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. There he coordinated the MacArthur Foundation Asia Security Program, was the lead researcher on a multi-year project investigating private security companies, and established a body of research work focused on critical analysis of Australian defence and strategic policy. He studied economics at the University of Sydney and completed graduate studies in strategy at the University of New South Wales. He writes a regular column on Australian foreign policy for The Saturday Paper and is the author of the book Anzac’s Long Shadow: The Cost of Our National Obsession (2014). |
Concluding address |
Does Gallipoli matter?Professor Robin Prior, Flinders University |
Closing musical performance |
The Lost Gallipoli Sonata of Frederick Septimus KellyChristopher Latham, violin Caroline Almonte, piano Melbourne-born Caroline Almonte has a reputation as a gifted, versatile, and sensitive artist. She studied with Stephen McIntyre and completed her postgraduate studies at the Juilliard School in New York. She has won numerous awards, including winner of the keyboard section of the ABC Young Performers Awards and First Prize at the international chamber music competition in Italy, Premio Trio di Trieste. She gives regular solo and chamber music recitals around Australia and internationally. She has recently appeared at the Edinburgh International Festival, the Adelaide International Cello Festival, the Dunkeld Weekend of Music, the Huntington Estate Music Festival, and the Australian Festival of Chamber Music in Townsville. In 2010, she performed Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Melbourne Recital Centre. Her many musical collaborations include working with the Flinders Quartet, Yvonne Kenny, Ralph Kirshbaum and Li-Wei Qin. Most recently, she has toured with renowned cellist Pieter Wispelwey. As a soloist, she looks forward to performances with the Sydney, Melbourne, and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestras in 2014. She is a founding member of the Sutherland Trio, a piano trio with violinist Elizabeth Sellars and cellist Molly Kadarauch. Alongside her various performances on stage, she has had a prolific teaching career and is passionate about working with young people. She teaches piano at the University of Melbourne and gives both piano and chamber music master classes. |