Gallipoli memories

This personal wartime memoir begins in the uneasy summer of 1914, as the narrator and his wife hurry home from Capri while Europe moves toward catastrophe. Looking back years later, he reconstructs his experience from remembered impressions, conversations, journeys, and encounters rather than from a formal diary. The result promises an intimate account shaped as much by personality and observation as by military events.

From the first departure toward Alexandria and the practical struggle to obtain a uniform, the narrative follows the bewildering routines of service life around Gallipoli. Headquarters, troop movements, shellfire, islands, military politics, and the civilians caught up in the conflict all come into view. Wry, candid, and alert to the absurd as well as the tragic, this is not a conventional history of the campaign, but a vivid recollection of the people and moments that made an extraordinary experience human.