SPOILERS AHEAD
Episode 3 opens in the aftermath of the truce that saw the
Australians and Turks fraternising in No Man’s Land as bodies from both sides
were cleared away. Tolly and his friends talk about the condition of the food,
and the latrines. Men are hesitant to go there, because of the disease and the
flies, and because – as noted in many books about the campaign – the Turks
liked to snipe at men in the throes of diarrhoea and even drop artillery shells
into the latrines.
The men discuss their changed perception of the Turks since
the truce. There’s grudging respect now for the men on the other side of No
Man’s Land. This gels with factual accounts of the campaign. The Aussies, to
that point, had believed the outrageous anti-Turk propaganda, believing their
enemy to be savages. Conversely, the Turks believed what their German allies
told them, and thought the Australians were, amongst other things, cannibals.
Soon thereafter, Tolly is called to a meeting with his
commanding officer, and, despite his hesitance, is promoted over the heads of
his brother and their friends. He protests, but is basically reminded that the
Army isn’t a democracy, and so he becomes a reluctant lance corporal.
In the aftermath of being promoted, Tolly runs into Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett,
the famed British journalist who is covering his seventh war at the tender age
of 34, and the two men talk about the situation the Australians and New
Zealanders find themselves in. Bartlett, unbeknownst to Tolly, is a fierce
critic of the campaign, and therefore is something of a thorn in the side of
the British headquarters staff.
Presumably the next morning, the men are back in the front
line, and are continuing the never-ending process of digging trenches, when a
Turkish sniper fires a bullet through one of the shovels. This precipitates a
duel between both sides, target practice using shovels. It’s a scene
reminiscent of other Gallipoli-themed movies and television shows, substituting
slouch hats for shovels. I think it might’ve been a scene from A Fortunate Life, if I recall correctly.
Tolly and his men are involved in a fierce bombing duel with
the Turks – I assume they are meant to be at Quinn’s Post, where bombing was
carried out by both sides almost without pause for the entire campaign. Cliff, the
group’s larrikin, likens to a game of cricket. The men also find time for a
swim, and are shot at by the Turks in the water, another scene reminiscent of
Peter Weir’s Gallipoli, without a man
getting shot. I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Meanwhile, Ashmead-Bartlett leaves Gallipoli and, to the
consternation of Sir Ian Hamilton, returns to London, where he is granted an
audience with Lord Kitchener (a barely-recognisable Lachy Hulme) and, after
telling Kitchener some hard truths about the campaign, suggests an alternative
mission to break open the Dardanelles and capture Constantinople, doing so via
Bulair.
Kitchener is confused, and labels Ashmead-Bartlett simply “a
journalist”, implying that he is no military tactician. Perhaps not, but he
seems to have more of a grasp of the realities of Gallipoli than most on
Hamilton’s staff.
Upon his return to the Mediterranean, Ashmead-Bartlett is
intercepted on Lemnos by Hamilton’s prickly chief of staff, and basically
slapped over the wrists. He is barred from visiting Gallipoli. The journalist
pointedly wonders aloud how he will ever cover a campaign in Turkey from a
Greek island, and leans that he will receive briefings from Braithwaite.
At a
gathering of journalists later, Ashmead-Bartlett reveals his displeasure, and
is berated by another journalist, a Boer War veteran named Henry Nevinson, who
believes that Ashmead-Bartlett is interfering in the campaign rather than just
reporting on it.
Back on Gallipoli, the newly-promoted Tolly and his friends
are involved in a night attack on a Turkish trench. Things don’t go to plan,
and in the darkened confusion, Tolly is shot, and left for dead in No Man’s
Land.
Just when you think that maybe the show has pulled a
stunner, in killing off it’s main character, the episode ends with Tolly laying
on a stretcher by the beach, clearly wounded and presumably about to be
evacuated.
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