Book Review: The Battle for Lone Pine by David W. Cameron

Most Australians are well aware of the Battle for Lone Pine. It is a key part of the ANZAC legend, and will forever be remembered as Australia’s only victory of the Gallipoli Peninsula – unless you count the successful and bloodless way with which the Australian and New Zealand forces evacuated the peninsula – albeit one that came at a great cost. In nearly every way, this was but a pyrrhic victory.

It says something that seven Victoria Crosses were awarded for actions of men over four days of fighting at Lone Pine, a key part of the continuing formation of the now-celebrated ANZAC legend, as well as being a part of the August Offensive (also, a British landing at Suvla Bay, the light horse’s fatal charge at The Nek and the New Zealand offensive on the commanding heights of Chunuk Bair) that was supposed to allow the ANZAC forces to break out from the meagre grip they’d had on Turkish soil since the April 25, 1915 landings.

The battle for Lone Pine was as ghastly a fight as there was on Gallipoli, four long days in the heat of summer, marked by bloody, mind- and energy-sapping confrontation at incredibly close range. The majority of the fighting was by way of the bomb (or, as we now know it, the grenade, and most often a hand-made version: nails and other scraps of metal packed crudely into a jam tin, with a fuse atop) and casualties were extraordinarily high.

David W. Cameron, the Australian historian who previously wrote so brilliantly about the landing in his book April 25, 1915, turns his attention to the only Australian triumph of the Gallipoli campaign, and shines a deserved spotlight on so many great and heroic deeds, so often performed by ordinary men. His words bring the battlefield to life: the horror of bayonet charges and bombing duels, the carnage in the narrow trenches, where men were forced to trample over dead and dying of both sides because the front lines were so crucial that stretcher bearers could not get forward to do their work.

Day by day, almost hour by hour, Cameron examines the battle from both sides, relying on testimony, both Turkish and Australian, from men who were there. There is little glory in war, of course, and Cameron does not paint the battle in a particularly good light. Though the ANZACs triumphed, it was a wasted effort that came at a great cost, because the rest of the August Offensive did not turn out as planned. There was no breakout and the Lone Pine trenches were only a few yards beyond previous Australian lines, a distance hardly worth the huge casualty numbers the battle produced.

Even so, The Battle of Lone Pine is a wonderful testament to the fortitude and bravery of so many Australians, so far from home, fighting in a conflict that they had little business being a part of, doing amazing things in the face of great adversity on that fatal shore.