OT: "Galipoli" on The History Channel NOW!

[Stranger]

8PM EST:cool:

[Stranger]

Sorry, my enthusiasm about a great movie not often aired on American TV got the best of me.

:)

[guohuen]

Stranger, Joan Baez tells a story about Galipoli in the song Waltsing Matilda on her album Ring them bells. Check it out. It's beautiful and sad at the same time.

[Stranger]

Thanks for the heads-up. It is an Aussie folk song, she must have covered it. The Pogues (Irish band) do a good cover of the song on "Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash".

[Leonidas]

Even if i had the History Channel, who the hell is Galipoli?

[Stranger]

It is spelled Gallipoli (I mispelled it in the thread title). It was a famous amphibious battle in WWI. Many Australians died or were seriously wounded due to poor planning on the part of the British. The movie (starring Mel Gibson) is worth seeing IMHO.

[joedoe]

Awesome movie, tragic story. My father and I were just talking about the terrible waste of life at Gallipoli the other day.

And the song "The band played Waltzing Matilda" is very poignant isn't it? Makes me wanna cry every time I hear it.

[Leonidas]

So what was the death toll.

[joedoe]

It's more than just the death toll. What happened was that the Australia/New Zealand forces (ANZACS) were under the command of the British. They were supposed to make a landing a few miles north (I think) of where they landed, but due to poor navigation they ended up on a heavily defended bit of coastline called Suvla Bay.

Basically it was a slaughter and the ANZAC forces were forced to try to take the landing. The British commanders would not pull them out, so essentially they had to not only clear the beach but then scale the cliffs to try and take the Turkish positions. Meanwhile, the Turks had previously set up well-defendable machinegun positions and were just cutting the ANZACS down.

Over a period of months it eventually turned to trench warfare but the Turks always had a more defensible position. Finally the British command decided to pull out but not before losing over 30000 ANZACS.

The worst part was the way the operation was run - bayonet charges against machine guns were not unusual. Ultimately though, the landing should have been aborted. Once it was known that there were cliffs to be taken that were heavily defended the operation should have been cancelled.

[Leonidas]

I think i watched a doc. about that battle on PBS. I watched so many war documentaries that i faintly remember it though. I know i watched something about the Turks having the upperhand in a major battle. In any event it is sad. Human error and just plain stupid decisions screw over a lot of soldiers and they have no way of getting out of it.

[sticky fingers]

and Anzac Day is celebrated every April 25th in rememberance to the fallen. Lest we forget.

on a sidenote I heard that Mel Gibson is not too popular with the British as he has made 3 films that portray the Brits in a bad light- Gallipolli, Braveheart and The Patriot.

[joedoe]

A bit touchy isn't it? If you can't face up to your mistakes in the past, what hope is there for the future?

[Sharky]

british people aren't clever enough to link him to all those films. We have short memories and remembering too many things at once confuses us.

Besides, he was in Lethal Weapon, and other classics such as "What Women Want". We love him like he was our own.

Technically, all Australians are british anyway :eek: :eek: :eek:

[joedoe]

Whatever :)

[grogan]

If you like Gallipoli watch the movie 'The Light Horseman', set in the same era it was the last great cavalry charge of modern warfare. And a little tidbit on Gallipoli is that our soldiers had to run against machine guns just with a bayonet afixed to the rifle as taking rounds with them was thought an unnecessary waste of ammo by the British heirachy, so if they made it to the enemy trenches it was all hell hand to hand I saw a doco with one old digger crying telling the story of using everything he had to win biting scratching everything. Another British treachery was in ww2 when most of our (Aussie) forces were in Europe fighting the germans to save England and we started to get attacked by the Japs just north of Australia, Churchill refused to let our troops back so in the end we told them (England) to get stuffed as we were about to be overrun and made it back just in time to fight a bloody war in Papua New Guniea with the help of Macarthurs navy. So the only thing that we have to thank the Poms for is our taste for bland food!

[Sharky]

kay.

[Mr Punch]

It wasn't just those cases. It wasn't just British incompetance. I would stretch it and say that most wars have many examples of monumental command-chain incompetence.

In these cases it was the British wasting ANZAC life, but if you look at the Somme, or many many other examples it was British life. The whole of the First War was fought using the same 'tactic': 'see how many men it takes to shut up those demned machineguns!'

War is stupid. Most generals more so, mainly because they don't go anywhere near the front. And as for the Second, many British people thought Churchill was a fat, drunken idiot. He made the right noises, and many very wrong decisions.

Gallipoli is a great movie. Not sure about Gibson's stance on the British. Don't care! Still think 'Blackadder Goes Forth' is one of the most telling takes on the 'Great' War ever to hit the small screen.

[guohuen]

Just caught that episode yesterday. Really moved me.
BTW my favorite insult comes from him. " Your breath comes straight from satan's bottom!":D

[ghostdragon]

Way back when,

I used to bug Limey officers about their tendency to fight down to the last Australian... they didn't take it too well. Always a good conversation starter though.

[rogue]

Interesting time. Technology was jumping far ahead of combat doctrine.

[Black Jack]

Rogue,

From a more homefront perspective I have read that WWI was the "first" time that the American civilan really got a taste of the ugly side of the war from its returning soliders.

Not because of the war itself, but because medical technology was good enough to stop soliders from dying, but not of the capability to treat the large number of tragic cosmetic problems like missing faces and limbs.

[Stranger]

Black Jack,

There is actually a documentary on the History Channel about that very subject. Some of the physical injuries were a real horror show (they had a lot of graphic hospital footage). They also covered the subject of "shell shock" which made its appearance in WWI due to the ridiculously long artillery bombardments.

In the song "Waltzing Matilda" the young Aussie protagonist loses both of his legs at Gallipoli and comments after praying for death that he never realized until then that there are worse things than dying.

"Johnny Got His Gun" is a really depressing book that explores the darkside of surviving massive combat injuries in the WWI era.

[Black Jack]

Stranger,

I forget the terms but what is interesting about the term "shell shock" is that it is really a time period specific term to that specific era but what it describes is not confined to that era or even to shelling, more of a psychological problem that soliders can get over long term and bloody fighting, **** I wish I had the book that lists the names of the same type of syndrome for all of the other American wars, it was very interesting.

[Stranger]

Black Jack,

I think the term "shell shocked" was replaced by "battle fatigue" by WWII and then "post-traumatic stress disorder" from Vietnam to date.

There might be other terms that fill in the gaps.

The footage of the WWI shell shock sufferers that I saw mostly consisted of men who shaked/trembled violently and uncontrollably.

It can manifest in many ways.

[Black Jack]

Stranger,

Thats it, good info, thanks.

Do you remeber the term from the Civil War??

[Stranger]

Sorry, I can't answer that question.

[guohuen]

I had the honor of meeting one of the last American WW1 Veterans when I was in the VA hospital in 81. His lungs were damaged by mustard gas so he was on oxygen and really labored for breath. Lovely humble guy when you could talk to him. He cried himself to sleep every night. Broke my heart. Kept me awake at first until I started crying myself asleep.