I was listening to Radio National yesterday, and the memoir A Fortunate Life by AB Facey was mentioned. Those who watch First Tuesday Book Club would have seen A Fortunate Life come in at number three on their Ten Aussie Books to Read Before You Die list. If I remember correctly they said it was not very well written, but it really showed the horrors of war experienced by Facey. At the time, I thought it might be a book worth reading to get an accurate picture of what it was like at Gallipoli. 

Evidentially, Facey claims in the memoir that he was one of the first soldiers ashore at Gallipoli and came under heavy machine gun fire.

However, according to historian Chris Roberts, a retired Brigadier, Facey’s account only perpetuates one of the myths about the landing at Gallipoli.  In Chris Robert’s book The Landing at Anzac 1915, he writes that the landing “was not a bloody landing under murderous fire” and that the beach was “not an inferno of bursting shells and barbed wire”. In fact, the first troops to land at Gallipoli only had to withstand sporadic rifle fire, according to the diaries of a few soldiers who were actually there.  Evidentially, the film Gallipoli also perpetuates the myth.

Roberts then says that Facey’s account of his arrival and wounding at Gallipoli is a fabrication. War records reveal that Facey arrived on the 7th of May, 12 days after the first landing. Facey also writes he was horribly wounded, yet his war records reveal no such injury. If this is true, how much more of the memoir is a fabrication? If this is true, shame on you AB Facey. Myths about war only perpetuate war.

I recall watching a Four Corners program about Gallipoli many years ago. In that program, it said that on the first day, the invading Anzacs troops at Gallipoli encountered little resistance as they rushed inland, but then they stopped for the day instead of taking the high ground. I particularly remember an interview with a pissed-off New Zealander blaming lazy Australians for stopping. But then, we like to blame the British.

In the Radio National program, Chris Roberts confirmed that the troops stopped before reaching higher ground. The Turks then finally arrived and set up their machine guns on that higher ground. If the Anzacs had kept on going and dug in on the high ground, then Gallipoli might not have been the military disaster it was.

Chris Roberts is a retired Brigadier who served in Vietnam, he later commanded the SAS Regiment and Northern Command and holds an honours degree in history.

Anyway, I won’t be reading A Fortunate Life. I am sick of soldiers and politicians lying about war. If all children were taught the truth about wars and why they happened, then they probably would rarely occur. Instead, we see them dragged along to dawn services by their parents so they can earnestly parrot to any media that “they died so we could be free.” Which has me yelling at the television: besides the second world war, in which other war was our freedom threatened?