The Best Gallipoli Yarns
And forgotten stories
By Jim Haynes

Published by Allen & Unwin www.allenandunwin.com
RRP $29.99 in paperback  ISBN 9781760111793

Jim Haynes is a prolific Australian spinner of yarns across many subjects. If you don’t believe me, check out his website at this link: www.jimhaynes.com.au – he has a special passion for Australian storytelling.

In this book The Best Gallipoli Yarns, he brings together a collection of yarns, poems and recollections… stories of recruitment, memories of life in the trenches, accounts of the fighting and of coming home.

He has arranged the material in chronological order to produce a coherent and readable collection.

Many of the pieces are previously unpublished or long out of print. Some of them were written soon after the events they describe, while others were written later. They are stories, writes Haynes in his preface. They are not intended to be military reports or offer the depth of the work produced by military historians.

Having said that, it is the first hand accounts that give us a real sense of the events at Gallipoli and the emotional and physical impact on those who took part.

This is a collection full of poignancy, horror and sadness, as well as dry Aussie humour. It reminds us that Gallipoli was more than a military campaign. These are the forgotten stories and yarns that are at the very heart of the Anzac legend.