Krithia

The Forgotten Anzac Battle of Gallipoli
By Mat McLachlan
Published by Hachette
 RRP $34.99 in paperback
ISBN 9780733649103

“The Second Battle of Krithia resulted in the death of not just thousands of troops but also of hope. Prior the battle, the Allies had been driven by the conviction that they would overcome the Turks at any moment, and that the way to Constantinople would be miraculously open before them. After the battle, the crushing realisation that Gallipoli would now be defined by stalemate and attrition descended on the peninsula like a black veil.”

The Second Battle of Krithia has existed largely in the shadows of the bigger Gallipoli story. It is, however, one of the most poignant and tragic tales of World War I. This fascinating story has finally been brought to light by military historian Mat McLachlan, author of The Cowra Breakout.

 In May 1915 during World War I, British units tried to capture the village of Krithia on the southern tip of the Gallipoli peninsula.

Australian and New Zealand units were sent to reinforce the British. On 8 May, the Anzac troops took part in a bloody battle near Krithia.

Advancing across a featureless plain in broad daylight, with no idea where the Turkish defenders were, the Anzacs came under a hail of machine-gun and rifle fire. The Australians managed to advance, but got nowhere near the village and dug in well short of their objective. The New Zealanders on their left fared no better. By the end of the day, over 1800 Anzac troops had been killed or wounded.

Supported by first-hand accounts and oral history, Krithia features the stories of a number of Australians, New Zealanders and Turks – some who survived, some who did not.

On the one hand, the battle of Krithia is a tale of bravery and sacrifice; on the other hand, it is a sorry tale of false hope based on flawed assessments by a British leadership not up to the task.

In analysing the disastrous campaign, McLachlan reserves his harshest criticism for the Lieutenant General Sir Ian Hamilton. Up until the Gallipoli campaign, he was, McLachlan writes, ‘… by every measure … an outstanding soldier’, but also a man with serious flaws, not the least his over-reliance on his immediate subordinate, Sir Aylmer Hunter-Weston and his refusal to intervene when things went wrong. Hamilton, however, with his eye on his future, kept a detailed campaign diary which McLachlan describes as

‘an exercise in arse-covering and no arse needed more covering than his after the bloody debacle he would oversee at Gallipoli.’

VERDICT: This is a highly readable book enhanced by personal stories and direct quotes from diaries and letters written long ago. There is, by necessity, a substantial prelude to establish the lead up to the battle that is the main focus of this book – telling the story of a battle that occurred nearly two weeks after the infamous Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915. 

McLachlan is a regular media presenter and podcaster (see Useful Links page for links to the podcasts) as well as a tour guide of battlefield tours and author. This book is intended for a general audience keen to take a deeper dive into the role of Australian forces at Gallipoli.

I’ve also included with this post a link to a review of the book in the Australian Book Review (October 2024) by noted academic Robin Prior. He has some criticisms – too much padding and ‘ … the illusion of scholarly apparatus in a book without the reality, …’, this observation relating to the lack of detail in the source material of the footnotes.

In reality, will this matter to McLachlan’s readership? Probably not.

It’s worth noting however that Robin Prior is well qualified to make criticisms. He is currently Visiting Professorial Fellow at the University of Adelaide, and is a noted World War I historian, which is a way of acknowledging that he would be especially interested in this detail. Among his noted books are 

Gallipoli: The End of the Myth: Prior, Robin: ISBN 9780300168945 Yale University Press, 2010

Longer review of Krithia, Reviewed by Robin Prior, Australian Book Review, October 2024 (Subscription required.)