A Gallipoli Myth

Great War Myths: Setting the record straight

"Gallipoli was mostly an ANZAC affair."

The Gallipoli campaign was important for the Australians for several reasons. Most important reason probably being that it gave birth to a feeling of nationalism. Australian self-awareness if you like. Gallipoli is therefore very strongly embedded in Australian 'remembrance', and rightfully so.

Unfortunately over the years this has left the image that only Australians fought at Gallipoli, or at least that they took the brunt of the fighting. They did not. Who remembers the French involvement in the Gallipoli campaign? Not many, we guess. Still, the French had twice as many soldiers killed on the peninsula then the Australians. And the British? They had more than twice as many men killed as all the other Allies combined. We feel that the number of casualties directly relate to the involvement in the fighting. Getting the right figures is difficult. Different official sources give different figures. But even if we take official Australian figures than a table speaks for itself:

Reproduced with the kind permission of Peter van den Heuvel & Marco Hoveling taken from their informative World War One site "An Unfortunate Region". See my Links Page.