Dan Snow's History Hit - Gallipoli: the Endgame

Episode Date: August 3, 2020

In December 1915, some 135,000 allied troops, nearly 400 guns and 15,000 horses were collectively trapped in the bridgeheads at Anzac, Suvla and Helles. It was clear that the operation to seize control of Dardanelles and the Bosporus straits and capture Constantinople (now Istanbul) from the Turks, and thereby open a Black Sea supply route to Russia, had failed. With every day that passed the Turks moved up more guns, threatening to blast to pieces the flimsy piers, breakwaters and blockships that acted as makeshift harbours to feed and supply tens of thousands of men. And winter was coming. The evacuation plans were brilliant, but it was still a close-run thing. A spell of bad weather in the final days might have destroyed the flimsy piers, leaving thousands trapped helpless should the Turkish guns open up and their infantry swarm over No Man's Land. Dan and historian Peter Hart discuss how the Gallipoli garrison escaped to fight another day. Peter Hart was an oral historian at the Imperial War Museum for almost 40 years, during that time he interviewed thousands of veterans. An internationally acknowledged expert on Gallipoli, he is uniquely well placed to tell this remarkable story. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. Gallipoli was a complete catastrophe, even by the standards of the First World War. Nothing strategically useful was achieved. Tens of thousands of people, soldiers, British, Commonwealth, Imperial, French soldiers, and Turkish of course, killed, maimed, wounded, all as part of the fruitless attempt to force the Narrows, force their ships through the Bosporus, of the fruitless attempt to force the narrows, force the ships through the Bosporus, Allied force through the Bosporus, and attack Istanbul, knocking the Turkish enemy out of the war like a hydra by striking at its very head. The fighting at Gallipoli was terrible, as you'll

hear in this podcast, but there was one element of the Gallipoli campaign which went very smoothly and showed British and Allied ingenuity in its best possible light, and that was the evacuation. The evacuation took place in the depths of winter, 1915 to 1916, and it went off largely without a hitch, as you will hear from the fantastic historian Peter Hart. It's such an honour to have him on the podcast because I've been a huge fan of his for years, I've worked with him on a couple of projects. This is his first time on the podcast. We're very lucky to have him. He has written a wonderful new book on the evacuation of Gallipoli and he joined me to talk about the campaign and particularly how the British, the French and their allies were able to get away from the peninsula which had actually become something

of a prison for them. Peter Hart worked for years at the Imperial War Museum as an oral historian. He interviewed hundreds of First World War veterans decades ago. He's got an almost unparalleled knowledge of the wartime experiences of that now lost generation. If you want to watch First World War documentaries, we've got plenty on History Hit TV.

It's like Netflix, but it's for history. You enter the code POD1, P-O-D-1, you get a month for free, and you get your second month for just one pound, a euro, or dollar. You should go and check it out. You're going to love it. You enter the code POD1, P-O-D-1, you get a month for free, and you get your second month for just one pound, a euro, or dollar. You should go and check it out. You're going to love it. And in the meantime, though,

here's Peter Hart with Gallipoli, the end game. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's an absolute pleasure. I've been looking forward to it. Well, no, I've been... You're one of the giants of the British historical scene. So it's a great honour to have you on. And I'm very, very excited. Just before we talk about the Gallipoli evacuation and the subject of your new study, you and Richard Van Emden are the two who's

been on the podcast once or twice. You've talked to probably more First World War veterans, interviewed them than anybody, you know, anyone in the world. It's an absolute privilege. And I was allowed to do that by my job, of course, because I worked for the Imperial War Museum and I was their oral historian. But it was so great. You just didn't realise what you were doing almost. I was quite youngish in my early 30s and I didn't realise probably what a great opportunity it was. I'd give anything to speak to them now because I know a lot more about it than I did then,

I can assure you. Well, I've heard many of the transcripts that you recorded because we had a BBC project we worked on together that went out on Radio 4 during the centenary. I remember. And I think you asked amazing questions, so I don't think you should be too harsh on yourself. But what's fascinating is the longer we travel from we travel from the war almost the more remarkable they become that's what's so

extraordinary so when my kids listen to them in 50 years time they're going to be listening to about events that took place eons ago it's going to be what an amazing thing to have created that you've done i'm so proud to do it but grateful grateful, as I say, for the opportunity from my employers. It is like a dream to meet Joe Murray, who I'd read his book, Gallipoli as I saw it, when I was a young geek of about 15 or 16, and then to actually sit opposite him and listen to him tell his stories. And he had the weirdest memory. I mean, I don't know what your memory's like.

I'm dreadful. And he said, do you know what your memory's like. I'm dreadful. And he could tell, he said, do you know what you've got in your pockets, Peter? This is off tape. I said, not really, no. And he said, well, I know what I had in my pockets in 1915. And it was that sort of, that's an exaggeration. But he did, and it was interactive. So it wasn't just him telling a story, but you could say, ah, but why did you do that interactive so it wasn't just him telling a story but he could you could say ah but why did you do that and he'd give you a reasoned explanation what a treat it was to interview and there were so many great veterans that i had the pleasure of interviewing

and and then of course the second world war ones who are now coming to an end of their time you know it's we have this i've certainly was brought up with this impression of the First World War, that it was almost uniquely horrifying in every way imaginable. The mud and the blood and the Passchendaele, you know, the meat grinder that was the Battle of Third April, so many battles. When you were talking to them, and now that you've talked, obviously you've talked to Second World veterans, you've talked to Hellman veterans. And now that you've talked, obviously, you've talked to Second World veterans, you've talked to Hellman veterans.

Does it feel that they had an experience that was somehow unique within the history of war? Or is it just, you know, if you'd met veterans of Roberts's army in the Boer War in South Africa, or Napoleon's troops as they were treated from Moscow in the freezing cold, is it just that war is often that extreme and appalling? To me, the veterans had more in common than separating them. The experience of conflict, the fears, the terrors. What changes is the surrounds and what's happening. But going over the top in the first world war is not a unique uh experience you ask people who fought in the normandy fighting i know you've done a lot

of work on normandy and it's just as terrible the casualty rates in normandy in 1944 are very comparable with the casualty rates on the western front in some of the great battles i i genuinely feel that and if you talk to an Afghanistan veteran or an Iraq veteran, the same emotions, it's the same feelings, often the same privations, the same problems they're facing. The food is generally awful. It's got a bit better now, but it's still sometimes bad. This kind of thing, it never changes. So for me, there's more in common. The veterans have more in common than you'd think. Yeah, and I, because obviously I love the 18th century as well.

I think if you look at the, you know, Cartagena or, you know, in the War of Jenkins' Ear with the disease and the bodies floating in the harbour, I think we'd have found similarly appalling stories for generations before as well of those veterans of the First World War. Well, dysentery at Gallipoli, which is a particularly horrible feature of that

and the Mesopotamia campaigns, and dysentery in the Indian campaigns of, say, Wellington Fort, would be the same. It's the same awful feeling, the same... Oh, I don't know know it's just too terrible to imagine sometime for a soft lily-livered person like myself no we don't know we've been very lucky so my my my great-grandfather was was at gallipoli as a medic and that apparently my mother grandmother my nine says that he was a changed man after that well just briefly because

we're going to talk about the evacuation which was the most successful part of the Gallipoli campaign. It's the only. The only beacon of success. Just briefly, let's talk Gallipoli. The idea itself, why did the British and French armies find themselves fighting on this

strange promontory in the Eastern Mediterranean? They had a variety of reasons which on paper look good you know to knock Turkey out of the war, to help Russia, to send munitions to Russia, to encourage the Balkans to join us, to encourage Italy to join us, all these things but the reality is very different. The Russians had already sorted out their imminent problems, their immediate problems, sorry, with the Turks. There was no munitions to send. It's the year of the shell shortage. The Russians didn't have food senders because they had difficulties moving it around their country. The railway system was already overstretched. All these excellent

reasons. The Balkans then as now would rather fight each other than band together against an outsider. Germany doesn't rely. Turkey wasn't propping Germany up. Turkey was just an extra. It was basically they were trying to avoid fighting on the Western Front. It's politicians all over the world. Always. They look for the easy option, partly because they are dependent on voters and voters don't want to suffer. So it's a sort of never ending circle that goes on. Politicians do what the public wants and the public often then moan about it. So that's what it is. It's it was a great concept.

Churchill often gets the blame and I think he is substantially to blame. He was first sea lord, sorry, first lord of the Admiralty. But the reality is, with maturity and historians are allowed to sort of develop their views, I now even more think it's the responsibility of the whole cabinet.

Churchill was not that senior in the cabinet. He could have been stamped on. Kitchener and other senior figures could have stopped it, but they didn't. So therefore, as they let it carry on, they are jointly responsible. It's not just Churchill. And it was a stupid idea. And so the Royal Navy tries to force its way up to Istanbul through the Dardanelles. It doesn't work. They decide because it's blocked, so you've got to land on this Gallipoli Peninsula.

Shouldn't be too hard. I mean, you know, Gallipoli, it's just a, you know, otherwise unremarkable bit of land. Why did it turn into this sort of byword for futility and slaughter? Well, mainly because two things. One, although it's not a particularly unusual piece of land, there's lots of places in Scotland that are like the terrain. The terrain is not helpful, but most of all, most of all, the thing that they forgot then and we often forget now, the Turks.

The Turks were tough soldiers. They'd had recent experience of combat in the Balkan Wars, which they'd done very well on, but not because of individual soldiers. And they were well led. They were well led by a fairly good combination of some German experts and a German leader, Liman von Saunders, and excellent Turkish commanders, especially at divisional and regimental level. They were a really tough enemy. And it's the British disease. It's hubris. It's why we always think that every time there's a World Cup,

our football team's going to win it. Based on what? Our cricket team's always going to win. You know, we have the best postman in the world, do we? Do we actually know any postman from other places? We have the best this, that in the world. And often it's just us thinking things. We often give ourselves nicknames that no one else in the world thinks of,

like devils in skirts. The Germans don't call the Highlanders that. They call them English. Do you know what I mean? So we just underestimated them terribly. It's a shame. And the fighting on that peninsula was so extraordinary for all the reasons that you get on the Western Front.

But what is so extraordinary about it is there was no safe zone. I'm always struck, was there? Every inch of British-French allied lines, positions, held territory was under observed fire or certainly indirect fire from Turkish positions? The only places that were safe was a very good, a couple of very deep gullies, and that's the only, and they weren't safe, a shrapnel could get in there, but yes, you're under stress. Western Front, as you know, two or three days in the front line, two or three days in supports, three days out in reserve and then often rest periods.

You're in the line, the very dangerous parts for three days. Gallipoli, you landed whenever you landed, say the 25th of April in worst case, and you were there until what? And that's what the story of this chat is about, until you're evacuated. this chat is about, until you're evacuated. There's no way out except by a death or wounding, or very commonly illness. But the rest of them had to just endure it. And the stress levels were incredible. Incredible. You've talked to so many veterans, it must be impossible to make this judgment but when you compare the Somme to Gallipoli to the fall of Cutt-a-la-Mara the um the the shocking third April 1917 the collapse of uh Goff's army in 1918 is is there any sense that you can you could was there something that stood out about Gallipoli and the veterans you talked to the trauma they suffered they share it with Mesopotamia it's it's dysentery but it's

not just dysentery it's a cocktail of diseases they've also got jaundice which actually they quite liked gave them a bit of color in their faces uh paratyphoid and soldier's heart which is where your heart you're so your body just starts to give up you get a disordered action of the heart which is exactly the same as being 90 you're a soldier but your body's got a disordered action you can't act you're fundamentally your body's closing down you do get sent away then so this marks it out the fighting although serious and dangerous there's not much shell fire and all Gallipoli veterans are absolutely appalled when they get to the western front with much shell fire and all Gallipoli veterans are absolutely appalled when they get to the western front with the shell fire but on the other hand they're not they're not going to

the loo 15 times a night so there's a bit of swings and roundabouts but the artillery fire on the western front is uh without uh without any sort of comparison you can't compare it to I mean at Gallipoli they sometimes only had two or three shells a day, which, if they didn't hit you, isn't that bad? Now, the decisions made to abandon Gallipoli, when is that decision taken? And it's no easy matter, is it? Because you're kind of... Suddenly you go from being the aggressor to potentially the hunted.

Well, this happens with the failure of the August offensive from Anzac and the new Suvla landing so basically they couldn't get through at Helles they couldn't get through at Suvla and they couldn't get through at Anzac so what were they going to do and there's a great period of everybody trying to evade evacuation and in actual fact that the key to the evacuation is that Hamilton, Sir Ian Hamilton in many ways a really likeable figure. He was the commander-in-chief of the expeditionary force to Gallipoli. He is removed because he will not consider seriously evacuation.

And he's replaced with a chap called Charles Munro, who's a Western Front general and very practical. And he arrives and he just, you could, he visits all three sites, Helle Suvla and Anzac in a single day. And as Churchill puts it, he came, he saw, he capitulated, which is a typical Churchill.

Churchill is very clever. It is an amusing sort of epigram, wittish, waspish remark. It's also like a lot of Churchill stuff, utter bollocks. It really is uh he came and it was so flaming obvious that these these bridgeheads were untenable that he came to an instant decision and as soon as he gets there uh he arrives on the 30th of October and 31st of October he recommends evacuation warning they might lose between 30 and 40 percent of the men and the materials there. And that decision, so that's taken now, 31st of October. Sadly,

that is not the end of it, because everybody back in Britain goes, what about the empire? These Turkish chaps are Muslim. And the British empire has got an awful lot of Muslims in it, India, you know, Egypt. What are we going to do about it? And they don't want to risk it. So it's crazy, isn't it? Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, he goes out, and he may be a politician by then, but he's not really, not in his heart of hearts.

He gets there, he takes three days to look at the things, and he comes to the same decision. No, no, no, no, no, no, you've got to get off. But he was still worrying. Then they've got this mad period where everybody's doing everything. Should we send the troops to Salonika? Should we send the Salonika troops here? Should we use a naval assault?

Should we do this? Should we do that? The British government can't make its mind up. It's flannelling about politicians. Who's going to take the decision? They are. Who's going to get the blame? They are. Who's going to get the blame? They are. They don't want to take the decision. They can only see disaster looming.

And it takes from when Monroe recommends evacuation until the 7th of December before the politicians finally agree to evacuation. Just think of what that means. It's gone from being autumn to the depths of winter. What problems could that pose? Well, what problems could that pose for an evacuation off a coast with no bloody harbour? I don't know. Land a Viking longship on island shores, scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the

poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive but to conquer whether you're preparing for assassin's creed shadows or fascinated by history and great stories listen to echoes of history a ubisoft podcast brought to you by history hits there are new episodes every week week. And yet one thing the British Empire is consistently good at is evacuations. Running away.

Running away. Running away. And so a big advantage, of course, is complete control of the seas around, well, not on the east side. Bar submarines. Yeah. Bar submarines. And. Bar submarines. And that helps, does it? Well, it's like anything to do with

the British. The Royal Navy underpins everything. And the Royal Navy, although they've got this mad scheme to have another go at the Straits, they are actually brilliant and they focus all their energies. And they are practical men. They make fantastic arrangements to get all the boats,

sort everything out, and they do wonderfully. What would we do without the Royal Navy? You know the 18th and 19th century. You know exactly what I mean. Without the Navy, we are done for. When the Navy loses control, the Army lose. And so everything, the evacuation depends on the Navy. But the problems, and this is why I

wanted to write the book, and this is why I'm grateful to Matt McLaughlin, McLaughlin as he insists he's called, silly bugger. It's clearly spelt McLaughlin, he'll curse me for that. But him and livinghistory.com are producing the book because it's so exciting how are they going to get away dan there's no real ports the winter's coming the storm's brewing they've already had what they had one huge storm the back end of november uh which rainstorm followed by freezing cold 5 000 evacuated hundreds dead how are they going to get off how are they going to do it? The Turks at Suvla, the Turks, the lines are about four miles inland. They're quite a bit between them, but they're four lines inland. At Anzac, they're a matter of hundreds of yards inland, but they're just two or three yards between the trenches in places.

How are they going to do it? How are they going to do it? And that's, for me, what the book's about. How are they going to do it? How are they going to do it? And that's, for me, what the book's about. How are they going to do it? And it's a two-part story because you've got, firstly, Suvar and Anzac, and then, of course, you've got Hellas. It's a great story. And when you write a single-volume history, you've got no space for it. You know the constraints of writing a book, and you know the constraints publishers put on you. You can't, if it's a single volume history of a big campaign, there's no room for real detail, real fun, as I call it. Sorry, I'm rabbiting on. I get excited.

Not at all. And it's good to hear Matt McLaughlin's name being taken in vain there. He's been on the podcast many times. He's a good friend. He has. I've listened to them, yeah. So just briefly, how do you dis it's always it's always said by military armchair military historians and i'm sitting in an armchair with a bookshelf behind me full of military history books uh it's always said that disengaging from the enemy uh is the hardest bit to do isn't it i mean and how on earth do you do that on the gallipoli peninsula where as you point out they're all so they're overlooking each other in they're in each other's pockets?

Well, the thing is, they were brilliant. The historically normal thing to do would have been to launch a diversionary attack and try and distract the enemy's attention. By this time, in essence, Monroe's still in charge, but Birdwood, William Birdwood, is essentially in command of the final stages with the Chief of Staff, Brigadier General Cyril Brudenell-White. You might say, why am I mentioning him? Well, he's the Chief of Staff who comes up with a plan.

He realises that when it goes quiet, the Turks are going to realise that you've gone. What they're going to do is they're going to sneak away, thinning out the lines thinning out the troops behind keeping hold of the front line but gradually thinning out all the troops behind it and then in the final stage they would uh they would pull back the front line and just make a basic basically go for go for the sea and he realized that the key moment was when it goes quiet when the front lines are empty and he came up with quiet quiet

periods and you think what's clever about that well what's clever about it is it it's conditioning if they call so what you do is you have a quiet period for a couple of days perhaps three days and what you do is first it takes peer over the top nothing happens then they start creeping about in no matter nothing happens damn it if they get too close to your lines you shoot them but other than that you leave them be you don't fire at all and then suddenly up on the fire step fire mass fire and what you've done is said just because it's quiet doesn't mean we're not there and it's brilliant and they keep doing this and it conditions the turks uh is it part of the British new routine? Must be.

Quiet does not mean gone. And it's great because you could imagine the average soldier in the trench when it comes to the real evacuation, they're not going to be keen to investigate because their mates have investigated and been killed. So it's a great, great plan. And then you've got the thing that people always go mad about and that's the self-firing rifles and my book is not sniffy about them but points out that these

only really give you 30 minutes that it's basically water dripping and then something a complicated mechanical thing pulls the trigger so that after you've gone there's still an occasional rifle shot but these are nowhere near as important as the quiet periods they are they are they are good fun and and everyone likes a diagram i'm sure my book will have a diagram knowing matt and so the last few troops to leave uh is it literally a matter of leave the browning machine gun and sprint down to the boat waiting on the beach below? No, they took the machine guns back.

Vickers, Vickers, Vickers, you've flicked to the Second World War. Oh, sorry, what did I say? Vickers, yeah, Vickers. No, no, I knew what you'd done, because I do that kind of thing. I'm just doing a book on 5 and 4 for Yeomany, and they've got Brownings in their tanks, so I recognised it. I've been doing too much Spitfire Mark I's with the Battle of Britain at the moment.

That's the problem. Our heads are sometimes just a jumble, aren't they? Yeah, so they basically, at Anzac, it all goes brilliantly. I mean, Suvla, there's no trouble at all. Anzac, it's so tense, but they creep back to the beach. There's just basically sort of 20 or 30 men on a battalion front by the end. And it succeeds. All the ruses play in a cricket match the day before they leave. There's a famous photograph of that. sort of 20 or 30 men on a battalion front by the end. And it succeeds.

All the ruses play in a cricket match the day before they leave. There's a famous photograph of that. It's really just a demonstration. They actually had smoking patrols. The people wandered around smoking. They emptied out all the supplied depots from inside. A million ruses. The engineers had created better roads back to the beach. Everything's marked out. Everything's planned. And they do it.

And the thing is, and this is the part and it may disrupt you slightly because this is only the first part of the story. Because having done that, they haven't evacuated Hellas because the government wouldn't let them. And also the Navy couldn't do it. So then they have to do it all over again. But now it's January. And the final evacuation on the 8th, 9th of January is even more tense. I don't want to go on and on and on, but can I give you the situation there? It's a combination of Suva and Anzac. They are four miles to go back, but at places, the trenches at the front are only two or three yards apart, four or five yards apart, four or

five yards apart, a cricket pitch at most in certain sectors. So they've got both problems joined together. The Turks know they're going. They've moved up more troops. The heavy guns, which are one of the reasons they had to go. They've got guns coming through Bulgaria, heavy howitzers. If they hit, they're dependent on flimsy piers and a floating bridge and things like that to get off. If any of those are hit, it'll delay the evacuation. Thousands of men will be trapped. And it is thousands, 20,000 men on the last night at Helles. Would they get away with it? Would the Turks be fooled? They'd had an attack the day before, which had been beaten off thanks to the Royal Navy. is such such an exciting story Dan and the Helles part is often

totally ignored because books tend to do one and then think oh well and then they got off from Helles but what a story it is and my favorite thing about the whole thing is I know you love visiting battlefields but if you visit W Beach at at the back, there's what looks like, it's just a gully thing on the right-hand side. Next time you go, have a look. It's where they put all the explosives that they couldn't get off, and they set a fuse. And there were several of these.

One of them had been set off by, some people say, a careless man with a candle. I think you and I would both know that it's almost certainly somebody smoking a tab, quiet cigarette, set fire to the explosives and fuel depot. And they've got this going on. They've got the fuses set and they can't find one of the generals. He's got sort of lost behind. And they actually have this stupid poem. It uh major general stanley maude's been left

behind and he's coming over the top with just his key staff the fuses have been lit one of them has been set light by a stupid soldier that it's three or four hours since they left the front lines the turks could be arriving any minute and a major general's missing and the bloke on the beach wrote come into the lighter maude the fuse has long been lit oh come into the lighter maud and never mind your kit and so then it gets a bit more abusive i won't read that and then they just get on the last boat and as they're actually pulling out that the the massive uh explosive dumps blow up uh like brock's benefit and round that uh you know i told you about the um the the round that is an explosive debris field which was spotted by a an afghan veteran i took there afghan you know recent afghanistan veteran and he said pete what's this

explosive field because i and every other historian who'd ever been there had never spotted it. And all these boulders across this field, too big to move, were from inside that valley. That is history brought to life. That's why I love visiting battlefields. I'm sure that's why you love visiting them, because you can see things that tell a story.

And also, we should like the amphibious landings on gallipoli they didn't have lcus you know landing craft these these big things that you perhaps become more familiar in the second world war i mean they are you mentioned lighter they're kind of getting into rowing boats and stuff aren't they they've moved on slightly from that they've got uh what they call uh beetles uh which funnily enough look a bit like assault craft so they've got things at the front like antennae and they drop a ramp and they have got lighters that take up well 200 300 400 men and they're helpful but fundamentally it all depends on this floating bridge at w beach for instance on the 8th 9th the last night and that floating bridge the lighters bash into it the floating bridge leads to the hulks and there you can get the destroyers too but if that floating bridge the lighters bash into it the floating bridge leads to the hulks

and there you can get the destroyers too but if that floating bridge is broken and it is then they have to go in the lighters and the lighters are not very big and and there's a storm brewing it's it's all such a such a story of i don't know how they did on on that last night they get off another sort of there's the statistics are really good another sort of nearly uh 17 000 or so men um you know me in statistics like yourself i don't think history statistics i think history is a story and and and understanding why it happens it's it's just amazing it really is and how many men do they lose during the evacuation well funny enough non is the official answer when you're reading accounts or a couple of people get badly injured

there's one tale of somebody falling between the boats and drowning but he doesn't appear on the casket so i'm going with non and that is amazing uh for instance at at Helles, which is the tightest of them all, since the government in the, what, 28th of December, the government give final permission to evacuate, they evacuate 35,268 men, 3,689 horses and 20, and mules, and 127 guns. They did destroy 907 horses and mules. And if you go into Gully Ravine, which I'm sure you've been into, if there's been a storm, you still get all the bones,

the horse bones turning up from where they shot them all. And there's great oral history accounts of people, I'm not shooting my mule, they just let them go. But most of them were shot. But again, those mulesules bones still litter the lower regions of gully ravine it is what a story well it's an amazing story and it's one of the great battlefield to visit for lots of reasons uh it's just there's something extraordinarily special as well as the drama of the landscape the way it's been preserved the nature of the

the nature of the fighting it's an amazing place isn't't it? It is. I think it's awesome. I urge everybody, when they can, not sure when Covid will allow it, but with all battlefields, but Gallipoli is just so beautiful. It's beautiful. The trenches are still there because it's never been, it's not like the Western Front.

At Hellas, most of the trenches have gone, but in the gullies and at Anzac, the trenches are all there up on kirich tepe where they mounded up uh sanghas like like in india the sanghas it's an indian name the sanghas are still there it's an amazing some of the dugouts are still there at w beach there's one of the winter dugouts to the left on the side of the cliff is still there you can go in it 20. 20 or 30, you can go in it. It's not safe, but you can. What a place to visit. I just love it.

And this story, I was so pleased to be able to tell the story. Well, you've done it brilliantly. So everyone needs to visit Battlefield, but they also need to buy your book first. What's it called? Tell everyone what it's called. Now, I never remember the title of the book matt specifically told me i was to remember the evacuation of gallipoli

sorry a momentary heads and it's uh it's a you if you buy it in advance you get a two-hour podcast on livinghistory.com which matt and i recorded which has veterans uh accounts actual tape recordings embedded within it which which is great fun. Sorry to do this commercial bit, but you know why things have to be done. And I'm very proud of that two-hour podcast. We've only done a taster here. There's so much excitement in this story that you miss. And the future of Gallipoli studies is not in single volume histories it's in these

these smaller accounts of various things for instance where's the book on the French at Gallipoli that's the next one someone should write someone who can speak French properly which it's sadly I can't right yes you're so right there's a lot there's a lot more material to come out we'll be talking about this for another hundred years I'm sure thank you very much Peter Hart. It's such an exciting project. The website, the podcast, the book, it's all very clever and joined up.

Well done to you and Matt McLaughlin. And thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure. Cheers, Dan. I feel the hand of history upon our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,

this part of the history of our country, all work on, and finish, and liquidate. Hi everyone, it's me, Dan Snow. Just a quick request. It's so annoying, and I hate it when other podcasts do this, but now I'm doing it, and I hate myself. Please, please go onto iTunes wherever you get your podcasts, and give us a five-star rating and a review. It really helps, and basically

boosts up the chart, which is good, and then more people listen, which is nice. So if you could do that, I'd be very grateful. I understand if you don't subscribe to my TV channel. I understand if you don't buy my calendar, but this is free. Come on, do me a favor. Thanks.