BIG FIGHT

Capt David Fallon

ISBN 10: 1847345239 / ISBN 13: 9781847345233

Editore: Naval & Military Press, 2006

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2005 N&M Press reprint (original pub 1918). HB. 276pp. This book is an account of the authorâ s battlefield experiences at Gallipoli and on the Western Front. Fallon was a pre-war regular (Northumberland Fusiliers) who, when war broke out, was a staff sergeant instructor at the Australian Royal Military College in Duntroon. Transferred in some unexplained fashion to the Australian army he took part in the Gallipoli landings on 25 April 1915, which he describes in gory detail, as he does the rest of the fighting till he was evacuated in December. Back in the British army he was commisioned into the Buckingham Battalion (TF) of the O & B LI (145th Bde/48th Division) with which he fought on the Western Front till badly wounded at the end of 1916. He seems to go out of his way to make his descriptions of the fighting as bloody as possible, and as for the Germans, he has a chapter entitled "Hun Beastlinessâ in which he makes unbelievable statements such as the two examples which follow: It was the nude body of the Mother Superior. She had been nailed to the door. She had been crucified. In the ruins we brought out the bodies of four nuns, unspeakably mutilated. Their bodies had been stabbed and slashed each more than a hundred times. They had gone to martyrdom resisting incredible brutes. They had fought hard, the blond hair of their assassins clutched in their dead hands. And again, at Wytschaete:Above the wreck of the skyline trench bayonets stuck up, and on them were the severed heads, with horrible smiles under their English caps, of twenty of my men. Referring to German soldiers he writes: They hate the bayonet. The cold steel is not for Hans. Shades of Dadâ s Army, Lcpl Jones and "They donâ t like it up â emâ .

Codice articolo 8706HB

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: BIG FIGHT
• Editore: Naval & Military Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 2006
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1847345239
• ISBN 13: 9781847345233
• Rilegatura: Rilegato
• Condizione: New
• Cataloghi dei venditori:
  • History
  • Military History

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Riassunto

Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III Gallipoli TODAY all is quiet at Gallipoli Peninsula. The rows on rows of wooden crosses at Anzac and Helles, at Nibrunsei Point and Brighton Beach, look out over the JEgean Sea, doubtless blue as it ever was. The dead who lie beneath these little monuments of great deeds?the crosses amid the dwarf holly bushes that clothe the western slopes?have reached their rest. In the scrub Lee-Enfields lie rusting alongside shattered Mausers. The pebbles on the long bleak beaches are mixed with shrapnel bullets, and in the sand and the dunes west of the Long Sap are buried bones and scraps of leather, clips of corroded cartridges, and shreds of khaki clothing. We had no false idea when we left Lem- oos Island, eight transports carrying ourparticular 3,000 Australians, twelve more carrying the remainder of General Birdwood's division, as to the difficulty if not impossibility of the task ahead. Our training at Lemnos Island had shown some of the difficulties, especially the business of landing through choppy seas or narrow beaches under frowning cliffs and then scaling those cliffs. The Turks with their German officers had had their warning in the attempt to force the Dardenelles by the allied forces in January. It was absurd to think that they would be surprised by any movement we could make only a few months after. We discussed the improbability of success quite openly. We went over the old defeats in the history of the Dardenelles, the defeats when Helen of Troy figured as the object of conquest, the defeats of the Crusaders and of Constantine. As I say, we didn't have much hope, but nevertheless, we were all glad that the time had come when the training was at an end and we were to go into the fight. Personally, I set about the same task as the others. On the eve of the ...