Gallipoli Diaries: The Anzacs' Own Story, Day by Day

Gallipoli Diaries: The Anzacs' Own Story, Day by Day recounts the infamous Gallipoli campaign, a cornerstone battle for Australia, marking its first significant participation as a nation in war. This campaign, though a crushing defeat, is often celebrated as a victory due to the bravery displayed by the Australian soldiers.

In this updated commemorative edition, published 100 years after the 25 April 1915 landing, Jonathan King, a noted war historian, brings to life the Gallipoli story by recounting it day by day. The narrative is woven using the authentic words of diggers, drivers, soldiers, and war correspondents who were present at the front line. The book includes a comprehensive series of extracts from letters and diaries, written by hundreds of Anzacs at Gallipoli, covering each of the 240 days of the eight-month-long campaign.

The soldiers’ accounts, including their misspellings and mistakes, enable us to step into their shoes and share in their experiences. These Australians of exceptional calibre and good cheer recorded their thoughts for various reasons. Despite their hardships, many found ways to lighten the burden of their dire circumstances.

The book captures it all – from fear, frustration, and boredom to their resourcefulness in scrounging for bully beef. It paints a vivid picture of their struggles against flies, lice, and the stench of the unburied dead. It tells of how they swapped cigarettes with enemy Turks, dodged shrapnel while swimming at the beach, celebrated birthdays, sheltered from rain, shivered in snow, and waited for action while praying for deliverance.

Unlike the tales of generals, historians, and war scholars, which have been told many times before, this book offers a unique glimpse into what Gallipoli was really like, through the private words of the men on the front line. Christopher Bantick of Books + Publishing remarks on the power of King's work: "In Jonathan King's Gallipoli Diaries we share the experiences of the diggers from day one… It is a story that is spoken in the sometimes halting words of the soldiers and therein lies its power. There is much here to enlarge our understanding of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign - not least the appalling conditions in the trenches, the daily grind of water carrying, poor food, flies and death."