Book Review - Climax at Gallipoli: The Failure of the August Offensive
Climax at Gallipoli: The Failure of the August Offensive
Written by: Rhys Crawley,
University of Oklahoma Press, 2014
ISBN 9780806152066, 384pp,
Reviewed by: Brigadier Chris Roberts (Ret’d), AM, CSM
Mounted to break the deadlock resulting from the failed April landings, the August Offensive at Gallipoli was the largest operation undertaken on the peninsula. In the eyes of many contemporaries, and several subsequent historians, it came close to success; an offensive that failed by a whisker to bring the Allies victory at Gallipoli, the stuff of Churchill’s self-serving ‘ifs’ in his The World Crisis. Yet in the enormous literature on the Gallipoli campaign, little has been devoted to a separate study of this momentous event. Eliot Cohen and John Gooch’s chapter in Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War provides a relatively short, analytical discussion of what they see as the systemic reasons for failure at Suvla Bay, while David Cameron’s two recent narratives (The August Offensive at Anzac, 1915, and Shadow of Anzac: An Intimate History of Gallipoli) focus on the ANZAC attempt to seize the Sari Bair Range. Elsewhere, the offensive is covered in a few chapters in histories of the entire campaign. With Climax at Gallipoli, Dr Rhys Crawley offers the first analytical study covering the whole offensive, from the British diversions at Cape Helles, the ANZAC breakout, to the IX Corps landing at Suvla Bay.
Rather than a narrative history telling the tragedy blow by blow, Crawley delivers a thoroughly researched, analytical study on a canvas stretching across the strategic, operational and tactical levels of war. He convincingly argues that the August Offensive was doomed to failure before it started, and effectively dismantles the view it came ‘so close to success’. In doing so, Crawley adopts a new approach to studying a battle. Instead of the normal chronological narrative interspersed with analysis, he explores the elements associated with mounting and conducting operations up front — planning, mobility, fire support, combined operations, lines of communication, and supply and transport. Through a detailed examination of how these elements impacted on the operation, and how they were affected by other issues, Crawley considers whether the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force (MEF) had the capacity to undertake the offensive, highlighting the difficulties they faced.
In the ‘Mobility’ chapter, for example, Crawley considers the potential impact of force size, command structure, health and morale, communications, terrain, and the Ottoman defensive capabilities on the MEF’s mobility in the offensive. Under ‘Planning’ we learn how the campaign unfolded from an initial objective of enlarging the restrictive ANZAC beachhead, into a full-blown, four-phase offensive to sweep across the peninsula to achieve the original objectives of the campaign, although recent research indicates the full-blown offensive was the initial intent, and the enlarged beachhead the result. Nonetheless, Crawley argues convincingly it was a plan based on highly optimistic assessments, and a gross underestimation of Ottoman capabilities.
Most campaign histories neglect the vital element of logistics, but Crawley devotes two chapters to this fundamental factor of operations. While some may disagree with some of his assertions, such as the impact of several levels of command on the supply of water, the depth and breadth of his consideration alone make this book an immensely useful contribution to the historiography of the Gallipoli campaign, and to modern military planners. In the penultimate chapter, a narrative of the salient events of the offensive as it unfolded provides an easily followed overview of the tragedy. Crawley wraps up his work with a chapter considering the feasibility of the subsequent three phases had the British and ANZAC forces been successful in the first. In the end, the thrust of his case is proven — the offensive came nowhere near to success, as borne out by the reality of the failure to achieve even its initial goals. He achieves this without reverting to the ‘Lions led by Donkeys’ school of Great War history, acknowledging that, while Hamilton and his subordinates produced a flawed and highly optimistic plan, they were not fools, but intelligent men who were the product of their upbringing, training and experience, holding the Europeans’ contempt for non-Caucasian races, and caught up in an abruptly changing character of war.
While Crawley delivers a compelling and convincing case, some of his judgements reveal perhaps a limited knowledge of broader military history, and inexperience with the practice of military operations. In fairness, this is a common trait in a good many other historical accounts that seek to determine why a military action failed. For example, his dismissal of Birdwood’s suggestion to send a light horse regiment into the Ottoman rear as a distraction as ‘absurd’ disregards similar highly risky, but successful uses of cavalry, such as Stuart’s ride around McClellan’s army during the Peninsula campaign, Grierson’s ride through Mississippi to distract the Confederates during the Vicksburg campaign, and Sheridan’s ride to the outskirts of Richmond during the Wilderness campaign. These examples may well have been in Birdwood’s mind when he suggested his ‘wildcat scheme’. While soldiers would wholeheartedly agree with many of Dr Crawley’s deductions, with a practical knowledge that war is a business of managing difficulties, of taking calculated risks, and a choice of problematic options, they would be less critical of other assessments, or as disturbed with some of the difficulties he raises. There is a sense the author considers Field Service Regulations were prescriptive rather than a guide tempered by training, experience, and the situation at hand they were meant to be. But his very referral to them grounds his discussion in the thinking of the day rather than by the practices of a century later that we so often see.
Nonetheless, these are relatively minor issues and matters of opinion which do not detract from the fundamental case Crawley presents: that the August Offensive was a flawed and overly optimistic operation that was doomed from the start, and rather than coming ‘so close to success’, it never came close to achieving even its phase one objectives. In this he succeeds, and provides a well presented and easily digested study that today’s soldiers would do well to read. It provides a timely reminder that hope is not a method, of the need for pragmatic assessments in planning major operations, of resourcing them properly, and of the consequences of underestimating one’s enemy. For the general reader, Climax at Gallipoli provides considerable insights into the complexities of planning, supporting and undertaking military operations that other studies ignore. Free of the usual hyperbole that shrouds the Gallipoli campaign, this book is well worth reading. It is a welcome addition to the literature on the Gallipoli campaign, presenting as it does the first analytical study of this tragic operation.
