A magic pudding of a book.(Gallipoli)(Book Review)

Gallipoli, by Les Carlyon; Macmillan, 2001, $45.

HORRIBLE AND STRANGE debut though it was, Anzac saw Australia s first appearance on the world stage as a nation, fifteen years old. From today's ever-swelling public enthusiasm which rises on every twenty-fifth of April, it is clear that Anzac is the very core of our national tradition. (Can you name any other national rally where the organisers fear that too many will show up, rather than too few?)

One often reads of the Anzac "myth", a word with faintly patronising or sceptical tones. A myth, says my dictionary, is "a purely fictitious narrative ... any narration having fictitious elements". But we now know almost everything of importance that human beings can ever learn about Anzac, even though that may still be less than is known to the angels in Heaven: small remaining gaps in the facts, yes; odd spots still for speculation and re-interpretation; but Anzac is no myth. It is history with a capital H, and in this magnificent book Les Carlyon has made himself its historian.

While academic historians find time and money to meet in conclaves of complaint about lack of funding and their poverty of research opportunities, a private citizen simply puts his head down and gets on with the job. This noble volume comes from the pen of one whose by-line I first remember as a racing writer on the Melbourne Age.

Maturity and fairness permeate Carlyon's work and this, added to manifest mastery of immense and varied sources, gives the whole work a quiet authority. He seeks to prove no partisan theses; he just wants us to know what happened. He is firm that, for true insight, we must see it all with the eyes of the actors of the time; we must know what they knew--neither more nor less. There can be no backward projections of today's enlightenments, values and political correctitudes.

How many pairs of boots did Carlyon tear to tatters in his researches? He has covered every yard of the Gallipoli tracks and battlefields, and seen them in every light from dawn to moonrise. When he describes Lone Pine, you know he has been there. He knows a great deal more about the ground than any of the generals who sent their men to die on it in 1915. His energy thus has helped produce the many excellent maps that so assist his readers.

Gallipoli's higher direction from London was an endless tale of political and military idiocy--a macabre farce scripted by some blackhearted Evelyn Waugh.