Gallipoli Memories by Compton Mackenzie -- Summary

Preface

At the very beginning of WWI, Germany lost and so built a 500-mile long trench line from Belgium to Switzerland. Failed efforts on the part of the Allies to break the trench line led them to look for a way around to Germany through Gallipoli, Turkey. The Allies thought that the arrival of the battle fleet would scare the Turkish government into making peace. Some ships were sunk and so Allied troops attacked Gallipoli by land. The Turkish retaliated and it was bloody, and as a result, the Turkish front was stalemated, just like that in Europe. The Allies persisted with the attempt to defeat the Turks for months.

The story

On a day when renewing fighting was a possibility, the narrator leaves his tent gladly to work out some administrative business. The atmosphere was gloomy because there were many casualties in the last bout of fighting. The Brits, the French, and the Senegalese had blundered on the battlefield. He is on his way to headquarters to ask for the raise in pay and the batman he had been promised but gives up on the way there. Bullets are being shot around him and he is exasperated at the futility of war. He heads for a tree, seeking cover instinctively, which is a bad idea because the area functions as a watering spot and was routinely sprayed with shrapnel. Danger makes him think of the novel which he has yet to fully proofread. He encounters two other soldiers, who are laughing hysterically, one of whom is hit. He turns out to be alive.

By the time he makes it to the battlefield, a ship has been bombed and battle stuff. He meets the last surviving officer of his battalion and he's super scared.

Compton Mackenzie