urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:peterfitz peterfitz peterfitz 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:peterfitz:116478 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z 2038-01-19T03:14:07Z I just watched the very good documentary about the Gallipolli camapign on Maori TV; I say "good", but it was a story of pretty much unrelenting misery. I knew that it hadn't gone very well, but I didn't realise quite how much of a cock-up it was.<br /><br />The battle planning, especially on the side of the British, seems to have been based primarily on jingoistic hope and delusional optimism rather than any kind of tactical reality, and a very great deal of completely pointless slaughter resulted. The most common tactical doctrine on the part of the British command appears to have been "if at first you don't succeed <i>(and get absolutely massacred without achieving a bloody thing)</i>, try try again <i>(in exactly the same way with exactly the same result)</i>".<br /><br />My great-grandfather was there. I'm bloody glad I wasn't.