Fact or fiction: 5 common Anzac myths put to the test

Updated

The story of the Anzacs at Gallipoli remains an important part of Australia's national identity.

More than 8,000 Australians lost their lives in the ill-fated attempt to force passage through the Dardanelles strait and capture the Turkish capital, Constantinople.

The legends of Anzac heroism, mateship and ingenuity have gone down in folklore along with names like Simpson and Jacka VC.

Another part of that legend is the bungled landing in the wrong spot, the superior fighting skills of the bronzed diggers, and a defeat brought about as much because of dithering English commanders as the Turkish guns.

But how much of what Australians have come to believe about the Anzacs is fact, and how much is fiction?

ABC Fact Check asks the experts about five common myths.

Myth: The Anzacs landed in the wrong place

According to military historians including Professor Peter Stanley of the University of NSW, one of the most persistent myths about the Anzac landing at Gallipoli is that the troops came ashore at the wrong spot.

Professor Stanley says the journalist and historian Charles Bean helped generate this myth by quoting a naval officer, Commander Dix, as saying, "the damn fools have landed us in the wrong place!"

Professor Stanley says this is "not correct". "For decades people have tried to explain the failure at Gallipoli by blaming it on the Royal Navy, but the Royal Navy did land the troops in approximately the right spot. It was what happened after the landing where things went wrong," he says.

The head of military history at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, Ashley Ekins, agrees. "It's a common misconception," he says. "In fact, the Anzacs landed pretty well right in the centre of the originally selected landing zone."

Professor Stanley says there wasn't ever a precise landing spot, just a range of about a kilometre or two, and as it happened, putting the troops ashore around Anzac Cove was probably beneficial, because it was not heavily defended.

Mr Ekins, who is the author of the book Gallipoli; A Ridge Too Far, says there were incorrect claims at the time that currents drew the landing boats away from their intended target. "There are no currents in that area," he says.

Myth: Bumbling British to blame for failed landing

Another myth is that British generals were to blame for the failure of the Gallipoli campaign.

Wrong again, says Professor Stanley. "The first landing was opposed by only about 80 Turks, and the defenders were soon massively out-numbered, but the invaders failed to advance inland as they had been ordered," he says.

He says the Australians' orders were to push on and capture a hill called Maltepe, seven kilometres inland. But the Australian brigadiers got nervous and told their men to dig in on the second ridge, and that's where they stayed for the rest of the eight-month campaign.

Professor Stanley says Australians wanted to blame somebody else for a failure that was basically a failure of Australian command.

Mr Ekins says the then Australian prime minister, Billy Hughes, was among the first to point the finger at the British. In fact, Mr Ekins says, there are multiple reasons for why the campaign failed. "The objectives in the first place, the conception of the whole campaign, was flawed," he says.

Wartime inquiries found the entire campaign had been misconceived from the start and was poorly carried out, resulting in the useless deaths of tens of thousands of allied soldiers.

A 1917 British parliamentary report concluded: "The failure at Anzac was due mainly to the difficulties of the country and the strength of the enemy."

However it also noted that had the British been successful at nearby Suvla, they may have lessened Turkish resistance at Anzac Cove.

Myth: The Anzacs were bushmen and natural athletic soldiers

Historian Joan Beaumont from the Australian National University says the reality was that the Anzacs were "not really a race of athletes as they were sometimes called".

Professor Beaumont says that although official war correspondent Charles Bean described them as being considerably fitter and taller than the men from the British working classes, in fact some of the physical standards weren't high by modern standards.

The minimum height for Australian soldiers from the start of the war was five feet six inches (167cms), and went down to a diminutive five feet (152cms) by the end of the war.

But while the Anzacs may not have been very tall, Mr Ekins says they were certainly fit. "They were undoubtedly a fine contingent of men," he says. "And they did stand out alongside the British troops... People noticed the difference in their bearing, their size and so on."

However Mr Ekins says they were not good soldiers, at least not at first. "At the outset when they landed they were actually very inexperienced amateurs. They had to learn in a very hard school and there was much about war that they had to learn."

Professor Beaumont, author of books including Broken Nation, says that it was Bean who helped create a misconception that the Anzacs were all bushmen, natural solders, fine horsemen and crack shots. "That's one of the key elements of the Anzac legend, but even at the time that Bean was writing the majority of Australians lived in the major towns," she says.

Professor Stanley also says while the Anzacs were the best physical specimens that could be found, they were mostly from the capital cities.

Did you know? Ever wondered how you've seen footage of the landing at Gallipoli when no-one actually filmed it?

A lot of what we've seen is a re-creation of events.

Check out the Ever wondered how you've seen footage of the landing at Gallipoli when no-one actually filmed it?A lot of what we've seen is a re-creation of events.Check out the National Film and Sound Archive's history of Gallipoli on film.

Myth: Simpson and his donkey

One of the heroes of the Gallipoli campaign is stretcher bearer John Simpson Kirkpatrick who famously used a donkey to carry wounded men back from the front line. Simpson landed at Anzac Cove on April 25, 1915, and was shot and killed by a sniper less than four weeks later.

Professor Stanley, author of the book Simpson's Donkey, says the Simpson story is a very confused one. For one thing, he says, it's probable there was more than one donkey.

Mr Ekins adds that most Australians probably don't realise Simpson was an Englishman who joined up in Australia in an effort to get back home.

"He'd joined up basically... to go back home to London to see his mother and sister, to whom he'd been writing for several years while working around the outback of Australia and in various places," Mr Ekins says.

"He joined up, became a soldier, a stretcher-bearer in the field ambulance and found himself on Gallipoli, to his surprise I guess, when he was intending to go back home to England."

He says contrary to the popular belief, Simpson may not have saved any lives.

"He did very brave work, he went into the gullies, he rescued men who were wounded, but mostly men with leg wounds," Mr Ekins says. "He may not have actually saved a single soldier who was going to die."

Myth: The "secret" evacuation and the drip gun

Another feature of the Anzac story is the ingenious way the Australians covered their evacuation by deceiving the Turks.

The Anzacs fashioned so-called "drip rifles" - with a crude timing system made from tins or cooking pots that kept unmanned guns firing. The inventor of the rifles was Lance Corporal W.C. Scurry, who was awarded the Distinguished Conduct medal and promoted to Sergeant for his ingenuity.

However, Professor Stanley says the drip gun contributed nothing to the evacuation. He says by the time the first one went off, all of the troops had been evacuated. "So, what did it contribute to fooling the Turks? Nothing," he says.

Mr Ekins agrees that while the "secret evacuation" was well planned and executed, it's unlikely the drip rifles fooled the Turks. "If they were unsure that (the Anzacs) were leaving, they thought it was a strong possibility," he says.

Editor's note (30/04/2014): Following publication of this piece, Fact Check was contacted by a relative of the inventor of the drip gun who pointed to an article written in the Australasian POST magazine in June 6, 1963. The magazine interviewed Lance Corporal W.C. Scurry about the use of the rifles on the last day of the Gallipoli evacuations, December 19, 1915: "So the last few troops reached the beach, boarded a barge and moved quietly out to the waiting ship," the author said. "From the slopes above the beach there came the periodic rifle cracks as Bill Scurry's 'phantoms' did their job... Bill says he remembers hearing one of them fire when he was aboard a ship named Heroic. It was then about 1:10am – roughly 35 minutes since he had left the line." The POST also quoted a letter written by a soldier back to his mother in Dublin, which said: "... due to the inventive faculties of Corporal Scurry, of our battalion – these men were able to get away ... There's many a man owes his life to it, if we don't all."

The verdict

There is no doubt that the Gallipoli campaign was a major military defeat for Australia and its allies, and it came at a tremendous human cost for a fledgling nation.

Similarly, there is no doubt there were acts of bravery, sacrifice and mateship that are worth commemorating.

It is also understandable that contemporary chroniclers such as Charles Bean, subsequent historians and even governments have sought to put the best possible spin on it, sometimes at the expense of the truth.

While modern historians work to set the record straight, it's still worth appreciating how myths can provide an insight into the way Australians have tried to find meaning and redemption from such terrible loss of life.

More on this fact check

Who was Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean? Charles Edwin Woodrow Bean (1879-1968), often referred to as CEW Bean, was an Australian journalist and historian, principally of the First World War. Why do Australians commemorate a battle we lost? John Barron asks experts Ashley Ekins, Professor Peter Stanley and Professor Joan Beaumont why Australians commemorate the battle of Gallipoli. Where did the myths about Gallipoli originate? John Barron asks experts Ashley Ekins, Professor Peter Stanley and Professor Joan Beaumont why Anzac myths exist and how they originated.

Sources

Topics: anzac-day, world-war-1, history, community-and-society, australia, new-zealand, turkey

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