Anzac reflections — why Gallipoli was a tragedy of errors

I live not far from an Army base at the southern end of New Zealand’s North Island — Trentham Military Camp. It was the staging post for many of our country’s deployments of troops to World War One’s battlefields, a hemisphere away.

The First World War is still an enigma to me, confined to the kitbag of inexplicable matters, alongside why men have nipples. (The reasons for a Second World War can be explained relatively easily — a sociopathic, racist, genocidal madman decided that he had the right to wreak havoc in Europe and kill millions of people in the process while punishing those countries who punished Germany for starting the First World War.)

I didn’t study history at school, so taught myself the art of shining light into the past’s musty corners. What I found out about the origins of WW1 was that in the decades leading up to it, two groups of nations had formed sides (much like in ‘Bullrush’, the schoolyard game I played as a boy). On the goodies team were the UK (and its empire), France, and Russia (the Entente powers) with Italy and the US piling on later. On the dark side were Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman Empire (Turkey). By August 1914, the name-calling and tongue-poking-out between the two groups of countries and their proxies had markedly deteriorated. A full-scale punch-up erupted…