Firstly i have no disrespect for the Anzacs who died at Galipoli,they were another in a long line of tragic soldiers who lost their lives in WW1.Every country has similar stories. with this film Peter Weir should have just stuck to telling the story of the Anzacs as it would have been better not to portray British soldiers at all rather than portray them in such a bad light,which is an insult to those who died.He makes this film blatantly obvious in what he has set out to do,and it sickens me that people have been sucked in by this. Now where he has been really sneaky--is that he knew that back in the early eighties most British people knew very little about our part in Galipoli,it wasn't widely known about,mainly due to the fact it was a big mistake by Winston Churchill who at the time was first Lord Of The Admiralty he wanted a combined assault from The Royal Navy and the British Army,it went badly wrong,on two of the beaches the Turks could see us landing and mowed our soldiers down as soon as they got off their ship.They had even placed barbed wire in the water which cut one battalion of Lancashire Fusiliers to pieces.The sea ran red with blood,some of the barbed wire can still be seen today. Now this was only the beginning of what was to become a disastrous campaign for all involved.The whole campaign was eventually called off,big mistake no more said. A year later the battle of the Somme took place where there was even more appalling loses,so British loses in Galipoli was swept under the carpet,even though we had lost over 21,000 men there, mainly Lancashire fusiliers.Hardly looks like they were drinking tea. My own great uncle a Salford lad served in The Royal Navy on a light Battle cruiser HMS Dublin,the ship was withdrawn from Galipoli and sent to Brindisi where they were guarding the lighthouses,the ship was struck by a torpedo fired from an Austrian submarine,he was one of the 13 killed.I often wonder what he would have witnessed the last two months of his life when he was at Galipoli.He was just 20 years old. Luckily the navy records still exist,as they were kept at Plymouth unlike the army records which were kept at Kew Gardens and were destroyed by the Luftwaffe in WW2,So nearly all the British soldiers who were killed at Galipoli have no records,the only way you can find out if a relative served in the British army in WW1 is by looking at the medal role,which will have a date of their enlistment,and then its guess work from there.My grandfather a Lancashire soldier enlisted 1917 where he served?Ypres? The good thing now is that Brits can readily read about their involvement in Galipoli as there are many websites with all the facts and there has been some good documentaries on events some have been Australian and have done the Lancashire fusiliers and other British soldiers justice, which has been long over due.Not many British people knew our involvement in Galipoli let alone that we lost 21,000.So it seems to me that Peter Wiers film is now very out of date,now that the true facts are becoming widely known,he just makes the film look like an excuse for Brit or particularly English bashing,rather than try to be educational for the younger generation.Which is a shame,because Galipoli was a lesson to be learnt,but where facts have been distorted it just leads to a growing resentment from young British researchers and modern day historians.A waisted opportunity.
