Dominic Sandbrook

I'll read what he said.

It was pitch dark, then all of a sudden the coast, a dim outline of the coast, loomed up.

As we got closer, we were all beginning to get tensed up, nervous, wondering what was going to happen, as everything was so quiet.

Then a single shot rang out and a yellowish light flared up in the sky, and from then on the Turks let loose, machine gun and rifle fire at the boats.

As soon as the boats grounded, it was every man for himself.

And it's very Saving Private Ryan.

So an army surgeon, Australian surgeon, wrote in his diary that he watched the men going ashore under all this Turkish fire.

Several fell as they ran, and on the beach I saw even more men lying untidily, some quite still, others making an occasional movement.

Then I jumped over into two feet of water and waded heavily ashore.

The lapping edge was already pink and frothy with fallen men.

Oh, God.

So it takes them about four hours to get their men ashore, the Anzacs.

That's amazing.

They do get ashore.

Really?

It is.

It's very impressive.

I mean, that opening reading, I mean, they do perform very, very bravely.

Yeah.

They start to push up the hill, up inland, but it is clear that their guiding assumption was wrong.