Book Review: To Hell and Back: The Banned Account of Gallipoli

Two posts back to back.  Am I reviving my flagging activity on the blog, you ask?  Only somewhat.  As I said, I read a lot of stuff back during winter break, and wrote up reviews that were nearly ready to publish when spring semester started.  The one below is an example of that.

Source: Amazon.com

To Hell and Back: The Banned Account of Gallipoli, by Sydney Loch, with Susanna and Jake De Vries

From the book’s cover:

As a young soldier in the battlefields of Gallipoli Sydney Loch witnessed the horror of war first-hand. On his return to Australia he detailed what he saw in his book The Straits Impregnable. Hoping to avoid military censorship his publishers dubbed Sydney's book a novel. But as the war ground on and the numbers of casualties grew the publisher inserted a note saying the story was factual. The book which had enjoyed huge literary acclaim was immediately withdrawn from sale by the censors.

Synopsis:

To Hell and Back is a tale of the experience of an "Aussie" soldier during the Gallipoli campaign of World War I. This campaign occurred on a relatively small but strategically vital stretch of land that most people today in the West can't find on a world map. It is located at the place where Asia and Europe meet, on the shores of the Dardanelles in what today is Turkey. During World War I, British forces attempted to seize this waterway and the land about it and hold it against the Ottoman Turks, who were part of the so-called Central Powers (including Germany and Austria-Hungary). The reasons for this are complex, but to the men involved in this eight month long siege, the reasons were swept away in the destruction that modern warfare wrought upon them.

Sydney Loch was there at Gallipoli during the efforts to dislodge the Turkish forces from the land, and later wrote an account of his experiences which he called The Straits Impregnable. The book was published as a work of fiction while The Great War was still going on, since wartime censorship restrictions did not allow it to be reported as fact. It was feared, and probably rightly so, that the potential soldiers being enticed into arms at that time would shrink from the war if they knew just how bad it was going in.

The Straits Impregnable makes up most of To Hell and Back, with brief introduction material describing Loch's life before the war, and follow-up information about the initial publishing of The Straits Impregnable and the subsequent banning of the book when the second edition proclaimed it to be a true account of what went on upon those blood-soaked shores. The book recounts Loch's experiences in war, from his training as part of the ANZAC forces, to his arrival at Gallipoli (which hearkens to the traumatic D-Day invasion of the next big war), to his months in the fight. The combat was grueling, and Loch explains in bare Aussie style how he saw it all, right up to the time he was med-evaced to Alexandria, Egypt after contracting scarlet fever.
 

The author, Sydney Loch.  Loch went on to become a very active humanitarian, and worked in both Poland and Greece between the World Wars, as well as in Romania and Poland during World War II, where he saved hundreds of Jewish children from the Nazis as part of Operation Red Piper.  / Source: TheAge.com.au

What I liked about it:

The book really made you feel like you were there, and gave a greater appreciation for the experience of a man who fought during World War I, which was a long time ago and thus is sometimes difficult to comprehend. Loch's style, as I have read elsewhere in other reviews of the book, is much less self-reflective than other more famous works written by World War I trench warfare survivors. He tends to tell it like it is, but does embellish from time to time with flourishes of language that he learned in his scholarly pursuits prior to his entrance in the conflict.

What I didn’t like about it:

The Australian slang was sometimes difficult to discern, from an American point of view. I had to look up what a "Jackaroo" was, as it is mentioned repeatedly in the opening sections of the book (for those who are curious, it is a "a young male management trainee on a sheep or cattle station" - taken from Dictionary.com 

Speaking of the opening sections, both the front material and the end stuff about John Loch and his experiences was a bit dry compared to his own words in The Straits Impregnable. I see why it was included, as it gives the reader a greater perspective on why Loch did what he did in publishing the book, and the travails he had in making a living after the war ended.  But Loch's own words on the subject of Gallipoli are much more engaging than the added details that surround it.

Google Image search of World War I was bound to find some rather gruesome pictures (which you can infer from Loch's descriptions and thus can be skipped in this blog post).  However, a search for "Gallipoli" actually came up with some really nice illustrations of the battlefield from the eyes of someone who observed it firsthand.  These were done by a Leslie Fraser Standish Hore, who captures the scene pretty well.  / Source: TheGallipoli100.com.au

What I learned, if anything:

It was amazing to see the wide range of horrors that Loch so calmly describes in his narrative, and really gave me a better grasp for what it must have been like for a soldier at Gallipoli. I knew next to nothing about the campaign, other than the fact that it was something of a disaster for the Allied Powers  The book was very informative on that score.

Recommendation:

When we think of World War I in the West, we often think of the drudgery revolving around trench warfare, ala All's Quiet On The Western Front. To Hell and Back gives a different perspective on this sort of warfare, in a very different part of the world. At the same time, the story is very similar in context, as modern warfare brought differences to combat that were not anticipated by the leaders who conspired to wage this "Great War." The results led to a period of unprecedented relative international peace that would culminate in an even more destructive war beginning in 1939.

To Hell and Back is recommended, taking into consideration that it deals with sometimes quite gruesome subject matter. For instance, at one point Loch is looking over the edge of the trench he is in and sees a dead Turkish soldier only a yard or so away from his position. The description he gives of this dead man, as well as many others from both sides of the fight that Loch sees during his service, is pretty graphic. So too are the descriptions of the ways in which men meet their deaths in this bloody slogging form of early twentieth-century warfare. But if you can stomach the horrific nature of the stuff being described, there are moments of great clarity when the time period itself and the circumstances being described are put into marvelous focus for the reader. For myself, I enjoyed learning more on the subject, even though it was not a happy one.

Learn more about  To Hell and Back: The Banned Account of Gallipoli, by Sydney Loch, on Amazon.com


The parting comment:

Uhmmmm...  Jr. Frostys...  You know this picture is old, because nobody gives away stuff for that cheap anymore, not least being Wendy's.  I used to get their five piece chicken nuggets for a buck, but then they went and dropped it to four pieces (and they aren't even good - probably neck meat) OR you get the six piece nuggets.  For more money.  Hhhhh...  Now I need a Jr Frosty. / Source: AbortedFajitas.com