Review

Author(s): Robert J. T. Joy

Review by: Robert J. T. Joy
Source: The International History Review, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Aug., 1995), pp. 615-616
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40107063
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 Reviews of Books 615

sequel, Vance and others ought now to examine documents from captors and
neutral Protector Powers. Scholars with the appropriate language skills could
search the archives of such former enemies as Germany and Japan, as well as
of the neutral countries. Fifty years after the events in question, French
authorities are now releasing materials from their Vichy period. If North
Korea - where 33 Canadians were interned - goes the way of East Germany,
there may even be a happy hunting ground in Pyongyang.

Laurentian University Graeme S. Mount

Michael B. Tyquin. Gallipoli: The Medical War: The Australian Army Medical
Services in the Dardanelles Campaign of 1915. Kensington, New South Wales
University Press, 1994; dist. Portland, Oreg.: ISBS. Pp. xiv, 277. $39.95 (us).

On 15 April 191 5, combined British and French navy and army forces made
an amphibious landing on the Gallipoli peninsula of Turkey as a strategic out-
flanking of the trench war stalemate in France. Part of the British force was
the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). The operation was
a military and political disaster.
Yet, ANZAC participation in the First World War is believed by many to
have given Australia and New Zealand their initial sense of nationhood and
solidarity as they developed after the war from their colonial status. To this
day, 15 April is a public holiday in Australia. Gallipoli, as a pivotal event in
Australian history remains there a subject of historical discussion beyond its
campaign significance.
We, therefore, have this recent study of the medical support of the
ANZAC. The clinical care of the troops was of acceptable standards for the
period. The medical operational, logistic, and administrative support were as
badly done as the military and naval performance and resulted in equally
disastrous outcomes for the sick and wounded.
Michael B. Tyquin, in this doctoral dissertation, has adopted the 'bottom-
up' historical approach begun by C. E. W. Bean in his magisterial official
histories of Australia in that war. There is wide-ranging and intensive use of
letters, diaries, official reports, and other primary sources, mostly from the
splendid collections of the Australian War Memorial.
The story is non-chronological and is divided into topical chapters: attack;
transport; treatment; disease; politics; and other causes of concern. There are
nine appendices: chain of control; chronology; brief biographies; copies of
orders and plans; casualty data; and lists of equipment and hospital ships. The
illustrations and figures are useful and well reproduced.
Sadly, I must report that I find nothing new in this text. I do not agree that

xvii, 3: August 1995

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616 The International History Review

the author has 'added several new insights' - I can find none that are not
present either in Bean's official military or A. G. Butler's official medical
histories, both immediately post-war; in Robert James's Gallipoli (1965); in
John Robertson's ANZAC and Empire (1990); and in a host of other
secondary texts and journal articles. The 'deliberately brief military history is
so truncated that readers unfamiliar with the campaign will not have any
sense of the battles that produced all those casualties. The medical failures
came directly as a result of British army and navy failure to understand joint
amphibious operations, and of failure of the high command and amateurish
staff planning. Tyquin comments that Bean 'held in check' Butler's anger in
early drafts of the medical history. But we are not told what was not printed.
Since Butler was a medical officer at Gallipoli (as Bean was an accredited
journalist/historian), these deleted passages would be useful to have.
It is an author's choice of style whether to organize topically or chrono-
logically. In my opinion, chronology should be violated only when absolutely
necessary. In this book, it should not have been done. Military operations at
the campaign level can only be grasped chronologically, for the ebb and flow
of battles are absolutely time-dependent. By choosing a topical approach,
Tyquin introduces redundancy and loses the operational scheme. Restricting
discussion to 'April, August, and December' artificially imposes a focus that is
ahistorical.
Well - readers interested in the topic can use the book for its bibliography
(but must update it), for the fine use of selected primary sources, for a well-
written and readable text, and for chuckles at the publisher who left in copy-
editors' question marks. For a thorough history, begin with Bean and Butler,
the British histories, and the author's reading list.

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Robert J. T. Joy

Paddy Griffith. Battle Tactics of the Western Front: The British Army's Art of
Attack. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994. Pp. xvi, 286.
$25.00 (us).

Paddy Griffith's lively, entertaining, and opinionated study will surely

invigorate the debate on British methods of waging trench warfare in the
First World War. A recognized authority on tactics and a former lecturer at
the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, Griffith is apologetic about being a
neophyte to First World War studies. He need not be, for he is admirably
suited to explore the tactical development of the British Expeditionary Force
on the Western Front, 19 16- 18. As a purely military historian, he knows
intimately the battlefield and its weaponry. He also writes from a broad

xvii, 3: August 1995

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