How well did the morale of soldiers at Gallipoli bear up when fighting in the appalling conditions of the Gallipoli campaign? Did they fight for King and Empire, for their mates, for home, or for what? And what motivated them to go over the top onto enemy fire?
To find answers to these questions, leading British military historian Professor Gary Sheffield looks at the experiences of Australian, British and New Zealand troops, in and out of battle. Based on extensive original research in archives in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, this lecture goes beyond the Anzac myth and dismissive views of British troops. It employs a mixture of sociology, and military and social history not only to examine morale at Gallipoli but also to make some broader points about citizen armies in the two world wars.
About the speaker
Gary Sheffield is one of the United Kingdom’s leading historians of the First World War. He was educated at the University of Leeds (BA, MA) and King’s College London, where he studied for his PhD under the supervision of Professor Brian Bond.
He started his academic career in the Department of War Studies, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, before moving to King’s College London’s Defence Studies Department where he was Land Warfare Historian on the Higher Command and Staff Course. Awarded a Personal Chair by KCL in 2005, he took up the newly-created Chair of War Studies at the University of Birmingham in 2006 before moving to the University of Wolverhampton in September 2013.