Gallipoli

There's obviously some sort of inter-blog war going on about this. So some points:

First, I am not sure if everyone is clear on the definition of a casualty. It does not mean a death. Any injury (and I guess sickness can count) that takes a man out of the battle is a casualty.

Second, I read this somewhere that out of a total of 5m Britons engaged in the First World War only some 750,000 died.

Third, in 1915, most Britons would have been serving on the Western Front. The British Expeditionary Force suffered 90% casualties in 1914. It was the only army we had. Considering the desperate fighting around Ypres in 1915 it was amazing there was anyone to spare for Turkey.

Fourth, by 1918 Britain was running out of men (so what happened to the 4.25m who hadn't got themselves killed?). That is why so much of the fighting that year was carried out by Australians and Canadians.

Fifth, Gallipoli sounded a good idea at the time. There was a stalemate on the Western Front and everyone could see that it would take years before you could successfully fight there without taking enormous casualties. The sensible thing seemed to be to look for a "quick win" against those useless Turks. How were we to know that Attaturk and von Sanders would be there?

One final point. Did you know that the bloodiest campaign ever fought by the British Army (in terms of casualties per day) was the Normandy campaign in WW2? The second bloodiest campaign was the 1918 campaign. No one notices if you are winning.