Jim Haynes. Cobbers--Stories of Gallipoli 1915.

Jim Haynes. Cobbers--Stories of Gallipoli 1915, ABC Books, 373 pp, pbk, $29.95 Haynes.

This is the folksy view of Gallipoli--the place where all men (on our side) were straight and true, where all the mistakes by the top brass were forgivable, all the slaughter heroic and the final withdrawal little short of miraculous.

Certainly, there are brief accounts of shocking personal tragedy and the suffocating stench of the piles of dead. We do hear reference to the torture of the flies and the lice and the dysentery. But it's overlayed with such a roseate glow of cheerful heroism that the horror fades into the Aegean mist. It is, in short, war as entertainment.

Indeed, the editor who compiled this collection of stories, poems, newspaper articles and excerpts from larger works, Jim Haynes, gives his job description as "professional entertainer". And within the growing library of books on Gallipoli there is no doubt room for a work devoted to the lighter side.

He makes no claim to a larger purpose. And his publisher makes little attempt to provide the book with a sense of gravitas. The cover is a comic book illustration reminiscent of The Phantom in his heyday. The contributors and context of their work is run together in the Introduction instead of being spaced through the book as the authors make their appearance. There is no dramatis personnae of the campaign, no index and no attempt to place the Dardanelles disaster into the wider context of World War 1.

However, for those with a particular interest in the Anzac legend, Cobbers will be a welcome addition. For all the Boys Own atmosphere, the bush ballads and the mawkish sentimentality it does contain works of special interest and appeal. The account by General Birdwood of the actual landing contains a mea culpa concerning the arrival at what became Anzac Cove that has been the subject of much controversy. Indeed, in this account he says, "This landing further north that was intended naturally caused some temporary difficulties; for these I must take the blame, for they were caused by my insistence on landing before daylight."

This meant that the Queenslanders who first hit the beach found themselves faced with steep cliffs and precipitous gullies instead of the gentle rise and flat plateau they'd been led to expect.

In other accounts, Birdwood reportedly reversed himself claiming Anzac Cove was his preferred destination all along. And in the Cobbers version (where the reference is not given) one can see him mentally preparing the ground: "[There were] great compensations also. The original spot chosen was on fairly open ground ... and troops landing there must have suffered heavily from machine-gun and other fire from the trenches in that locality."

However, Cobbers is not designed as a literary battlefield to pursue such military contretemps. It is a good old fashioned read for the Gallipoli buff and the student of historical mythmaking.

Sadly, it gives scant attention to the campaign from the Turkish side. These days Australians regard Gallipoli as a place of pilgrimage and some 50,000 a year make their way to the silent scrubland across the water from ancient Troy. Yet at the same time more than 2 million Turks make the same journey to the place they recognise as the crucible of modern secular Turkey. They too are caught up in a legend quite as powerful as Australia's.

This deserves more than passing mention, even in an entertainment.

Robert Macklin is the author of several books on war, including The Battle of Brisbane, Kill the Tiger and Keep off the Skyline with co-author Peter Thompson. He is presently writing a biography of Albert Jacka who was awarded the first Australian VC of the First World War on Gallipoli.