About the Author

Rhys Crawley is a historian with the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the Australian National University. He received his doctorate from the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Reviews

Rhys Crawley takes a revisionist sledgehammer to one of the remaining myths of the Gallipoli campaign: that the Allies could have won the Suvla offensive of August 1915. In a series of carefully constructed chapters he demonstrates that the operation's failure was a function of structure rather than circumstance. Not only was the plan too ambitious, but it placed far too much faith in the possibilities of maneuver in an age of industrialized positional warfare. The result was all too typical of the Great War - an aggregation of sacrifices as futile as they were heroic."" - Dennis Showalter, author of Hitler's Panzers: The Lightning Attacks that Revolutionized Warfare

""Rhys Crawley's rigorous examination of the August offensives at Gallipoli - in particular the artillery and logistic support required for a successful attack - deepens our understanding of why the First World War was so expensive in casualties, while the front lines seemed to move hardly at all. This book is highly recommended for all those interested in the Gallipoli campaign and in the operations of the First World War as a whole."" - Robert O'Neill, author of The German Army and the Nazi Party, 1933 - 1939