Goodbye Cobber, God Bless You

The Fatal Charge of the Light Horse, Gallipoli, August 7th, 1915.

On August 7th 1915, men of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade staged one of the most tragic, brave and futile charges of the First World War. They attempted to storm an extraordinarily strong Turkish position using nothing but fixed bayonets and raw courage. All of them knew they were about to die.

None held back. It was a massacre immortalised in the film, Gallipoli.

John Hamiltons book follows the men who fought and died in this action from the recruiting frenzy of August 1914, to their training camps, to Egypt, to the peninsula itself, to that fatal morning. It is a work of meticulous research and detail. We see through their eyes the excitement, fear and horror of a generation encountering the carnage of modern war for the first time.

"Goodbye cobber, God bless you" is compelling, personal and painfully moving.