Voices of Gallipoli
You just had to hope you had enough ammunition to keep popping it into the Turks. I never thought nothing about killing Turks. Some say they were fine fellows, but I just thought they were a pack of bastards.
Henry Lewis
Henry Lewis, talking in his quiet Auckland suburban home at Manurewa in 1982, was by far the most bitter of the Gallipoli veterans interviewed in that year and the next. The accuracy of his recall could be questioned; his passion never. He spoke with most authority about the cruel and hopeless assault the Otago Regiment, the ‘bad luck battalion’, made on entrenched Turks at the beginning of May. He spent most of four months on Gallipoli, from the April landing to the August offensive, and would spend his next seventy years cursing the campaign.
[Voices of Gallipolli] is largely a collection of [verbatim] narratives which tell how humble and mostly simple New Zealanders lived and died on Turkey’s Gallipoli peninusla for eight months in the year of 1915.
Maurice Shadbolt
The testimonies were taken and recorded by New Zealand novelist Maurice Shadbolt. I’m reading them aloud, because I think it’s an important thing to do. I’m not trying to act, or be Vic. I’m just trying to say his words out loud so we can remember what he had to say.
Arthur.
Voices of Gallipoli: Henry Lewis