Game To The Last brings the Gallipoli campaign to life

MANY books have been written about the Gallipoli campaign, but few have knitted the personal narrative to the historical data as well as Game To The Last.

Game To The Last

MANY books have been written about the Gallipoli campaign, but few have knitted the personal narrative to the historical data as well as Game To The Last.

First-time author James Hurst provides an enthralling account of the exploits and tragedies that befall the Western Australian 11th Battalion of the 1st AIF, from Perth to the blood-soaked trenches of Gallipoli.

The book is a rare beast - a work of academic history with a compelling narrative.

It brings the characters to life in a way that many history books fail to do. A graphic selection of images of men at war and original maps places the campaign and its victims in clear context.

Hurst is not afraid to venture beyond his detailed research using diaries, letters, journals and official accounts, to put the reader inside the hearts and minds of the men who fought and died in the disastrous British-led campaign that spawned the Anzac legend.

Men such as the Lukin brothers, Dudley and Lionel, who were "slaughtered with the flower of rural Western Australia's youth at the Nek. Only their brother Guy, who was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, would survive to see the wide open plains of WA again.''

Thirty-six men of the 11th were killed in a single action to take Leane's Trench below Lone Pine. One who survived was Bert Facey, author of the classic A Fortunate Life.

"I had seen some hot spots during the campaign, but this was terrible,'' Facey wrote of Leane's Trench.

The bloody futility of war is a shining theme of this book, but it is the understated heroism of the men of the 11th Battalion that jumps off most of its 260 pages.

Game To The Last
James Hurst
Big Sky Publishing, $34.99