Pozieres: The Anzac Story

Description

In 1916, one million men fought in the first battle of the Somme. Victory hinged on their ability to capture a small village called Pozieres. After five attempts to seize it, the British called in the Anzacs to complete this seemingly impossible task. At midnight on 23 July 1916, thousands of Australians stormed Pozieres. Forty-five days later they were relieved, having suffered 23,000 casualties to gain a few miles of barren landscape. Despite the toll, the operation was heralded as a stunning victory. Yet for the exhausted survivors, the war-weary public, and the families of the dead and maimed, victory came at a terrible cost. Drawing on the letters and diaries of the men who fought at Pozieres, this superb book reveals a battlefield drenched in chaos and fear. Bennett sheds light on the story behind the official history, recreating the experiences of those men who fought in one of the largest and most devastating battles of the Great War and returned home, all too often, as shattered men.

Scott Bennett was born in Bairnsdale, Victoria, in 1966, and holds an Executive Master of Business Administration from the Australian Graduate School of Management at the University of Sydney. Over the last ten years, he has worked for many of Australia's most recognised retail companies as a management consultant or an executive manager. In 2003, he visited the Great War battlefields in France and Belgium to retrace the steps of his greatuncles, who had fought there. The experience led him to question the many 'truths' that have developed around the Anzac legend. The result was the writing of _Pozieres_, which reexamines the battle of Pozieres and the Anzac legend.

'Pozieres has languished in Gallipoli's shadow for almost a century. Scott Bennett shines a probing light into that darkness. His passion is evident in every page, and his attention to detail is striking... The tragedy of Pozieres tears at our nation's heart. This a book that needed to be written.' - Patrick Lindsay, author of Fromelles and Kokoda Spirit