BOWLER
OF GALLIPOLI Witness to the ANZAC Legend
Frank Glen
Australian Military History
Publications, 2004. 142pp.
This book tells the story of
Lieutenant Colonel Edmund Robert Bowler of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force
(NZEF), who served at Gallipoli in 1915 as the ANZAC Assistant Provost
Marshal. It traces his growing
admiration of the Australian and New Zealand soldiers fighting on the Gallipoli
Peninsula, and his parallel disillusionment with the direction of the
Dardanelles campaign. That
disillusionment eventually led him into political interference that ended his
service with the NZEF.
Potentially, there is an
interesting story here.
Unfortunately, this book does not tell it well, perhaps in part because
Bowler’s place in proceedings was probably not as significant as the author
tries to make it, while Bowler himself may not have been as effective or
influential as the author tries to portray him. As an example, Glen perhaps exaggerates the extent of
Bowler’s influence on operations at ANZAC, with suggestions that the idea of a
turning movement might originally have been Bowler’s, and of Birdwood
confirming ‘Bowler’s statement of the necessity to undertake a left flanking
movement’. Had the First World War
not occurred, Bowler would have been simply a country solicitor who served many
years in the NZ Territorial Force.
Despite his service in World War I, he is probably most remembered as
such.
Frank Glen describes Bowler as ‘strongly
of the opinion that the idea of attacking Germany through the Balkans had merit’,
perhaps showing a certain naivety about the effort needed to defeat a major
military power (but then, he was in good company, along with Winston
Churchill). He was initially
confident of success, however, he soon began to review his opinion of the
competence of some British officers.
Having early developed the belief that operations at ANZAC had a greater
chance of success than at Helles, by late May, Bowler seems to have lost any
confidence in the future of the whole Dardanelles operation, and came to
believe that the forces should be transferred to France. As early as July, Bowler became
concerned about the prospects for a winter campaign on the Peninsula, and commented
on the need to evacuate the Australians and New Zealanders.
In the early days of the
campaign, Bowler displayed qualities of initiative and decisiveness, ensuring
that the wounded were evacuated rapidly when it became plain that orders to
retain them ashore did not match the situation. These qualities contrast sharply with his less decisive
approach to quelling the Wazza riot.
Both then and later as ANZAC APM, Bowler seemed uncomfortable with his
role as a disciplinarian (Lord High Constable, in his words).
The high point in Bowler’s period
on Gallipoli seems to have been the eight weeks from mid-May to early July,
when he had the responsibility of Officer Commanding Inner Defences and
Commandant ANZAC Cove, as well as being APM and Beach Controller. Bean commented favourably (Volume II)
on the improvement to the state of the ANZAC Cove headquarters area after
Bowler’s appointment as Commandant.
Frank Glen sees Bowler’s disgust
at the contrast between the luxury enjoyed at Mudros by Line of Communication
staff and conditions at ANZAC as a key point in Bowler’s growing
disillusionment with the British command.
When to this was added the leadership failure at Suvla Bay, Bowler seems
to have lost his sense of perspective.
Added to this was his growing concern at the extent of New Zealand
casualties, and the likely effect on the young nation’s future. From there he proceeded down a path
that led to his effective dismissal from the NZEF.
Bowler lamented that the pre-war
NZ Territorial Force was being destroyed in the Gallipoli campaign. That concern was one of the elements
that Glen sees as significant in Bowler’s decision to try (by political
lobbying) to have the NZ and Australian forces evacuated from the
Peninsula. In this, there are some
echoes of the reaction of the British regular officer in whose company Jo
Gullett served during the Normandy invasion in World War II.
Gullett had been surprised by the
impact on his OC of the death and injury of several other company
commanders. However, on reflection
he realised that, unlike the AIF, whose members joined the Army ‘more or less
to fight’, the peacetime army was a way of life, condemned to be destroyed by
war.[1] Bowler apparently saw the peacetime NZ
Territorial Force in much the same light.
Perhaps the lesson is that long service personnel, regular or part-time,
might not be the best ones to lead in war, as they might become too close to
their creation and be reluctant to use it effectively?
In the end, his overt lobbying
for evacuation of the ANZACs ended Bowler’s service in the NZEF. Whether he considered that the cost was
worthwhile, or rather later realised that the evacuation would have occurred
regardless of his efforts, is not addressed. However, perhaps his silence on the matter for the remainder
of his life suggests the latter, and with it the bitterness of his prospects
that were destroyed for no good reason.
One matter that stands out in
this book is the remarkably lax approach to military security displayed by many
senior officers in their correspondence with their families. Not only Bowler, but also Monash and
Birdwood, outlined the scope of planned operations in their letters
(undoubtedly many others did too, but they do not feature in this book). One hopes that in these days of e-mail
links to operational zones, a stricter standard is applied to all personnel,
not just the lower ranks.
There are too many errors in this
book, from the trivial (about half of the times the acronym for Assistant
Provost Marshal appears it is rendered as AMP instead of APM, perhaps in an
unconscious tribute to the power of advertising) to the more significant
(Lieutenant Colonel Malone is described as the CO of the Wellington Mounted
Rifles, rather than the Wellington Infantry Battalion), to the remiss (the use
of the titles ‘Staff Corps’, ‘ANZAC Staff Corps’ and ‘Staff Corps Headquarters’
when ‘Corps Staff’, ‘ANZAC Staff’ and ‘Corps Headquarters Staff’ were probably
intended).
Overall, this is not one of the
better books produced by the Army history program.
JOHN DONOVAN
[1] Not as a
Duty Only An Infantryman’s War, Henry (‘Jo’) Gullett, Melbourne University
Press, 1984 paperback edition, pp143-144
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