Description
Renowned for her historical fiction titles, Jackie French now tells the story of the brilliant and famous evacuation of Gallipoli.
Sixteen-year-old Nipper and his Gallipoli mates Lanky, Spud, Bluey and Wallaby Joe are starving, freezing and ill-equipped. By November 1915 they know that that there is more to winning a war than courage. The Gallipoli campaign has been lost.
Nipper has played cricket with the Turks in the opposing dugout, dodged rocket fire and rescued drowning, freezing men when the blizzard snow melted. He is one of the few trusted with the secret kept from even most of the officers: how an entire army will vanish from the Peninsula over three impeccably planned nights.
Based on first-hand accounts of those extraordinary last weeks of the Gallipoli campaign, this is the fascinating 'lost story' of how 150,000 men – and their horses and equipment – were secretly moved to waiting ships without a single life lost. An unforgettable story told through the eyes of a boy who lied about his age to defend his country.
Review
Seen through the eyes of Nipper – who is called this because he looks (and is) too young to go to war – the story is set in the last days of the Gallipoli campaign.
Showing the shocking conditions – it’s freezing cold, there is death all around, rats, and mud - and the constant fear that the end is close.
But this story also explores the humanity present, and even cricket being played between the opposing sides. The trenches we so close together that it was not unusual for gifts to be thrown to the enemy.
Mainly we witness the extraordinary feat that saw the evacuation of 150,000 troops, their animals and equipment without loss of life, when it was clear that there could be no victory here. Maybe the other side didn’t know what the allies were up to – or maybe they did?
The story in no way glorifies war, but it does show bravery, larrikinism and the influence of such a critical event in birth of Australia as a nation. It is not a long read, and will be enjoyed by lower and middle secondary readers.
Reviewed by Rob
