Gallipoli, for the average australian, is the most famous  battle that our volunteer soldiers ever fought, because it was our first  entry as a nation into the war, and our people were keen to prove  themselves. It would be, however, a long time before the families back  home, and the nation as a whole, heard of the terrible conditions on the  peninsula and the waste of life that took place there. Although  Gallipoli was a crushing defeat, it was, and still is, celebrated as a  victory. In this updated commemorative edition, published 100 years after the  25 April 1915 landing, the Gallipoli story is told day by day, using the  words of the diggers, drivers, soldiers, and war correspondents at the  front-line. War historian Jonathan King has gathered together an  unequalled series of extracts from letters and diaries, written by  hundreds of Anzacs at Gallipoli, accounting for every one of the 240  days of the eight-month campaign — and even identifying the actual days  of the week. Reading the men’s own words, including misspellings and  mistakes, we share in the soldiers’ experiences. These Australians, of exceptional calibre and good cheer, each wrote  for different reasons, although many made light of their hardships. It  is all here — the fear, the frustration, and the boredom, as they  scrounged for bully beef; went mad from the flies, the lice, and the  stench of the unburied dead; swapped cigarettes with enemy Turks; dodged  shrapnel while swimming at the beach; celebrated birthdays; sheltered  from rain and shivered in snow; and waited for action while praying for  deliverance. Although generals, historians, and war scholars have had their  stories told many times, it is only now, when we read the private words  of the men at the front-line, that we can glimpse what Gallipoli was really like.