Eye Candy #383 - "Gallipoli"

Gallipoli:  Not to be confused with the Peter Weir film of the same name, this documentary covers the Battle of Gallipoli during WW1, involving British, Australian, French, and Turkish soldiers, using correspondence and eyewitness accounts from both sides at the absolute hell on earth these soldiers went through for 10 months, as the Allies tried to break the Turks, to gain a naval supply route to their ally Russia.  Violent, brutal, wasteful, at times utterly stupid, at other times utterly heroic, the insanity of war just isn’t done justice by film - we can’t possibly see and feel what they felt at that time, and have no comprehension of life under those conditions, from swarms of flies so thick it was difficult to eat, to battles with lopsided casualities figures where one side would lose 500 and the other would lose 10,000.  Of trench warfare, where the trenches were all of 15 yards apart.  Men drowning in latrines that were too deep to escape from.  Really, horrific stuff, but worth noting so it can never happen again.  The documentary itself isn’t anything to write home about, but the information is.  It’d make a nice double bill with the Peter Weir-directed drama of the same name.  Woodchuck sez, “Check it out.”