09/06/2025
First review of Inside GHQ: The Gallipoli Diary of Captain Orlo Williams (edited by Rhys Crawley, Stephen Chambers and Ashleigh Brown), with thanks to Simon Smith:
Well, Orlo....your diary exceeded my expectations!
Little Gully, the editors and all involved in ensuring this text saw the light of day are to be congratulated. What a wonderful observer and commentator of and on events Williams was. He is many things; wise, erudite, pithy and amusing, but as Peter Hart's assessment on the back cover records, 'he is never dull'. Words with which I couldn't agree more. His diary requires little embellishment, but I think the introductory chapter insertions by the editors add real value to the whole. They link and complement rather than intrude and impose, setting Orlo's insights into just the right level of context whilst still allowing him space to tell his story. Probably a template for others to follow on how to edit work of similar type. The photographs included here have also been selected judiciously, and in many respects have virtually equal value to the text. A superb production, a joy to hold and read.
For this reader, it's the author's opinions on Ian Hamilton and Kitchener that hold the most interest. Having had the privilege to study the former's papers in the wonderfully curated Liddell Hart archive at KCL a couple of years back, I have a fascination, and to an extent some sympathy, for both these complex, flawed men. They were not the only nineteenth century men fighting a twentieth century war,in coalition, without a blueprint to help them navigate the pitfalls and exigencies of industrial conflict on a hitherto unimaginable scale. My own opinion on Hamilton seems to chime with that of Orlo's: he was too much the gentleman when plain words and hard truths needed to be articulated, he deferred too much to Kitchener effectively treating him as a C-in-C and was too much the passive spectator to the failures of his subordinates. That being said, all those on the Peninsula were on an absolute hiding to nothing, asked to achieve the impossible with not only insufficient resources to achieve success, but with no real articulation of what 'success' looked like. Commanders of far higher calibre would have achieved no more, because the campaign was hard wired to fail from the outset. All that wasted heroism. Even if by some miracle Ottoman Turkey had been knocked out the war, it wouldn't have mattered a jot. Germany was the enemy and they could only be defeated on the Western Front, not the Dardanelles.
This book does immense service to the historiography of the Gallipoli campaign, and it feels really important. Overarching everything is the sneaking affection for Orlo that grew on me as I turned each page. What a pub companion or dinner guest he would have been! What a life lived!
https://littlegully.com/books/inside-ghq-the-gallipoli-diary-of-captain-orlo-williams/
Thanks again for delivering his words to us. It is a book that deserves enormous praise and every success.
