‘Dig, dig, dig, until you are safe’: constructing the Australian trenches on Gallipoli

Abstract

The Gallipoli Campaign holds pride of place in Australian history as the purported birthplace of the Australian national identity and of the ‘Anzac Legend’. Australian historians – amateur, professional and academic alike – dedicate more time to researching and writing themes surrounding the Gallipoli Campaign than they do to any other topic in Australian history; it is a remarkable trend given the ultimate failure of the campaign and the loss of some 8000 Australian lives, in addition to the lives of over 120,000 combatants from other nations. Yet for all this attention, and for all that we claim to know about the conduct of the campaign, there are still some clear gaps in the historical literature. One vast gap, and the one that this paper seeks to address in part, surrounds an understanding of the labour undertaken by combatants of both sides throughout the campaign. By focusing primarily upon the personal accounts of the rank-and-file of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in combination with the detailed Official History, this article will draw out the key features of the labour undertaken by Australian soldiers during the campaign and present a model for further historical inquiries of working cultures in the environment of work. It provides an intentionally limited scope in recognition of both the diversity of work undertaken by soldiers and of the need for further studies to draw this work out in greater detail. As a case study, this article focuses primarily upon the labour undertaken by the men of the AIF in digging the trenches (and associated activities such as tunnels, dugouts, saps and so forth) in the area surrounding Anzac Cove during the Gallipoli Campaign. Among other benefits, this approach demonstrates the primacy of manual labour in the daily lives of the rank-and-file soldier throughout the Gallipoli Campaign and emphasizes the importance of understanding this labour as part of our understanding of military service in general during the First World War.