In the spring of 1915, Allied forces, led by Britain but including many Australian, New Zealand and other Commonwealth (ANZAC) troops, conducted a disastrous campaign to capture the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey. A significant footnote in an account of the conclusion of the battle, including the dismissal of the British commander, Hamilton, describes how Rupert Murdoch's father, an Australian journalist, fabricated a scurrilous charge against the British soldiers.
There was another factor in Hamilton's dismissal. On September 2, an Australian journalist, Keith Arthur Murdoch, arrived at British headquarters and gave Hamilton "an elaborate explanation of why his duty to Australia could be better done with a pen than a rifle." Murdoch was permitted to visit Suvla and Anzac Beaches for a few hours: then, in breach of a signed agreement pertaining to the behavior of all war correspondents, Murdoch wrote directly to Andrew Fisher, prime minister of Australia, who passed the letter along to Asquith [prime minister of Great Britain]. In his letter, Murdoch praised the physical health, spirit, and bravery of the Australian forces and then spoke with contempt of the British troops: "You would refuse to believe that these men were really British soldiers .... The British physique is "very much below that of the Turks .... They are merely a lot of child-like youths without strength to endure or brains to improve their conditions." This was opinion, but Murdoch's worst accusation was flagrantly untrue: "The fact is that after the first day at Suvla an order had to be issued to [British] officers to shoot without mercy any [British] soldier who lagged behind or loitered in advance." Hamilton later described Murdoch's allegation as "an irresponsible statement by an ignorant man," but Asquith inexplicably had it reprinted on official British government stationery and circulated it to the War Council and the Committee on Imperial Defence. Neither Hamilton nor Kitchener was ever given an opportunity to respond.
Some Australians have never forgiven Britain and the British army for the loss of young Anzac lives at Gallipoli . The 1981 film Gallipoli also celebrated the manly beauty and heroism of the Australian soldiery, especially that of the 10th Light Horse Regiment from Western Australia. The film depicts this regiment ordered to attack again and again, repeatedly charging into Turkish rifles and machine guns and suffering 75 percent casual lies at the relentless insistence of an Australian senior officer under orders to distract the Turks while the British landed at Suvla Beach. The film was mostly truthful. "The 10th went forward to meet death instantly," wrote C.E.W. Bean, in the official Australian history of the Great War, "the men running as swiftly and as straight as they could at the Turkish rifles. With that regiment went the flower of the youth of Western Australia. Sons of the old pioneering families - in some cases two and three from the same home - who had flocked to Perth to enlist with their own horses and saddles."
lnterestingly, Keith Murdoch's son, Rupert, was one of the film's principal financial backers.
Castles of steel: Britain, Germany, and the winning of the Great War at sea, p. 496, by Robert K. Massie, Random House, 2003, First Edition
The fruit doesn't fall very far from the tree.