Five Months at Anzac

Joseph Lievesley BeestonProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.3

Word count: 160K words
Chapters: 16

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Five Months at Anzac by Joseph Lievesley BeestonAuthor: Beeston, Joseph Lievesley, 1859-1921,Language: English, Class: D501: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: World War I (1914-1918), Release Date: May 24, 2005

Editor's review

This book is a memoir by Joseph Lievesley Beeston, an Australian medical officer, recounting his five months stationed at Anzac Cove during the Gallipoli campaign of the First World War. Writing as a participant, he records battlefield medicine, the daily life of soldiers, and conditions at the front, offering a first-hand perspective for the study of WWI military history, the Australian Imperial Force, and the Gallipoli campaign. The prose is plain and fact-focused rather than literary. As a public-domain Project Gutenberg e-book, it is easily accessible and suitable as supplementary historical material. It is best read alongside background sources on the campaign to appreciate the historical value of its details.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in the military history of the First World War
Students of the Gallipoli campaign and Australian military history
Those seeking a first-hand battlefield memoir as a historical source
Readers who prefer factual war narratives to fictional war novels

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting a tightly plotted, literary war novel
Beginners without WWI background knowledge who want an introductory general history first
Readers uninterested in military medicine and the daily details of life at the front

Reading tips

Familiarize yourself with the timeline and background of the Gallipoli campaign before starting the text.
Read with a map at hand, comparing the locations described with the terrain of Anzac Cove.
Read in chronological order, noting the details of battlefield medicine and soldiers' lives.
After reading, compile the events and figures mentioned and cross-check them against a general history of the campaign.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a memoir?

It is a battlefield memoir written from the author's own experience, recounting what he witnessed during five months at Anzac Cove in the Gallipoli campaign. It is a factual historical source, not a work of fiction.

What background knowledge is needed to read this book?

It is advisable to first learn the basic course of the Gallipoli campaign in the First World War and the background of the Australian Imperial Force's participation. With this grounding, the book's accounts of the front-line environment and battlefield medicine will be easier to follow.

How difficult is the English in this book?

The book was written in English in the early twentieth century. The language is generally plain and mainly narrative and documentary. Readers with intermediate or better English can read it through with a dictionary, and specialized military terms can be understood with reference to background materials.

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About the author

Joseph Lievesley Beeston Author · British · 1859–1921

Joseph Lievesley Beeston (1859–1921) was a British Army officer. Public information about his life is limited, and it is difficult to reconstruct a complete picture of his military career and personal experiences. One work by him is held in this collection, Five Months at Anzac, which, judging from its title and the existing description, is a memoir of overseas islands and wartime experience. Writing of this kind typically records wartime life, the surroundings of a posting, and everyday observations from the perspective of a participant, and can offer primary material for the study of related military operations and soldiers' experiences. Beeston's narrative is documentary in emphasis and comparatively restrained, and its value lies chiefly in preserving an on-the-spot record of a particular time and place.