GALLIPOLI: The Scale of Our War.

• Author: McGibbon, Ian

GALLIPOLI

The Scale of Our War

Authors: Christopher Pugsley, Michael Keith and Puawai Cairns

Published by: Te Papa Press, Wellington, 2022, 236pp, $34.99.

The Gallipoli peninsula is a place of myth. Vestiges of Greek settlements, and of later Roman occupation, are not hard to find. It is a site that has seen the passage of great armies, of Xerxes and Alexander the Great, long before it became the centre of global attention in 1915. It now occupies a central place in Turkish nationalism, the site of an epic battle to defend their lands and, above all, as the place where Kemal Attaturk, the founder and first president of modern Turkey, first rose to prominence. Myths abound in Turkey's modern portrayal of this formative event.

New Zealand has its own Gallipoli myth, as reflected in the Scale of Our War Exhibition at Te Papa, which opened on Anzac Day 2015, the centenary of the first day of the Gallipoli campaign. Its defining feature is eight Colossus of Rhodes-like figures, two and a half times life-size, created by Weta Workshops. This exhibition is one of the most successful ever staged in this country, and its popularity has ensured that it will be enjoyed by the public until at least 2025.

Against the prospect of the exhibition's eventual demise, this book provides a permanent record of it, as well as describing how it was created. Very high production values have resulted in a beautifully illustrated book--a fitting monument to the exhibition itself. Readers will find the three-dimensional depictions of the battlefield most enlightening.

Michael Keith provides useful accounts of the seven men and one woman who are depicted in the giant figures, explaining how they came to symbolise New Zealanders who took part in the campaign and describing their fate or postwar lives. In a section that is printed in both English and Maori, Puawai Cairns outlines the experience of the Maori Contingent at Gallipoli, the first involvement of Maori in war overseas. It is a pity, though, that she mistakenly describes the Maori Pah--the site of the contingent's camp --as the 'nickname for No. 1 Outpost'; the pah was, in fact, on the slopes of a dried water course immediately south of that post, not on the post itself. These contributions bring to life the experience of ordinary New Zealanders caught up in extraordinary circumstances--a major feature of the exhibition.

Where the exhibition falls short is in the area of explaining what the individuals' efforts...