Brothers Part One: Gallipoli 1915 by John Tognolini

 
I’ve used the fiction style of a novel to convey the all-too-real historical events, conditions and characters in war, whether it be:

- the savage nature of the fighting and the major battles;

-that some senior Australian officers were just as good as their British counterparts at causing the slaughter of their own soldiers in futile charges against machine guns;

 -that what little drinking water there was at Anzac Cove tasted of petrol from the cans it was carried in;

 

-that dysentery ran rampant, and that it and other illnesses took 1000 soldiers off the peninsula each week;

-that some of the Anzacs were of German, Japanese, Chinese, Polish, West Indian and Italian decent, some were Aboriginal and others were just mere boys;

-that some played two-up with two-headed coins and ran bets on what hymns or psalms would be used on church parades.

 In this story I have attempted to show the horror of war for what it is. It has been my intent to show the hardship and suffering endured at Gallipoli. I had two uncles there, Stephen Tognolini, Military Medal and Bar, 21^st Battalion and Andrew Tognolini, 24^th Battalion. They would be joined by their two other brothers John/Jack Tognolini, 57^th Battalion Military Medal and Henry/Harry Phillips 60^th  Battalion on the Western Front in France and Belgium.

John/Jack Tognolini was killed in action on 25^th April 1918 at the Battle of Villers-Bretonneux in France. The army had his age as 24 years old. As he was born in 1900 he was either 16 or 17.

I will be writing three future volumes to Brothers dealing with the Western Front in the years 1916, 1917 and 1918.

 

John Tognolini  

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