WITH MANCHESTERS IN THE EAST

This book is midway between a battalion history and a Great War officer’s memoir. The 7th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment, first raised in 1859, served in the Sudan before being sent to join the ultimately disastrous Gallipoli campaign. The book is therefore an invaluable memoir of the Dardanelles fighting in 1915, with chapters on the battles around Cape Helles; trench warfare at Gallipoli and the peninsular’s evacuation. The final chapters of the book are concerned with the unit’s ‘revival’ and deployment in Egypt in the latter days of the war. This is a rare and candid account of the Dardanelles campaign and the part played in it by a typical Territorial Army battalion.