Scarecrow Army : The Anzacs at Gallipoli

Black dog books' award-winning history series The Drum uses first-person accounts and non-fiction to bring history roaring to life.

On 25 April 1915, thousands of Australians and New Zealanders landed at an unnamed cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula. They had come to fight the Turks. They thought the battle would be over in three days. Months later they were still in the trenches they'd dug at the landing. Anzac Cove became a graveyard where bodies lay above the ground and the living slept under it. They had gone looking for the adventure of a lifetime.

About The Author

In 2006 Leon Davidson's first book, Scarecrow Army: the Anzacs at Gallipoli, won the Children's Book Council of Australia Eve Pownall Award, the New Zealand Post Book Award for non-fiction and was shortlisted for the Elsie Locke Award. Red Haze: Australians and New in Vietnam, his second book, was published the same year to strong reviews.

Born and raised in Christchurch, New Zealand, he spent ten years overseas, mostly in Melbourne, working as a dishwasher, chicken slaughterer, furniture maker and a waste management consultant. He now lives in Wellington, NZ, where he is studying to be a primary school teacher and continuing to write.