AS the nation gets ready to pin up the bunting and wave a collective flag for next month's lavish VE Day 60th anniversary celebrations, another historic military campaign will be lucky to receive a fraction of the attention.

Ninety years ago on Monday, the Allied forces swept on to the rocky shores of Gallipoli in a spirited but doomed attack that came to symbolise the butchery of the First World War.

The action incurred an enormous cost in human life, including more than 1,000 men from the 2nd Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment.

It was hoped that the amphibious invasion of the Gallipoli peninsula in north-west Turkey would lead to the capture of Constantinople, capital of the German-allied Ottoman empire, and open up direct communications with the British empire's Russian allies. It didn't.

Commemorated in Australia and New Zealand as Anzac Day - the day the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, or Anzacs, entered the First World War - April 25, 1915 is otherwise famous for being one of the most disastrous and ham-fistedly orchestrated military campaigns of the last century.

Ironically, considering the iconic status bestowed on him following the Second World War, it was Winston Churchill who blundered at Gallipoli.

Then First Lord of the Admiralty, Churchill fatally insisted on a premature naval assault on the Turkish beaches.

In so doing, he earned the far from affectionate nickname "The Butcher of Gallipoli" and ensured the Turks had time to prepare a formidable defence before the army arrived a whole month later.

Robbed of the element of surprise, and facing a Turkish defence far greater than the 40,000 troops estimated by British commanders, the Allied landings turned into a bloodbath.

An estimated 131,000 soldiers were killed during the futile campaign, which limped on until the Allies decided to evacuate in December 1915.

Among those who died at Gallipoli were 1,229 soldiers from the 2nd Battalion of the Hampshire Regiment.

As the nation prepares to honour those who sacrificed their lives for the sake of our freedom in the Second World War - including the estimated 3,000 Allied troops who perished on the Normandy beaches on D-Day - we remember those who seem destined to lurk in the shadows of history.