CANBERRA AAP - It's one of the standout scenes of Australian movie history - champion athlete Archie Hamilton dashes towards the enemy trenches, freezing on the final frame as Turkish bullets smash into his 18-year-old chest.
For large numbers of Australians, most of their understanding of the complex Gallipoli campaign stems from the 1981 film Gallipoli, directed by Peter Weir, complete with its themes of mateship and pointless loss in a foreign war.
This depicts the attack at a position known as The Nek on the morning of August 7, 1915 - 100 years ago next month.
It powerfully shows what happened - lines of soldiers cut down in hopeless charges, with those waiting to attack knowing full well they are going to their deaths.
But it doesn't attempt to explain the bigger picture and it blames the British for a wholly Australian tragedy.
Here's what happened.
With the campaign stalled, Australian and British commanders came up with an ambitious plan for a final breakthrough. This was the August offensive that opened on August 6, 1915 as Australian and New Zealand units set out to seize crucial high ground north of the Anzac positions.
To distract Turkish attention, Australians attacked at Lone Pine. Later that night, British troops began landing at Suvla Bay, eight kilometres north.
The attack at The Nek was timed for 4.30am the next day. It has been described as a diversion like Lone Pine but Australian War Memorial historian Ashley Ekins says it was no such thing.
The Nek sat at the apex of the Anzac enclave and was key to a crucial feature called Baby 700, which had changed hands five times in one day in fierce fighting following the Anzac landing.
"The aim was to knock out some nine to 11 tiers of trenches on Baby 700. It was assumed the Kiwis would have captured Chunuk Bair and would be assaulting down the ridge line towards Baby 700 while the Australians attacked upwards," Ekins said.
But pretty much everything went wrong.
Historian David Cameron says even with the benefit of hindsight, capturing about 40 separate trenches covered by massed rifle fire and machine guns was optimism on a tragically grand scale.
The Nek itself was a narrow ridge - its name Afrikaans for mountain pass - with Turkish lines on the higher side.
Problem one was that the Kiwis hadn't yet captured Chunuk Bair and were in no position to support the attack. Australian commanders still opted to proceed.
Their plan was for artillery to hammer Turkish trenches, rising to a crescendo then halting at 4.30am as the first wave charged.
Because of narrow frontage, just 150 could attack at once. There were to be four waves, two by members of the Victorian 8th Light Horse Regiment and two by the West Australian 10th Light Horse.
As soldiers crouched in their trench, bayonets fixed, ready to charge, the artillery suddenly halted seven minutes early.
That has been blamed on failure to synchronise watches and it left commanders in a quandary - wait or attack and risk being caught in a renewed barrage.
They chose to wait and precisely at 4.30am, a whistle blast sent soldiers clambering from their trenches. The Turks were fully ready. Machine guns and hundreds of rifles opened fire and most fell within 10 metres.
A few minutes later, the second wave met precisely the same fate.
By this stage, it should have been called off but someone reported seeing a marker flag in the Turkish trench line, suggesting some had made it.
So the next 150 West Australians were ordered to get ready. By now Turkish artillery had joined in and those waiting clearly knew what was ahead.
Colonel Noel Brazier, commander of the 10th Light Horse, objected, saying this was nothing but "bloody murder".
But in headquarters, acting brigade commander Colonel John Antill insisted the attack proceed.
Soldiers shook hands, farewelled one another, charged and were cut down.
Historian Charles Bean wrote that with that regiment went the flower of WA youth, sons of old pioneering families who flocked to Perth to enlist at the outbreak of the war.
Two were Gresley Harper, 31, and his younger brother Wilfred, 25, who Bean said "was last seen running forward like a schoolboy in a footrace, with all the speed he could compass." He was the inspiration for Archie Hamilton.
By now, officers in the line decided enough was enough but Antill again insisted the fourth wave proceed.
Brazier appealed directly to Brigade Commander Colonel Frederic Hughes. For half an hour, soldiers waited as the matter was debated.
Finally, Hughes relented and the fourth wave was told to stand down.
But in one of those appalling misunderstandings of war, a wave of the hand was interpreted as the go order and those on the right charged and others followed. Their fate was precisely the same.
Hughes and Antill, both Australians, are the true villains of The Nek. Cameron says a quick glance across no-man's land would have told them there was no chance the Turkish lines could be breached.
As the sun rose over The Nek, the ground lay strewn with the dead, and the wounded who would soon be dead, as there was no chance they could be reached.
From the two units, 234 had died, and another 133 wounded. Turkish casualties were negligible.
When the war graves unit returned to Gallipoli in 1919, The Nek was strewn with bones of Australian youth lying where they fell four years earlier. Most were interred in a mass grave, now The Nek Cemetery, beneath the very ground on which they fell.
One of the few identified was Trooper Harold Rush, buried at Walker's Ridge cemetery. His epitaph famously reads: "His last words, Goodbye Cobber, God bless you."
