The Battlefield as an Apocalyptic Space: Once on Chunuk Bair and the Collapse of Imperial Narrative

This article examines Maurice Shadbolt’s Once on Chunuk Bair (1982) as a critique of the redemptive myths often attached to war, heroism, and national identity. Set during the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, the play dramatizes New Zealand soldiers’ brief occupation of the summit of Chunuk Bair in Türkiye and their ultimate abandonment by British command. While the historical event has frequently been mythologized as a formative moment in New Zealand’s national consciousness, Shadbolt deliberately undermines the narrative of glorious failure. The play transforms the battlefield into an apocalyptic space where illusions of imperial honor, martial virtue, and national belonging are unmasked. In this article, I argue that Once on Chunuk Bair systematically dismantles the ideological foundations that have long sustained the myth of redemptive war. Through its portrayal of abandonment, disillusionment, and psychological erosion, the play exposes how constructs such as heroism, identity, and hope are not affirmed through war but progressively destabilized. What is initially imagined as a moment of national becoming, which is anchored in loyalty, sacrifice, and patriotic conviction, is revealed to be a slow descent into uncertainty and futility. This article suggests that Shadbolt does not offer a vision of transcendence or collective rebirth. Instead, he confronts the audience with a battlefield that functions not as a site of transformation, but as a terrain of collapse where inherited ideals are not realized but unmasked. My reading positions the play as a radical challenge to narratives that aestheticize war and memorialize loss without fully confronting their moral and political implications.