Great Anzac Stories

by Graham Seal

  An early contender for the title of first man ashore was 34-year-old cane cutter Joseph Stratford. Although he was a New South Wales man from the Lismore area, he had enlisted in the Queensland 9th Battalion. On the basis of some previous military training, he was promoted to sergeant. Stratford struggled ashore from the bow of a leading transport in the first wave. Like many from the boats, he jumped into fairly deep water and was dragged under by the weight of his pack and gun. Unlike many, he managed to get rid of the pack and, with a wet and therefore useless rifle, charged a Turkish machine gun with only a bayonet as a weapon. He stabbed two Turkish soldiers before being shot dead. Stratford’s body was never found. It is said that an officer who witnessed Stratford’s deed thought that he should have been awarded the Victoria Cross.

  Research by family members has unearthed a number of eyewitness accounts from contemporary newspapers and letters that lend support to this story. One of his surviving mates, Private Gahan, wrote back to his parents: ‘There was not a man amongst us who did not love and look up to him. He was fair and straight. I felt when he did not answer the roll call that I had lost an elder brother’.

  Another 9th Battalion man, Lieutenant Duncan Chapman of Maryborough, Queensland, later claimed that his boat had been the first to land, and that, as he was in the bow, he was the first man to jump ashore. There was some corroboration of Chapman’s claim from comrades who were with him at the time and from Charles Bean. Chapman was later promoted to major and was killed at Pozières in 1916. Despite Stratford’s claim, most historians appear to accept that Chapman was the first man ashore at Gallipoli.

  A claim has also been made for a Private James Bostock, also of the 9th Battalion. This has been given little credence by historians who have pointed out that in the chaos of the landings and in the dawn dimness it would have been difficult to determine exactly what happened at any particular moment.

  As for the stories of the last Australian to leave Gallipoli in the early hours of 20 December 1915—there are even more contenders for this honour.

  Victorian Lieutenant, later Brigadier, Leslie Maygar had fought in the Boer War, where he won the Victoria Cross. At Gallipoli he was in command of a group of 3rd Light Horse given the task of holding the trenches until 2.30 am on the morning of the evacuation, ensuring that everyone else had been safely taken off. An inspirational military leader, Maygar was killed at Beersheba in November 1917.

  A different claim was made by Charles Bean for Fred Pollack of the 13th Battalion. Bean wrote that Pollack:

  Had obtained permission for special reasons to have a rest in his dugout, having previously arranged with his mates to call him before they left. They, however, understood him to refer to a different dugout, and, having thoroughly searched the one in which he usually slept and found it empty, assumed that he had gone on to the beach. Pollack, waking later, found the area silent. He went along the trenches, but they were empty. Running to the shore, he found no sign of movement until at North Beach he came on men embarking on one of the last lighters and went with them.

  The fortunate Pollack survived the war and lived until 1958.

  Another bid is made for Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, known as ‘Joe Maude’. Maude’s claim was supported by General Sir Ian Hamilton, and also celebrated in a lighthearted parody of the Victorian parlour piece ‘Come Into the Garden, Maud’ apparently composed by Maude’s comrades.

  Allegedly ‘Found on Helles on January 9th,’ the poem refers to Maude’s lateness in reaching the boat. He was carrying a large amount of equipment and, in the darkness, apparently became entangled in barbed wire, making him an hour late:

  Come into the lighter, Maude,

  For the fuse has long been lit,

  Come into the lighter, Maude,

  And never mind your kit,

  I’ve waited here an hour or more,

  For news that your march is o’er.

  The sea runs high, but what care I,

  It’s better to be sick than blown sky high,

  So jump into the lighter, Maude,

  The allotted time is flown,

  Come into the lighter, Maude,

  I’m off in the launch alone,

  I’m off in the lighter alone.

  Private Edward Gornall thought he was the last man to leave in 1915, according to a report in a South Australian newspaper under the heading ‘Last Man at Anzac’.

  Private Edgar Gornall, son of Mr. W. Gornall, of Bathurst, Victoria, writing to his parents states that he was the last man to leave the Australian trenches during the evacuation of the Anzac positions. The officers hurried their men away, and Gornall and another man were given orders to make a bolt for it. At 3.20 they were the only two men on the post. The Turks failed to realise the truth and continued to hurl bombs and fire at the vacant loopholes.

  Gornall further relates that while running his mate sprained an ankle. They suddenly discovered that the path along which they were to retire had been blocked by their own men with barbed wire. Neither of the men was able to scale the barrier, and there were thousands of suspicious Turks only a hundred yards away. On hunting round they luckily found another opening, and while making their way through this the mines in the trenches blew up. The Turks then opened a terrific infantry fire, but the two men successfully over took the last party as it was stepping aboard the last remaining motor barge.

  All the next day the empty trenches lately occupied by the Fifth Division received the heaviest bombardment of the campaign; 36 hours after the evacuation the Turks charged the positions, but met with no opposition. The enemy speedily reached the beach, where the war ships, which had been on the lookout, badly cut them up.

  Private Gornall explains that just before the withdrawal the troops were invited to help themselves to the stores on the beach, and, besides feeding on the best material available, each man helped himself to a new outfit. He saw ten thousand gallons of rum thrown on the rock on the beach, and in the depressions in the ground there were lakelets of wine and stout; thousands of hogsheads, barrels and bottles were smashed. Immense quantities of other goods were also destroyed, and two motor lorries and stacks of sawn timber were burnt.

  Gornall’s version is still accepted in and around Bathurst.

  Other claims have been made for different people at different times. One was Tasmanian Captain Burford Sampson, a platoon commander who led troops at Quinn’s Post and Courtney’s Post. A Captain C. A. Littler of the 12th Battalion was in charge of beach movements and plausibly maintained he was the last to step aboard the last boat at 3.45 am. Lieutenant George Shaw, 28th Battalion, also laid claim to the honour of being the last man off, while Lieutenant Colonel (later Major-General) John Paton, who had temporary command of the 5th Brigade, was yet another claimant. Even General Birdwood was mistakenly given the glory by at least one writer, though he had left at 3 am.

  Usually overlooked in disputes about the last man to leave is the vital role of the Royal Australian Navy. It was the Navy’s Bridging Train that was the last unit to cast off from the shore at 4.30 am, about twenty minutes after the remaining troops had departed. The sailor who cast off the mooring line on that boat was actually the last man to leave Gallipoli. His name was not recorded.

  Memories

  AS WELL AS fulfilling the need to memorialise the dead, acknowledge the wounded and allow the living to grieve for their loss, the concept of Anzac has always been a vehicle for the public expression of a sense of national identity. From the moment the news broke revealing what had happened on a small stretch of Turkish coast on the morning of 25 April 1915, Anzac has been bound up with the sense of what it means to be an Australian. At first, this involved patriotic speeches and protestations of loyalty to the British Empire and the motherland. Late in World War I as the enormous casualties mounted ever higher this began to give way to a less enthusiastic view of the ‘crimson thread of kinship’, as politician Henry Parkes, the ‘father of Federation’ and premier of
New South Wales once described the Australian links with Britain.

  By the time of World War II, these ties were still there but were growing weaker. The fall of Singapore to the Japanese in 1942, with the consequent reorientation of Australia’s strategic and political alliances towards the USA, marked the fraying of any serious political connections between Australia and Britain. Through all these social, political and economic changes, the figure of the digger and his role as the hero of Anzac have continued to move many Australians deeply. In remembering, publically and privately, the deeds of those who have fought for Australia, at home and abroad, the country acknowledges its sense of self in the most powerful possible manner.

  No. 008 Trooper J. Redgum

  As a volunteer force, the AIF was full of colourful characters. One or two featured in The Anzac Book, including ‘Wallaby Joe’ in a tale related by W. R. C., 8th Australian Light Horse. Joe, or whatever his real name might have been, was, according to the story, one of the first to enlist when Australia went to war.

  His real name matters little; suffice it that he was known among his comrades as ‘Wallaby Joe.’

  He came to Gallipoli via Egypt with the Light Horse. Incidentally, he has ridden nearly a thousand miles over sun-scorched, drought-stricken plains to join them.

  Age about 38. In appearance the typical bushman. Tall and lean, but strong as a piece of hickory. A horseman from head to toe, and a dead shot. He possessed the usual beard of the lonely prospector of the extreme backblocks. Out of deference to a delicate hint from his squadron commander he shaved it off, but resolved to let it grow again when the exigencies of active service should discount such finicking niceties.

  His conversation was laconic in the extreme. When the occasion demanded it he could swear profusely, and in a most picturesque vein. When a bursting shell from a ‘75’ on one occasion blew away a chunk of prime Berkshire which he was cooking for breakfast, his remarks were intensely original and illuminative.

  He could also drink beer for indefinite periods, but seldom committed the vulgar error of becoming ‘tanked.’ Not even that locality ‘east of Suez,’ where, as the song tells us, ‘There ain’t no Ten Commandments and a man can raise a thirst,’ could make his steps erratic.

  He was very shy in the presence of the softer sex. On one occasion his unwary footsteps caused him some embarrassment. Feeling thirsty he turned into one of those establishments, fairly common in Cairo, where the southern proprietors try to hide the villainous quality of their beer by bribing sundry young ladies of various nationalities and colours to give more high-class vaudeville turns. The aforementioned young ladies are aided and abetted by a coloured orchestra, one member of which manipulates the bagpipes.

  A portly damsel had just concluded, amidst uproarious applause, the haunting strains of ‘Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay.’ She sidled up to Joe with a large-sized grin on her olive features.

  ‘Gib it kiss,’ she murmured, trying to look ravishing.

  But Joe had fled.

  Henceforth during his stay in Egypt he took his beer in a little Russian bar, the proprietor of which could speak English, and had been through the Russo-Japanese War.

  When the Light Horse were ordered at last to the front, Joe took a sad farewell of his old bay mare. He was, as a rule, about as sentimental as a steamroller, but ‘leaving the old nag behind hurt some.’

  On the Peninsula and under fire his sterling qualities were not long in coming to the surface. Living all his life in an environment in which the pick and shovel plays an important part he proved himself an adept at sapping and mining. At this game he was worth four ordinary men. No matter how circuitous the maze of trenches, he could find his way with ease. He could turn out all sorts of dishes from his daily rations of flour, bacon, jam, and biscuits. An endless amount of initiative showed itself in everything he did. His mates learned quite a lot of things just by watching him potter about the trenches and bivouacs. His training at the military camps of Australia and, later, in Egypt, combined with the knowledge he had been imbibing from Nature all his life, made him an ideal soldier.

  He was used extensively by his officers as a scout. As the Turkish trenches were often yards from our own, needless to say the scouting was done at night, the Turks’ favourite time to attack being just before dawn. Often during these nocturnal excursions a slight rustle in the thick scrub would cause his mate to grasp his rifle with fixed bayonet and peer into the darkness, with strained eyes and ears and quickened pulse.

  ‘A hare,’ Joe would whisper, and probably advise him to take things easy while he himself watched.

  This went on for some time until one night his mate came in alone, pale-faced and wild-eyed. Interrogated by the officer on duty, he informed him that Joe had been shot.

  We brought the body in. He had been shot through the heart—a typical affair of outposts.

  Tucked away in one of the innumerable gullies, a little grave, one among hundreds, contains a body of one of nature’s grand men. On the wooden cross surmounting it is the following:

  No.008 Trooper J. Redgum,

  20th Australian Light Horse.

  Killed in Action.

  The first Anzac Days

  In English tradition, 25 April is St Mark’s Day, and the evening of 24 April—‘St Mark’s Eve’—is associated with ‘porch watching’. In this old custom, villagers maintain a vigil in their local church in order to observe the shades of those who will die in the village during the coming year enter the church at midnight—and not come out again. The first Australian organisation to form in support of Anzac Day was well aware of this tradition and noted it in their deliberations about the best way to observe the new calendar event. In January 1916 the Anzac Day Commemoration Committee in Brisbane raised funds for building war memorials by selling lavender-coloured silk ribbons embossed with the lion of St Mark, who was one of Jesus’ disciples and author of one of the gospels.

  But the first Anzac Day observation in Australia had already taken place six months before 25 April 1916. It happened in South Australia on 13 October 1915. The Labor state government decided that the sacrifice of the troops still on Gallipoli was sufficient to justify re-christening the eight-hour holiday Anzac Day. When it came, the day had the flavour of a patriotic festival, with a procession headed by the Royal Australian Naval Brigade and band, followed by returned soldiers and new recruits. The usual trade union march followed on behind, featuring floats on patriotic themes. There were more festive activities, including air balloons, military kites, mock arrests of MPs and, the grand finale, a ‘tram-car crash’. Two old trams were sent careering towards each other from opposite ends of a specially raised track. Together with some explosive additions, the resulting smash and fireball apparently satisfied the 15 000 spectators reported to have turned out for the show, ‘watching two tramcars melt into a shapeless mass of twisted iron and splintered wood’. Not surprisingly, a lot of money was raised for the war effort and the idea was adopted in Victoria, where Melbourne had an Anzac Day on 17 December 1915 and Ballarat on 14 January 1916.

  As these stories suggest, the first anniversary of the Gallipoli landings was immediately established as a popular day of national observance. But it was not celebrated in a broadly similar manner as it is today, nationwide. Instead, a variety of local customs, ideas and activities were tried out. In London there was a grand parade of Australian and New Zealand troops, making the streets ring with ‘coo-ee’ and ‘kia-ora’. Most Anzacs, though, were still at the front line. Charles Bean recorded one observation on the western front:

  Many of the Australian units marked the day by holding athletic and military sports meetings. The spectacle of five teams of enormous Victorians in a tug-of-war, on a corner of the Somme battlefield where old shell-holes had been filled in, and the whole brigade seated round as in an amphitheatre, was worth travelling leagues to see. Another brigade had a Hindenburg race, confined to men who lately reached and for some hours occupied the Hindenburg line .
. . By a strange coincidence, this was won by a Western Australian who is reputed to have been the first man to reach the line in the fight.

  In Egypt, the troops began the day with a religious service ending with ‘The Last Post’, then celebrated the day with a party. This was followed by ‘a skit on the memorable landing by a freak destroyer manned by a lot of corked blackfellows hauling ashore a number of tiny tin boats full of tiny tin soldiers. It was screamingly funny’, according to General Sir John Monash, who also said that 15 000 diggers swam naked in the Suez Canal. Monash concluded his account by describing the event as ‘this famous day—OUR DAY’.

  And while most cities and larger towns attempted some sort of acknowledgement of the day, most activities depended on community, veteran, religious and service groups rather than official government organisations. In fact, state and federal governments were curiously lukewarm about Anzac Day during the war and for a few years afterwards. For the 1917 Anzac Day, Prime Minister Billy Hughes did not even bother writing a new speech. He delivered the same one he had given the year before—in London. It was not until the community began to ask pointed questions in the press that officialdom finally joined in, from the early 1920s. From then, the day began to assume the more organised character that it has had since the 1930s, at which time the innovation of the Dawn Service began to be incorporated into most Anzac Day commemorations. Over the years following, the day has tended towards the more or less standard form that Australians know well, though local variations and developments are often featured, especially since the continuing popular rediscovery of the day from the 1990s onwards.

  Return to Gallipoli

  After the war ended in November 1918, it was not too many months before people began returning to the ‘holy of holies’, as one journalist called Gallipoli. In 1919 a ceremonial return of British troops took place under the terms of the war settlement. There were visits from the war graves representatives of the many nations who had taken part in the campaign, and the Australian war correspondent Charles Bean also returned seeking information for what was to become the official history of Australia’s Great War experience. Bean had been at the initial landings and remained on Gallipoli for almost the whole campaign, so his return was a poignant event. He arrived in May 1919 and was interviewed by a journalist, his observations providing for the first time some insight into what it had been like for the Turks.