by Mark Baker
Gabriel Josipovici was unfailingly generous with his time, by email and in meetings in London, helping me traverse the history of Nelly and her family. Without his beautiful book, A Life, written in memory of his mother, Sacha, much of Nelly’s story and the story of her great love for Phillip Schuler would have been lost. The childhood memories of his aunt, Chickie Bajocchi, recorded by Gabriel after Sacha’s death in 1996, ensured that remarkable history was preserved. My special thanks to Gabriel for permission to draw heavily on his work, to quote from Sacha Rabinovitch’s moving poem, ‘My Father’, and for permission to reproduce his family pictures—including the photograph of the wedding of Alexis and Nelly and those of Nelly with Sacha and Chickie.
On one of my visits to London, Gabriel produced an old letter from Danilo Nemec, the son of Netta, Nelly Rabinovitch’s lady’s maid—and the astonishing news that he was living nearby to me in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick. Dan’s memories of his mother’s relationship with Phillip Schuler—and his moving family history, Spomini—have enriched my narrative.
Many Schuler family descendants have also greatly assisted my research, particularly Su Strafford, Marija Denholm, Andrew Ryan and Daniel Denholm. Most of all, I am indebted to the work of the late Robin Denholm, Phillip’s nephew, whose unpublished family histories, including ‘The Paperman’, are a trove of information about Phillip’s childhood and the career of Frederick Schuler. Su Strafford’s research into the history of her great-uncle would be a foundation stone of mine. She was a generous and enthusiastic supporter throughout. In the course of her research, Su’s husband John bought her a well-worn original copy of Australia in Arms from a bookshop in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Su was astonished to find, when she opened it, ‘the signature loping across the page was none other than W. Ramsay McNicoll’. The brigadier general had been a friend of Phillip’s and had written to Sir Ian Hamilton after Phillip’s death. Marija Denholm, Robin’s daughter-in-law, was also generous with her time and the family papers and photographs kept by her late husband, Andrew. Marija inherited the portrait of Minna Schuler painted by Penleigh Boyd.
In October 2014, former Victorian premier Ted Baillieu invited me to talk about the journalists in the first AIF convoy to leave Melbourne. At a ceremony at Port Melbourne to mark the centenary of the departure of HMAT Orvieto, I was about to start my speech when I noticed an older woman seated a few rows back from the front with an extraordinary set of miniature medals pinned on the right side of her blouse—the Distinguished Service Order, the Military Cross, the Distinguished Conduct Medal and service medals for both the Boer War and World War I. I decided to approach her later to ask who her very brave relative was. As soon as the speeches finished, I looked up to find Lady Geraldine Currie (nee Dexter) already standing in front of me. ‘I need to talk to you about your Mr Schuler,’ she said, before leading me through the crowd to meet her brother, Mick. This chance meeting with two of the children of Padre Walter Dexter would open another rich vein of material for me. Dexter and Schuler became firm friends on the voyage from Australia and during the months of training in Egypt. When Schuler finally got to Gallipoli in late July, it was the chaplain who took him on his first tour of the forward trenches. My thanks to the Dexter family for allowing me to draw on Walter Dexter’s fabulous war diaries and to Mick and Liz Dexter, daughter of the great Sir Macfarlane Burnet, for the many hours spent on their back deck at Heathmont revisiting the padre’s adventure-filled life.
Another chance meeting, in September 2015, with my old friend Patrick Walters at the dedication of the War Correspondents’ Memorial in Canberra revealed that Patrick is related to two of the great heroes of the Gallipoli story—Lieutenant Colonel Carew Reynell, who was killed in action leading the 9th Light Horse Regiment, and Sir Maurice Hankey, the British War Cabinet secretary whose report from Gallipoli after the August 1915 offensive was everything that Keith Murdoch’s was not. My thanks to Patrick for providing additional sources on Hankey’s career.
Others who have been generous with time, advice and assistance include Roland Perry, Patrick Carlyon, Cameron Forbes, Michelle Stillman, Ekrem Avjioglu, Anna Joannides, Dino Joannides, Gerard Henderson, David Fisher, Garrie Hutchinson, Denis Reinhardt, Rick Anthon and my brother, Ian Baker.
Alan Moorehead, probably the greatest war correspondent and certainly the finest journalist-historian Australia has produced, wrote in the 1950s the account of Gallipoli against which all others are judged. It has proved a trusted roadmap for this book, magnificently knitting the story from both the Allied and Turkish perspectives. Les Carlyon’s 2001 Gallipoli breathed impressive new life into the narrative and should have persuaded others who have followed to stick with their day jobs. Fred and Elizabeth Brenchley’s book Myth Maker was an invaluable resource on the life of Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett. My great thanks to Elizabeth Brenchley for sharing their extensive research. Thanks also to Bunty Avieson for allowing me access to the unpublished manuscript on Keith Murdoch’s career written by her late father, John.
I am indebted to Diana Manipud and her colleagues at the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King’s College, London, for access to the papers of Sir Ian Hamilton and to the British Library for ending my long search for a copy of Hamilton’s novel Icarus. My thanks also to the Australian National Library for access to the archives of Sir Keith Murdoch, to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra and to the Noel Butlin Archives at the Australian National University, where the early records of the Australian Journalists Association are held.
Thanks to the wonderful staff at Allen & Unwin for making this book a reality—particularly publisher Tom Gilliatt, editors Michelle Swainson and Genevieve Buzo and manuscript editor Susin Chow, she of the sharp eye and gentle touch.
Finally, my greatest thanks and love to my wife, Asil, who was slow to grasp the imperative of my spending many months immersed in the life of someone who died a century ago, but without whose support none of this would have been possible. This book is dedicated to our beautiful children, Emre and Serin, who share a heritage that is Australian and Turkish, the places that loomed largest in the short but wonderful life of Phillip Schuler. May they be proud of the best of both worlds that made them and this story.
Melbourne, February 2016
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Notes
Chapter 1
1 The Bendigo Advertiser 4 November 1867
2 Family interview with Dorothy Denholm (nee Schuler).
3 Melbourne Punch, 21 May 1914 p. 868
4 Geoffrey Hutton & Les Tanner (Eds) 125 Years of the Age Nelson 1979 p. ix
5 Melbourne Punch, 21 May 1914
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 C.E. Sayers Centenary Age p. 20
9 Ambrose Pratt David Syme: The Father of Protection p. 205
10 Op. cit. p. 206
11 Op. cit. p. 250
12 Op. cit. p. 269
13 Ranald Macdonald David Syme p. 33
14 Sayers op. cit. p. 152
15 The Bulletin obituary 16 December 1926
Chapter Two
1 Dorothy Denholm family interview circa 1986
2 Robin Denholm interview with Isobel Keep, 1987/88
3 Family interview op. cit.
4 Ibid.
Chapter Three
1 Frederick Schuler letter to Sir Ian Hamilton 20 May 1920
2 John Hetherington The Argus 6 October 1952
3 R.M. Younger Keith Murdoch: Founder of a Media Empire p. 26
4 Op. cit. p. 29
5 Ibid.
6 Letter from Keith Murdoch to his father, 6 January 1909, Murdoch Papers NLA
7 Letter from Keith Murdoch to his father, 25 November 1908, Murdoch Papers NLA
8 Keith Dunstan Wowsers p. 152
9 Roy Bridges, That Yesterday was Home, p. 207
10 Op. cit. p. 208
11 Op. cit. p. 211
12 Ibid.
13 David Dow Melbourne Savages pp. 108–9
14 ‘A nation on the eve of the great war’ The Sydney Morning Herald 19 August 2014
15 Australia in Arms p. 15
16 The Age 4 August 1914
17 Australia in Arms p. 18
18 Op. cit. p. 21
19 Kevin Fewster Bean’s Gallipoli p. 2
20 The Australasian Journalist 26 October 1914
21 Op. cit. 25 September 1914
22 Australian Dictionary of Biography Vol 9 (MUP) 1983
23 The Australian Journalist 25 September 1914
24 The Australasian Journalist 26 October 1914
Chapter Four
1 Australia in Arms p. 25
2 The Australasian Journalist 26 October 1914
3 Australia in Arms p. 34
4 Australia in Arms p. 45
5 The Times 11 November 1914
6 Bean The Story of Anzac p. 108
7 Australia in Arms p. 48
8 Bean p. 109
9 Australia in Arms p. 62
Chapter Five
1 Australia in Arms p. 63
2 James Aldridge Cairo p. 219
3 Robert Graves Lawrence and the Arabs p. 84
4 Anzac Bulletin 4 July 1917
5 James Aldridge Cairo p. 213
6 Thomas Russell Egyptian Service, 1902–1946
7 Bean’s Diary, June 1916 AWM38, 3DRL606/45/1
8 Walter Dexter diaries, AWM
9 The Australasian Journalist 26 April 1915
10 Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol 11, 1988
11 Bean’s Diaries 24 November 1915 AWM
12 Australia in Arms p. 8
13 Australia in Arms p. 86
14 Alan Moorehead Gallipoli pp. 36–37
&nb
sp; 15 John Lee, When Murdoch Went to War BBC documentary 2015
16 Hamilton The Commander p. 129
Chapter Six
1 Egyptian Mail 2 April 1994
2 Gabriel Josipovici A Life p. 16
3 Op. cit. p. 17
4 Op. cit. p. 39
5 Sacha Rabinovitch My Father
6 Josipovici p. 22
7 Schuler letter to Hamilton 25 March 1915
8 Hamilton latter to Schuler 27 March 1915
9 George H. Cassar Asquith as War Leader p. 78
10 Alan Moorehead Gallipoli p. 114
11 Ian Hamilton Icarus
12 The Argus 7 June 1919
13 Hamilton letter to Frederick Schuler 5 July 1917
14 Australia in Arms p. 95
Chapter Seven
1 Australia in Arms p. 96
2 Op. cit. p. 97
3 Op. cit. p. 98
4 Op. cit. p. 9
5 Force Order (Special) from Hamilton’s GHQ 21 April 1915
6 Australia in Arms p. 100
7 Op. cit. p. 104
8 Neville Ussher entry, The AIF Project, Australian Defence Force Academy
9 The Speculum (Journal of the Melbourne Medical Students’ Society) July 1915
10 The Age 16 October 1915
11 Ibid.
12 E.M. Andrews The Anzac Illusion p. 54
13 The Barrier Miner 20 November 1919
Chapter Eight
1 Schuler Australia at Arms p. 9