The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (2124) Private Brendan Calcutt, 14th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Charis May, the story for this day was on (2124) Private Brendan Calcutt, 14th Battalion, AIF, First World War.

2124 Private Brendan Calcutt, 14th Battalion, AIF
DOD 18 December 1916
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 19 June 2016

Today we remember and pay tribute to Private Brendan Calcutt, who died a prisoner of war in Ottoman Turkey during the First World War.

Brendan Calcutt was born in 1896, one of eight children of Joseph and Lucinda Calcutt of Williamstown in Victoria; he also had eight half-siblings from his father’s first marriage. He attended Melbourne Grammar School and Longerenong Agricultural College before pursuing a career with the Victorian Railways and working as the timekeeper at the Echuca train station.

Calcutt enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in April 1915. His two older brothers had already enlisted, and two of his half-brothers were serving in France with the South African Overseas Expeditionary Force. Aged 19 at the time, Calcutt had to get his parents’ permission beforehand. It read: “Both consent to your enlisting & are proud of you”. After a period of training at Broadmeadows Camp, Calcutt embarked with a reinforcement group for the 14th Battalion in June 1915, bound for the training camps in Egypt.

Calcutt was sent immediately to the fighting on Gallipoli, where he participated in the August Offensive less than a week later. Following the 4th Brigade’s ill-fated assault on Hill 971 Calcutt was listed as missing, but the British Red Cross were later able to confirm that he had been wounded and taken prisoner, and was receiving medical treatment at a Turkish Field Hospital in Constantinople. News of his condition and whereabouts was fragmentary at best, and although word sometimes came through to the Australian Red Cross via the American Ambassador in Constantinople, snippets also came from other
Australian prisoners whose letters made their way through the unreliable Ottoman postage system.

In January 1916 the authorities confirmed that Calcutt had sufficiently recovered to be attached to a work party at Bazanti, where he was put into service on the construction of the Berlin-to-Baghdad Railway deep in the Taurus Mountains. Despite the camp’s remoteness, Calcutt received mail from home and Red Cross food parcels dispatched from London with some regularity.

British prisoners working on the railway faced the rugged terrain and harsh living conditions of central Anatolia. The work was often strenuous and disease was endemic: one report from November 1916 noted that Calcutt, now at Belmedic, was suffering from fever and diarrhoea, with his resistance slipping. The next month he pricked his thumb and it ended up turning sceptic. He was sent to a Turkish hospital, although his deteriorated condition made recovery difficult.

On 16 December 1916 Brendan lost consciousness and died two days later from blood poisoning. The British doctor who cared for Calcutt wrote a moving letter to his mother offering his deepest condolences and giving her a description of her son’s final moments: he had died without pain, surrounded by his mates.

Aged 20 at the time of his death, Calcutt was buried in a Christian cemetery at Hadji Ker, Turkey, but was later re-interred at Baghdad (North Gate) Cemetery in Iraq.

This was not the first time the Calcutt family was affected by the war: Brendan Calcutt’s older brother Gerald had been killed in May 1915 while fighting on Gallipoli.

Private Calcutt’s name is listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among more than 60,000 others from the First World War.

This is just one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Private Brendan Calcutt, who gave his life for us, for our freedoms, and in the hope of a better world.

Aaron Pegram
Historian, Military History Section