Anzac Day 2015: Pre-dawn service readings by Corporal Dan Keighran VC
Representing the Australian Army, Corporal Daniel Keighran VC commenced reading at 5.00 am
Two days before the Anzac landing, Sergeant Benjamin Leane, made a diary entry to his wife, Phyllis, back in Adelaide:
Dearest, we have just received orders to embark on the destroyers at 10.45 am tomorrow …
But if I am to die, know that I died loving you with my whole heart and soul, dearest wife that a man ever had. Kiss little Gwen and our new baby, who perhaps I may never see, and never let them forget Daddy …
And tell Mother that I am not afraid to die, nor am I afraid of what is to come after death … And now dear, dear, sweetheart, goodbye, goodbye.
Leane was killed in action in April 1917 at Bullecourt.
On the eve of the landing Lieutenant Alan Henderson, an accountant from Hawthorn in Melbourne, wrote:
It is going to be Australia’s chance to make a tradition out of this that she must always look back on.
God grant it will be a great one. The importance of this alone seems stupendous to Australia….
Private Frank Loud, 9th Battalion, ANZAC described the Gallipoli landing:
Each little movement in any of the boats could be quickly heard and was quickly hushed.
As our pinnace was slightly ahead of the other four, our boat was the first to ground.
I was standing on the seat aft when the first rifle shot was fired.
On reaching the beach I quickly loaded and fitted the bayonet on my rifle while staggering across the 40 yards of sand.
By that time there must have been at least one hundred rifles cracking at us.
I think every man’s one thought was to get to the top of that cliff.
Signaller Ellis Silas, 16th Battalion – an artist before enlisting – described his experience of the landing:
The destroyer … took us close into the shore, and then we were transferred into the ship’s boats. We were, in very truth, in the thick of it now.
Boatloads of wounded coming from the shore, shrapnel bursting round us, salvos from our own ships shelling the ridges; the noise was appalling …
We are now climbing the heights.
I am given a pick to carry – half way up I had to drop it, it was too much for me. The lads on the top of the hill are glad to see us for they have had an anxious time holding their position on the ridge.
Now some of the chaps are getting it – groans and screams everywhere; calls for ammunition and stretcher-bearers.
This is horrible, I wonder how long I can stand it.
Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett, the British war correspondent, noted:
A serious problem was getting away the wounded. All those who were unable to hobble to the beach had to be carried down from the hills … then hastily dressed and carried to the boats.
The courage displayed by these wounded Australians will never be forgotten.
Private John Croft, 3rd Battalion, later recalled:
It was a great fight while we were getting out of the boats and a good many got shot but a bayonet charge soon shifted the Turks and things got pretty lively. Towards 12 noon they were knocking us over pretty often and I stopped a bullet in my pocket book after it had been through my arm.
Lieutenant Victor Pascoe, 8th Battalion, wrote to the mother of Lieutenant Maurice McLeod, describing the death of her son at the landing on the 25th of April 1915:
It is beyond me to speak of him and what his life at all times was….I miss him sorely.
He was always so bright and cheerful, and helped men in many ways, unknown, perhaps, to himself…
We both landed together under shrapnel fire from the enemy’s guns, and came through it safely.
We took up a position further inland, and were lying behind cover of some bushes when a shrapnel shell burst overhead.
Three were hit, and in Maurice’s case death was instantaneous.
Our casualties were very heavy that day, especially with officers, and I am still wondering how I came safely through it all myself.
I hope you will excuse this pencilled note.
I have been a little ill myself, and am writing this in hospital.
…..Maurice died fighting for his country and for you ... surely something to be proud of.
Corporal George Mitchell, 10th Battalion, was but one among many who witnessed some terrible sights:
A sturdy Australian lay on his face. Congealing blood flowed from a ghastly wound in the head streaking his face, and forming a crimson pool.
His flesh was a waxen colour I was to grow so familiar with … Alec Gilpin had been fatally wounded in the stomach. All day he begged to be shot … Big Montgomery gathered Cyril Smith in his arms.
His last words were “Tell Marjorie how I died.”
Private Archie Barwick, infantryman, 1st Battalion described the first day:
All day the ground rocked and swayed backwards and forwards from the concussion.
Men were driven stark staring mad... their nerves completely gone.
We were all nearly in a state of silliness and half dazed, but still the Australians refused to give ground.
The Australian nurses on the hospital ships had to contend with a stream of wounded. Sister Ella Tucker, Australian Army Nursing Service, wrote:
The wounded from the landing commenced to come on board at 9 am and poured into the ship’s wards from barges and boats. The majority still had on their field dressing and a number of these were soaked through.
Two orderlies cut off the patient’s clothes and I started immediately with dressings. There were 76 patients in my ward and I did not finish until 2 am.
Artist-soldier Ellis Silas, writing on 17 May:
Dawn. The roll is called – how heart-breaking it is – name after name is called; the reply a deep silence which can be felt, despite the noise of the incessant crackling of rifles and screaming of shrapnel – there are few of us left to answer to our names – just a thin line of weary, ashen-faced men; behind us a mass of silent forms, once our comrades – there they have been for some days, we have not had the time to bury them …
Far away across the sapphire ocean just a few more will be waiting in vain for the return of their loved ones.
Of the 213 who had landed on the 25th of April, five days later only 89 answered “here”.
During the May armistice, Sergeant (later Second Lieutenant) William Cameron, of the 9th Light Horse Regiment, took the opportunity to “have a look over [the] battle field”:
Its awfulness is appalling. Thousands of bodies lie rotting in the intervening space between the enemy’s and our trenches about 200 yds and the stench is sickening.
The burial party have indeed a horrible job, yet the whole thing is peculiar in that Turk, Briton or Australian are intermingled in the common task of placing out of sight the bodies of dead comrades, and in a few short hours this will cease and each will be in his own trench, each doing his best to add to the already large list.
Cameron would be killed in action four months later.
Driver Douglas Barrett-Lennard was a vigneron from Guildford, Western Australia. He was a member of the 3rd Field Artillery Brigade when he was killed at Gallipoli on the 17th of July 1915.
His mate, Corporal H.R. McLarty wrote home detailing the circumstances in a letter headed: ‘This is how the men in this battery die’.
When the smoke from the bursting shell had cleared away, Wallis ran up to see the damage. He found Mick Taylor crawling about the ground, covered in blood and dazed.
Bill said, ‘Are you badly hit, Mick?’
‘No, Bill’, he said. ‘I am only scratched; look after Doug and Stan’. (We subsequently found he was wounded in 14 places)
Bill Wallis then picked up Doug Lennard. The poor lad had one arm blown off, one leg shattered at the thigh and internal wounds. He said, ‘I’m done; look after Mick and Stan – don’t mind me’.
Carter was leaning on the gun. He had a fearful wound in the side. He said, ‘I’m sorry I’m moaning. I know it will upset the others, but I can’t help it. I can’t help it.’
He died, poor lad, almost immediately. His last words were, ‘Did they get the gun?’
Doug (Barret-Lennard) was in fearful agony but kept saying, ‘I’m dying, but by God, I’ll die game.’ He lingered for two hours and it was a pitiful thing to watch. His last words were, ‘I died at the gun, didn’t I?’
And so he went, dear lad, the most gallant, the most unselfish little soldier God ever made. He has taught us all how to die.
Mick may pull through – fourteen wounds. God grant it may be so.
I do not think in the whole history of this war there is anything to eclipse this incident for gallantry or unselfish devotion to comrades.
The General spoke to us all. He said, ‘Dear lads, I have heard of nothing grander than the way your comrades died. I am proud of your battery. I would be proud to be a gunner in your battery.
I only hope that when you return you will be appreciated as you should be.’
“We buried the dear lads side by side at midnight. It was a real soldier’s burial. The minister’s voice was drowned in the crack of the bullets whistling overhead.
And thus we left them.”
Private Victor Nicholson saw his mate “Lofty” killed at Quinn’s Post, Gallipoli, shot through the eye while peeping through a loophole:
I didn’t cry, unless Gallipoli was one long cry.
If you cried once, you never stopped.
There were friends going every day and sometimes every hour of every day, wonderful friends.
I cried inwardly.
That’s all you could do.
Lieutenant Walter Claridge, infantry officer of the 28th Battalion:
We just had to grit our teeth and do our job.
I am not going to tell a lie and say I wasn’t afraid...who wouldn’t be with death grinning at you from all around.
I don’t know how I stood it so long without breaking.
Private Edgar Morrow, infantryman, 28th Battalion:
I remember the sorry spectacle we made as we came out of the line the following morning, a wretched, shattered few of the cheery 8 or 900 who had passed that way only a few hours before.
Our colonel stood on the side of the road as we passed, and he was not ashamed of the tears that were plainly visible on his face.
Second Lieutenant Charles St Pinnock, 57th Battalion, wrote to his mother in August 1915 after the tragic battle at the Nek:
You can imagine what it was like.
Really too awful to write about.
All your pals that had been with you for months and months - blown and shot out of all recognition.
There was no chance whatsoever of us gaining our point.
Roll call was the saddest…..only 47 answered their names out of close on 550 men.
When I heard the result - I simply cried like a child.
St. Pinnock was killed in France a year later.
Sister Lydia King, aboard the hospital ship Sicilia, was deeply affected by what she saw:
I shall never forget the awful feeling of hopelessness on night duty. It was dreadful. I had two wards downstairs, each over 100 patients and then I had small wards upstairs — altogether about 250 patients to look after … Shall not describe their wounds, they were too awful. One loses sight of all the honour and the glory in the work we are doing.
Captain Frederick Tubb of the 7th Battalion described what happened at Lone Pine, in early August:
We went in 670 strong and we came out 320. All the officers except the CO and Capt Layh were hit … I was extremely lucky and feel gratified for being alive and able to write ... My luck was in all the time.
It is miraculous that I am alive, three different times I was blown yards away from bombs ... Burton of Euroa deserved the highest award for his gallant action for three times filling a breach in the parapet till they killed him …..a lot more of our good old 7th are gone … Anyway the CO is very pleased with me and so is the Brigadier so I feel happy as Larry.
There were more than 2,000 Australian casualties at Lone Pine. Tubb was one of seven Australians to be awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery.
Private Cecil McAnulty, 3rd Battalion, also fought at Lone Pine. He made a last entry in his makeshift diary on 8 August:
We were right out in the open and all the Turkish machine-guns and rifle seemed to be playing on us and shrapnel bursting right over us.
I yelled out to the other four chaps, “This is only suicide boys, I’m going to make a jump for it. I thought they said alright we’ll follow.
I sprang to my feet in one jump.”
McAnulty was killed the following day.
Soon the casualties from the new offensive began to stream onto the hospital ships and the hospitals on the island of Lemnos. Matron Grace Wilson, who was in charge of the Australian nurses on Lemnos, wrote:
11 August — Convoy arrived — about 400 — no equipment whatever … Just laid the men on the ground and gave them a drink. Very many badly shattered, nearly all stretcher cases … Tents were erected over them as quickly as possible … All we can do is feed them and dress their wounds … A good many died … It is just too awful — one could never describe the scenes — could only wish all I knew to be killed outright.
Sergeant A.L. de Vine, 4th Battalion (from Maroubra in Sydney), summed up the feelings of many of the Australians evacuating in December:
We are all very sorry to have left Anzac without gaining our objective after nine months hard efforts, but the position in front of us was impossible, and our position untenable during the winter months, the whole business has been a very sorry mess up and a sheer waste of men & material.
Note about copyright
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