William Kenny

Kenny unhappily became the subject of a “thrilling yarn” started by correspondents’ reports of the landing. Charles Bean told of “a huge Queenslander [who] swung his rifle by the muzzle and, after braining one Turk, caught another and flung him over his shoulder”. The story was embellished by others who claimed that the Queenslander was pitching Turks over his shoulder on the end of his bayonet. By August the Sydney Mail published a photograph of the soldier, identifying him as Corporal William Kenny.

In time Kenny, a heavily-built military policeman, duly responded to the paper: “I had no connection whatever with the incident referred to.” Disappointed, the Sydney Mail added: “Thus ends another of the thrilling yarns of the immortal landing.”

Kenny served on to become a warrant officer and holder of the Distinguished Conduct Medal and the French Medaille Militaire. His sister, Elizabeth, in the Australian Army Nursing Service, was later world-famous as Sister Kenny, the deviser of a controversial treatment for polio.

One Australian still bears the name of “The Haymaker”, for his way of picking Turk after Turk on the end of his bayonet and throwing them … over his shoulder and over the edge of the cliff behind.

E.C. Buley

 

 

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