Introduction
Two of the boys, a wog, a donkey and myself

One of the most enduring images from Australia’s ill-fated campaign in Gallipoli is that of John Simpson Kirkpatrick, ‘the man with the donkey’. Legend has it that after working as a merchant seaman for four years, Simpson enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in September 1914. He was assigned to serve with the 3rd Field Ambulance as a stretcher-bearer, but Simpson shunned the stretchers in favour of a donkey called Murphy, the animal he employed to transport wounded men to the beach at Anzac Cove. In what is claimed were ‘lightning dashes’ into ‘no-man’s-land’, he is rumoured to have saved the lives of over three hundred men before being killed in action on 19 May 1915. A hush fell over the Gallipoli Peninsula on the day the man with the donkey was slain.

Or so the story goes.

Almost a century after the events of Gallipoli, the mythos of Simpson continues. The tale has crossed continents as accounts of Simpson’s feats have been told again and again. Some have Simpson as something of a saintly figure, others a bacchanalian brawler; there are even claims that Simpson was shot by an Australian. What does all this really have to do with young Jack Simpson? Does the elevation of a good man into a superhero enhance or offend his memory? Does it matter? One thing is certain—the legend wasn’t Simpson’s doing. It was born after his death, the yarn spun and woven through the decades. There can be no denying the appeal of such a myth. The Simpson legend has all the necessary ingredients: heroism, anti-authoritarianism, selflessness, larrikinism and mateship. Throw in a faithful little donkey named Murphy (or Abdul or Duffy, depending on the source), and a legend is born.

The lowly donkey, along with its companions the ass and the mule, has been exploited in more than one famous myth. The Bible is full of donkeys, from the one who spoke to Balaam—‘Am I not your donkey on which you have ridden, ever since I became yours, to this day?’ (Numbers 22:30)—to the animal’s more significant role in the New Testament: Mary, pregnant with Jesus, is said to have travelled to Bethlehem on a small donkey, and just before his own death, Mary’s firstborn himself rode one into Jerusalem. The donkey has since been dubbed ‘the Christ-bearer’. The story of stretcher-bearer Simpson trading his stretcher for a donkey has some resonance with the Jesus myth: the humble Christ, renowned for helping the sick and broken with no shortage of courage or humility, before entering the arena of his own death. A single image can wield enormous power. After decades or even centuries, a myth may bear little witness to the actualities of its origin. Perhaps this is of small consequence, especially if the myth promotes qualities beneficial to its devotees.

Whether Stanley James Livingston, a private in the 2/17th Australian Infantry Battalion, was mocking Simpson when he climbed aboard a donkey somewhere in the Middle East is not clear. World War I was coming to a close when Stanley was un-immaculately conceived in the year of our donkey-straddling Lord one thousand nine hundred and eighteen, and by the time the photo was snapped the myth was already well and truly ingrained. Perhaps it was the biblical myth that Pte Livingston had in mind? There is every chance he was in the vicinity of Jerusalem at the time. But precisely where and when the photo was taken is not so clear. Does this look like the fresh face of a young man enjoying his first overseas trip, a battle virgin? Or are we looking at a war-weary veteran of one of the most intense and bloody campaigns in military history? What had he got himself into, this kid from suburban Zetland, in the middle of no-man’s-land, with, as he put it, ‘two of the boys, a wog, a donkey and myself ’?

Pte Livingston scribbled those few words in elegant cursive on the back of the photo. For an ordinary soldier—and there were few more ordinary than Stanley—taking even an innocent holiday snap was subject to heavy regulation: ‘Photographs of a purely personal nature may be included in correspondence, but attention must be paid to the background, which must not include anything the photography of which is prohibited.’ This included military vehicles, tanks, signal equipment, artillery, aircraft, ships, fortifications, camps and weapons. There was equally heavy censorship on any message attached. It would seem Pte Livingston was just following orders by maintaining a sparse background and simply noting the subjects in the shot (unless of course a donkey might be construed as a military vehicle), but perhaps he had nothing to hide. Was it merely a photo opportunity with reference to nothing and no-one? Sorting fact from fiction is a perilous pursuit. Myths grow and facts are their casualties. In what follows I have done my best to avoid the pitfalls of myth-making and to instead present an honest account of what it might have been like to follow in the bootsteps of an ordinary soldier. In this case that ordinary soldier was my father. And just to set the record straight, one thing is for sure: Pte Stanley Livingston was no messiah, but he was, from all reports, a very naughty boy.