WAR IS A fertile field for the making of legends. In the case of Anzac, the potential for powerful stories is enhanced by the imprinting of Gallipoli, the western front, Tobruk, Kokoda and other events on the development of national identity. The character of legends is that they are told as true stories about events that could well have happened at a particular time and place. But usually they turn out to be, at the least, elaborate versions of more mundane events. The stories of these events, and sometimes of the characters taking part in them, are burnished through repetition in the succeeding years. But whether they contain a greater or lesser amount of historical truth, legends are powerful stories to which many people relate, emotionally as well as intellectually. They are told and retold, often gaining even greater appeal as they progress down the generations and their meanings become ever more valued. There are many legends of glory and gallantry, as well as mystery and mayhem, in the rich traditions of Anzac.
In 1854 the Irish-born Peter Lalor (pronounced ‘Lawler’) was elected leader of the disaffected miners on the Ballarat goldfields. The ‘diggers’ were protesting primarily against the amount of tax levied on them by the Victorian government and the often-brutal manner in which the police administered and collected the money. They also demanded political representation. After a series of violent incidents and mishandling of the situation by the authorities, the miners armed themselves, erected the famous wooden stockade at Ballarat and raised the Southern Cross flag. This armed act of treason was violently suppressed by police and military forces on the morning of 3 December 1854. Lalor barely escaped, in the process severly injuring his arm, which was amputated as a consequence. Thirteen rebels were tried for treason. All were acquitted. The Eureka Stockade was already a much-mythologised event by the time World War I began, and the story of Lalor’s sword was well suited to the Gallipoli legend.
There are a number of conflicting accounts of the origins and ultimate fate of the sword. The most persistent version is that Peter Lalor carried the sword and even used it during the bloody defence of the Eureka Stockade. Greatly treasured by the Lalor family, the weapon was eventually passed to Captain Peter Joseph Lalor, grandson of the leader of the Eureka rebels and a professional soldier who led a group of 12th Division men at Gallipoli on the first day of the landings.
Lalor was a colourful and apparently impetuous character who had enlisted in the Royal Navy at an early age but subsequently deserted to join the French Foreign Legion. He had been involved in a South American revolution and eventually became a member of the Australian forces. Known in the AIF as ‘Little Jimmy’, Lalor carried his grandfather’s sword with him as he and his men scrambled up the hills from the beach towards the areas known as Baby 700 and the Nek. Lalor was supposed to remain at the Nek, but when he did not hear from another party that had advanced further, he became impatient and decided to push on. He stood up to survey the scene, began to rouse his men to advance and was immediately killed by a Turkish bullet. A comrade picked up the sword but lost it later in the fighting. Another Australian soldier retrieved the sword and returned with it to the beach, where he handed it to a naval officer. It has never been seen since.
Considerable legendry has built up around these incidents and the whereabouts of the sword. The image that is most persistent, supported to some extent by a Turkish account of an Australian officer bearing a sword, is that Lalor died gallantly brandishing the sword as he called on his men to advance. This has certainly featured in media coverage of the story over the years. Where the sword ended up remains a mystery. There was a renewal of interest during and after World War II and at one point the official historian of the war, Charles Bean, published a claim that it might be in a Turkish museum.
To add to the confusion, there is also a story that another soldier carried Lalor’s Eureka sword into an earlier battle far from Turkey. In the obituary of Captain Osborne O’Hara, an officer in the 2nd Royal Irish Fusiliers, published in the Truth newspaper in February 1915, is the tale of how the sword came into his family.
Captain O’Hara fell fighting with the self same sword with which the celebrated Peter Lalor fought and defended the famous Eureka Stockade during the great Miner’s Rights’ Riots at Ballarat in the early fifties. This sword was a beautiful Damascene blade as light as a feather, as keen as a razor, whose swish was like a soldier’s song when swung by a strong arm. How Peter Lalor’s sword came into the possession of the O’Hara family and in the death grip of the young captain as he fell fighting at the front, is no mystery, but a story reading like a romance.
Either before or soon after young Osborne O’Hara was born, his father, the Doctor, had a pressing professional call to operate for cancer on a poor woman, who, so it subsequently turned out, was unable to pay the fee. The operation was so far successful as to relieve her from pain and prolong the patient’s life. She was grateful but could not pay the fee, and consequently was not asked to do so. But in her gratitude she asked Dr O’Hara to accept an old sword, hanging on the wall, which he had been admiring. The woman told the doctor that the sword was the identical sword with which Peter Lalor had fought at the Eureka Stockade fifty years before. She explained how the sword had come into her possession, traced its ownership to Peter Lalor and absolutely established its identity as his own once beloved blade.
Recent historical research has also thrown up further possible trails through which the Eureka sword—or swords—might have travelled from the Ballarat battlefield to the battlefields of World War I. The same research has also confirmed that, despite the robust life of the legend of Peter Lalor’s Eureka sword, there is no evidence that he actually carried it, or any other sword, at the Eureka Stockade. But even if ‘Little Jimmy’ Lalor’s sword was not wielded by his grandfather at that momentous event, the persistent belief that it was highlights the need for folklore to link two important events in Australian history.
When war between Britain and Germany was declared in August 1914, Australian ships were tasked with attacking Germany’s East Asiatic Cruiser Squadron under the command of Vice-Admiral Count von Spee. The submarines AE1 and AE2, with their parent ship Upolo, joined an Australian flotilla near Rabaul, New Britain (then the main island of what was German New Guinea) as part of the hunt for the enemy ships and the capture of Rabaul and the Bita Paka radio station. On 14 September, AE1 and Parramatta were patrolling together near Cape Gazelle in case von Spee’s cruisers appeared. The ship and the submarine—called a ‘devil fish’ by the local indigenous people—were exchanging visual signals until shortly before AE1 was last seen, just before 3.30 pm. Parramatta returned to AE1’s last known position but did not sight the submarine. Assuming that AE1 was returning to harbour as planned, Parramatta made for Herbertshöhe, anchoring at 7 pm. An hour later AE1 had still not returned and Australian Fleet Commander Rear Admiral Patey ordered a search for the missing submarine. Encounter, Parramatta, Warego and Yarra spent the next two days combing the area. But AE1 was not found, nor was any wreckage. What had happened?
Lieutenant Stoker, commander of AE2, the lost submarine’s sister boat, was asked for his expert opinion. His speculations were contained in a report he made from Suva, Fiji, a month later. The possibility of enemy attack was dismissed, as was a mechanical breakdown that may have led to her being swept away. Stoker considered that the most likely causes of her disappearance were that AE1 had either suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure while submerged or been wrecked on one of the many treacherous reefs in the area.
In his diary, A. B. Wheat, a sailor aboard AE2, recorded that ‘The cause of her disappearance is still a mystery’ and also speculated along the same lines as Stoker’s official report. Wheat, and probably his fellow crewmen, thought that AE1 might have been sunk by an old tug armed with a five-barrelled Nordenfelt gun. When the burnt-out and beached wreckage of this German vessel was discovered it was thought that she might have surprised AE1, which had no deck gun. The possibility of a mine was discounted after diligent sweeping of the area. Wheat included the suggestion that AE1 may have overtrimmed [unbalanced buoyancy] after having one of her motors disabled—‘that is had not buoyancy enough with her one remaining motor to give complete control and finally she had become unmanageable and sank’. Given the troubled trimming procedures of AE1 in England and AE2’s later stability problems in the Dardanelles, this is perhaps the most likely explanation for the loss of Australia’s first submarine. The failure of the search to reveal anything of AE1’s fate hit the officers and men of AE2 especially hard. Wheat wrote that it ‘cast a great gloom over us as we all had friends who had gone and we were the only two submarines in Southern Waters’. The dedication that prefaces his diary reads, in part:
To the memory of our sister ship AE1, and her crew, Lost September 14th, 1914 in St. Georges Channel, between German New Guinea and New Ireland.
We took the first patrol on the 13th, they took the second next day. We came back, they didn’t. The path of our duty became the high-way of mystery for they never came back. They lie coffined in the deep, keeping their silent watch at Australia’s North Passage, heroes all.
Similar speculations appeared in the Australian press. Revealing the impact that the loss of AE1 produced, the Sydney Morning Herald of 21 September 1914 contained a lengthy account, together with the official statement on the incident. The prime minister’s sympathies were extended and there were sections on the crew and officers. Newspapers carried photographs of AE1 titled ‘The Lost Australian Submarine’ and reprinted the expressions of sympathy and condolence from near and far, including those from New Zealand and from the commanders in chief of the East Indies and China. Also included was the official statement from the Navy Board, noting that ‘. . . although our men did not fall by the hand of the enemy, they fell on active service, and in defence of their Empire, and their names will be enshrined with those of heroes’. There were messages of sympathy from the king and queen and from Winston Churchill in his role of first lord of the admiralty. The Royal Australian Navy produced a black-edged memorial booklet and special payments and arrangements were made for the wives and families of the officers and crew. A number of poems were composed in commemoration of the tragedy.
These expressions of grief and remembrance echoed the public shock at the loss of AE1, along with the concern in official circles. But the fate of the submarine and her crew would soon be forgotten by most as the war unfolded, bringing news of even greater tragedies. The lost submarine soon faded from the pages of the newspapers, and AE1’s sister submarine sailed to the Mediterranean. AE2 became the first to ‘force the Dardanelles’, penetrating the Narrows section of the Dardanelles and entering the Sea of Marmara. In the mounting body count of World War I, the relatively minor disaster of AE1 in a colonial sideshow to the main theatres of war was soon forgotten by the public and by the government. It was not until the 1970s that John Foster of the Royal Australian Navy initiated an investigation into the fate of AE1. The search continues today.
In December 1915, the Gallipoli commander General Sir Ian Hamilton penned a dispatch on a mysterious battlefront incident that had taken place a few months earlier.
The 1/5th. Norfolk were on the right of the line and found themselves for a moment less strongly opposed than the rest of the brigade. Against the yielding forces of the enemy Colonel Sir H. Beauchamp, a bold, self-confident officer, eagerly pressed forward, followed by the best part of the battalion. The fighting grew hotter, and the ground became more wooded and broken. At this stage many men were wounded, or grew exhausted with thirst. These found their way back to camp during the night. But the Colonel, with sixteen officers and 250 men, still kept pushing on, driving the enemy before them . . . Nothing more was ever seen or heard of any of them. They charged into the forest and were lost to sight or sound. Not one of them ever came back.
Hamilton’s sober and professional account of this incident was only in stark contrast to a much more sensational version of the mystery in which the missing Norfolks disappeared into an ominous cloud rather than a ‘forest’.
The 1/5th Norfolks were a British regiment, in part composed of raw recruits from the Sandringham Royal Estate, who were known colloquially as ‘the Sandringham Pals’. Their unaccountable disappearance was the subject of more than usual concern. In the absence of hard information about their fate, a legend developed that had a good deal in common with other stories of vanished battalions on the western front. These stories usually involved the appearance of a mysterious cloud or mist over the battlefield, into which marched the doomed regiment or other unit, never to be heard of again. In the Gallipoli incident a group of New Zealand sappers claimed to have seen on 21 August (not 12 August):
Six or eight ‘loaf of bread’ shaped clouds—all shaped exactly alike, which were hovering over Hill 60. It was noticed that in spite of a four or five mile an hour breeze from the south, these clouds did not alter their position . . . Also stationary and resting on the ground right underneath this group of clouds was a similar cloud in shape, measuring about 800 feet in length, 220 feet in height, and 200 feet in width. This cloud was absolutely dense, solid-looking in structure, and positioned about 14 to 18 chains from the fighting in the British-held territory . . .
According to this account, a British unit said to have been the 1/4th (not the 1/5th) Norfolks, ‘had marched straight into it, with no hesitation, but no-one ever came back out’. After an hour or so the unit had disappeared into the large ground-level cloud, and three-quarters of an hour later the cloud rose to the level of the others and they drifted northwards until ‘they had all disappeared from view’.
The signatories to this account were New Zealander Frederick Reichardt and two other Anzacs. The discrepancies between the dates and correct designation of the Norfolks unit, together with the impossibility of the New Zealanders seeing what was happening four miles (6.5 kilometres) from their position at the time, strongly suggests that the event described was a battlefield delusion. Similar circumstances gave rise to such beliefs as the Angels of Mons, the Comrade in White and other apparitions supposedly experienced by battle-stressed men on the western front. However, it was close enough to what had actually happened to the Norfolks to generate the legend of the vanished battalion.
What did happen to the 1/5th Norfolks? In September 1919 a mass grave was discovered on the Anafarta Plain, as reported by the commander of the Gallipoli Graves Registration Unit.
We have found the 5th Norfolks—there were 180 in all; 122 Norfolk and a few Hants and Suffolks with 2/4th Cheshires. We could only identify two—Privates Barnaby and Cotter. They were scattered over an area of about one square mile, at a distance of at least 800 yards behind the Turkish front line. Many of them had evidently been killed in a farm, as a local Turk, who owns the place, told us that when he came back he found the farm covered with the decomposing bodies of British soldiers which he threw into a small ravine. The whole thing quite bears out the original theory that they did not go very far on, but got mopped up one by one, all except the ones who got into the farm.
The bodies included their colonel. There remains a lingering suspicion that the men were executed. Whether that is true or not, the nearly 300 officers and men of the 1/5th Norfolks had advanced well past their own front lines and deep into enemy territory. They were tired, in unfamiliar terrain and, it seems, not well led. A bayonet charge failed, they were surrounded and then felled by machine gun and sniper fire. Those who apparently made it to the farmhouse also died. Fourteen survivors were taken captive by the Turks, though the legend takes no account of this.
The story of Simpson and his donkey has become part of the legend of Anzac. Once taught to every child at school, it is the subject of frequent recollection in print and in the media, and is commemorated in many other ways, including in the well-known statue at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. According to most accounts, John Simpson Kirkpatrick, an Englishman serving with the AIF, continually took one or more donkeys up to the firing lines at Gallipoli and brought back wounded soldiers for medical treatment, at great personal risk. One morning, ‘Simpson’ as he was known, was winding his way towards the firing line when a cook called out to him to come and get some breakfast. ‘I’ll be back soon; keep it hot for me’, he is said to have replied. That morning he was killed by enemy fire and the enduring legend of selfless courage and sacrifice was born, as outlined in one of the early accounts of the story.
We have had numerous inquiries for information with regard to Private John Simpson, ‘The Man with the Donkey’ as he is perhaps better known, and mainly owing to the courtesy of a soldier who was a member of his section at Gallipoli, we are able to throw a little additional light on the career of that hero.
In the first place, it has since been gleaned his full name was Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, though he dropped the latter name on enlisting. He was born in South Shields, England 22 or 23 years ago and of latter years was the sole support of a widowed mother. A tall, well-set, finely figured, clean-cut young Englishman, he took to the sea as a career, and about five or six years ago came out here and joined one of the interstate vessels as a fireman, and in that capacity he travelled from port to port on the Australian coast, often touching Fremantle. In fact, of later years he is said to have been keeping company with a Fremantle girl, who saw him off when he left these shores on the Empire’s errand, the goal of which was death. But we are beginning to anticipate.
On the outbreak of war, Simpson, to give him his better-known name, was still a fireman (we understand on the Kooringa) and he quickly heard the call and enlisted at Blackboy. Needless almost to say, this cheery, brawny, presentable young fellow was cordially welcomed, and on accepting him for the À.M.C. Captain M’Whae made an unconscious prophecy in remarking. ‘You’re just the man we want.’ He was.
Simpson duly went through his training and participated in that march through Perth of the original first contingent, and may have been noticed by onlookers as carrying a possum, the mascot of his corps. With the men he was always popular, he sang a good song, possessed a cheery disposition and the ideal soldier spirit.
He was with the A.M.C. in the landing that electrified the world, and was busy during the first day assisting in the tending of the wounded. Then he was missed, and for a couple of days could not be found. About the Wednesday they came across him. He had been about his country’s business. Then for the first time they beheld him in his role of ‘The Man with the Donkey.’
It was soon found that he was accomplishing splendid work with the little animal he had picked up in conveying the wounded men to the base from difficult places where stretcher bearers could not go. His new military position was unorthodox, ‘not on the strength’ to use a military term. But the authorities were wise enough to see that he was achieving great things, and they let him be. ‘The Man with the Donkey’ he thereafter became, and ‘Simmo,’ as he was affectionately nick-named, and ‘Murphy’ the wiry little donkey with its eternal burden of wounded men, became familiar figures on the peninsula. Those who knew not his name, or whence he came, knew ‘The Man with the Donkey,’ and many a stricken soldier blessed the pair with his fevered lips.
One day the donkey walked down to the familiar goal, the dressing-station, with a wounded man as burden but otherwise alone. Its master was not in sight. A search was made, and the hero was found dead—shot through the heart by a stray bullet. As he would have wished to die he passed away, discharging the self-appointed duty he had for weeks carried out so faithfully. This was on May 19 but for many a long day afterwards in the dug-out and in the trench was the name of ‘The Man with the Donkey’ on Australian lips.
The donkey was taken and cared for by an Indian officer, and up to when our informant left Gallipoli it was still alive, its new master declaring that he would not part with it on any account. Whether the animal (there is talk of a movement to bring it back to Australia) was unavoidably slaughtered with the other dumb servants in the evacuation, or taken off as a special mark of affection, it is hard to say.
And Simpson? He was buried on the evening of May 19, and a roughly carven cross erected over his grave with the simple but sufficient inscription: ‘Private John Simpson—The Man with the Donkey.’ And so he sleeps, in desolate Gallipoli.
There was considerable agitation for a decoration for poor Simpson, but for some reason still unexplained it never materialised. ‘If ever one deserved recognition, he did,’ is the general verdict of those who knew the man and could judge of what he had done.
The story of Simpson and his noble sacrifice was immediately popular in Australia. A Mr Frank F. Keon of Melbourne sent a newspaper clipping about Simpson to Simpson’s mother in England. Mrs Kirkpatrick wrote back in due course.
Dear Sir—Thank you very much for the cutting that you sent me about the grand work my dear beloved son has done in Gallipoli. I should have written before now, but I have been so poorly and broken-hearted about him that I have not been able to answer to all the kind friends that sent me their sympathy, so that I hope you will excuse me for not answering your kind letter sooner. I am sending you the cutting of our Shields daily, and you will see what a tribute his officer, Captain Fry, gives him. Now, sir, hoping that you will let all my son’s friends in Melbourne know that John Simpson Kirkpatrick, that sailed in the s.s. Kooringa for two and a half years, is the donkey-man of Anzac, and tell the Australians from me, his mother, that my heart is bursting with sorrow and with pride to know that my beloved son, and the light of my life, died with the brave Australians. Now, sir, I can say no more at present, only that I have lost one of the best and most faithful sons that a mother ever had. Thanking you again for your kindness, I remain, your [sic] truly.
Sarah Simpson Kirkpatrick.
But Simpson was not the only man using donkeys to rescue the wounded at Gallipoli. After he was killed, the donkeys and their dangerous task were taken over by a New Zealander named Dick Henderson. And it was Henderson who actually appeared in the most famous photograph of ‘Simpson’ and his donkey, due to a mistake in the editing of the original editions of the official history of the war. This was not corrected until many years later in subsequent editions of the history. Henderson was luckier than Simpson and survived the war. He had apparently been well aware of the mistaken identities in the photograph but had chosen not to reveal the truth until the 1950s when, by then blind and ageing, he felt the need to ‘clear the story up’ so the mistake could be righted.
There have been many calls over the years for Simpson to receive a posthumous Victoria Cross, beginning with recommendations from serving officers who witnessed the man and his donkeys at work. There was even an attempt to have him sainted. To date, though, these efforts have not met with official approval, perhaps because of the difficulty in deciding which of the two ‘Simpsons’—and probably others—was the bravest.
Also full of controversy and rumour is the story of where Simpson’s donkey came from, and whether or not the animal was killed or managed to escape Gallipoli with the evacuating troops. As usual, there are various versions. A popular one is that the beast was the property of a Colonel Pope, commander of the 16th Battalion, AIF. Another is that it was a member of Pope’s battalion, one T. Gorman, who should have the credit. Most stories agree that the donkey was obtained at Lemnos.
Did the donkey die when Simpson was killed? Possibly, though some said that the donkey led rescuers to Simpson’s body, surviving to the end of the campaign to be taken off Gallipoli with the troops. In some strands of this tale, the donkey died aboard ship and was buried at sea. There was another claim that ‘Murphy’ was rescued by an Indian soldier. There was also a story that, like many supposedly deceased folk heroes, Murphy was alive and well in another place, in this case somewhere behind the lines at Abbeville, France. As a newspaper article recollecting the events and rumours put it in 1936, the donkey was ‘one of the many dumb heroes of the Great War’.
A further element of the story of Simpson and the donkey involves ‘Jenny’, the offspring of Murphy and another Gallipoli donkey also known as ‘Jenny’. F. C. Dunstan of B Depot, 6th AASC wrote about young Jenny in The Anzac Book.
For the delightful diversion which little Jenny, with her frolics and gambols, provided for the A.S.C.’s when they really had a moment to spare another medium will have to be sought. Though of short duration, her life appeared a charmed one whilst it lasted. Her freedom of action was the envy of every soldier along the beach. Her disregard for the enemy’s bullets and shells commanded our unbounded admiration. But whether her immunity for six months was due to the kindness of the Turks or their bad shooting, or her own good judgment, who can say?
Jenny’s origin is enveloped in some obscurity; but it is said that with her parents, Murphy of Red Cross fame and Jenny Senior, she toddled into our lines when quite a mite; and, once having crossed over the border into civilization, the three emphatically refused to return whilst the objectionable Hun element obtained in their native country.
Jenny the younger was no mere mystic mascot for the humouring of an especially created superstition. Her congenial company and high spirits, her affectionate ways and equable temperament, were the factors which gained for her the obvious rank of ‘Camp Pet.’ Her friendly regular visits will be missed, and the picture of her patrician head and dark-brown shaggy winter’s coat. Her refined voice was music compared with the common ‘hee-haw’ which characterizes her kind, or the peremptory foghorn of the sergeant-major.
But now she is no more. Our sorrow is immeasurable. The mother never left the babe whilst it suffered excruciating agony through a deadly shrapnel pellet. Skilful, indefatigable attention, invincible iodine, proved futile. Jenny Senior is grief-stricken, and now lies upon the neat little grave in which her infant was placed by the big Australian playmates who now mourn their irreparable loss.
Souveniring—also known as ‘ratting’—was a popular pastime of Australian troops. It involved obtaining items of enemy equipment—clothing, weaponry, medals or anything else that might be worth a few bob. Whether these items were obtained from Germans after they no longer had a need for them or were ‘liberated’ from prisoners was of no consequence. Possession, as they say, was nine points of the law.
The Anzacs were not the only troops to souvenir all manner of items from the field of battle, but they were noted exponents of the art, as suggested in a couple of digger yarns.
On the Western Front, a sergeant halted the enormous Private Smith, who was wearing a spiked German helmet.
‘Who gave you permission to wear German issue?’ he asked.
‘Please, sergeant’, said Private Smith, ‘don’t make me give this lid up; I had to kill seven Germans to get my size.’
The sergeant looked at Private Smith’s feet. ‘If you ever lose your boots,’ he said, ‘the flamin’ war’s over.’
And one about the enthusiastic war photographer:
It is well known to most front line Diggers that the Aussie official photographer was one of the gamest men in the war. One day he was taking the usual risks, oblivious of all considerations but that of getting a good picture. A purposeful Digger was seen stalking him from shell-hole to shell-hole.
‘What in the cell yer doing, Ginger?’ yelled a cobber.
‘Oh, it’s all right. I’m just waiting for this photo bloke to get knocked. I want to souvenir his camera!’
The story of the colourful character who became known as ‘the souvenir king’ is full of folklore as much as fact. John Hines, known as ‘Barney’, was born in Liverpool in 1873. After many years of roughing it around the world he ended up in Australia, enlisting in the AIF in 1915 and becoming a member of the 45th Battalion. On the western front he proved to be, like so many other ‘bad characters’, as good at soldiering as he was bad at staying sober, obeying orders and otherwise knuckling down to military discipline. In addition to his apparent fearlessness and talent for taking large numbers of prisoners, Barney had a very special ability with souvenirs.
So efficient was Barney at obtaining his trophies that he was dubbed ‘the souvenir king’. It was not only the number and range of items that Barney managed to filch from enemy sources, or elsewhere, that was impressive, but also their occasional oddity or extravagance. On one occasion he souvenired a grandfather clock; on another he added a full barrel of English beer to his stocks.
To be fair, he was far from being the only collector of questionable mementos in the AIF or any other army. It was the publication of an evocative photograph, taken by Frank Hurley, of Barney sitting with a pile of his keepsakes that provided him with a raffish celebrity around which grew quite a few legends. The most widespread of these is the most unlikely tale that when the German head of state, Kaiser Wilhelm, heard of Barney’s looting, he placed a price on his head, encouraging German troops to hunt down the souvenir king. His notorious reputation for unhappy dealings with authority also generated the story that he was once arrested by British Military Police but caused them so much trouble that he was soon handed back to his unit. His battlefield bravery led to the folk belief that he had killed more German soldiers than any other member of the AIF.
Barney was wounded on several occasions and was given a medical discharge in 1916. But he re-enlisted and went back to fight and souvenir for another year or so until he was again discharged for health reasons in 1918. He returned to Australia where he set up house in a humpy on the fringes of Sydney, eking out a living through various forms of manual and itinerant labour and, of course, selling souvenirs. It is said that he took the train into the suburbs each week to deliver a sack of vegetables to ex-soldiers in the repatriation hospital. Occasional republication of the famous photograph briefly revived his notoriety from time to time. When war again broke out in 1939, Barney tried to enlist but was rejected due to his age. He died in 1958.
One especially potent legend of the Great War is best known in its Canadian version. But the story also circulated among British and Allied forces, with the alleged victim being a British officer or an Anzac.
Canadian troops had been training in England from October 1914, arriving in France the following February. By May a disturbing new rumour was spreading through the trenches. The Times of 10 May 1915 ran the first press report of the story, which claimed that a group of Canadians wounded in the fighting near Ypres had come across one of their officers who had been literally crucified. ‘He had been pinned to a wall by bayonets thrust through his hands and feet, another bayonet had been driven through his throat and, finally, he had been riddled with bullets.’
A similar horrific tale was picked up by the Canadian press and retailed in a number of versions, and stories of crucified Canadians, as well as British and Australian troops, continued throughout the war. There were questions in the British Parliament, some street riots and numerous official and unofficial attempts to verify the stories. But they never were proven, although the belief that the event—or something like it—had occurred was certainly strong among Canadian troops at the front and also among many on the home front. It has been suggested that the story was a propaganda piece developed by the Allies in response to the German sinking of the liner Lusitania on 7 May 1915. Regardless of its origins—and there were similar stories in circulation before April 1915, including allegedly on Gallipoli—the story has never gone away, with a recent television documentary attempting to verify it.
As with all such rumours and legends, details will vary. There is also a tendency for various stories to become mixed up in their telling and retelling. In this case, it may be that the actual crucifixion myth became tangled up with another tale in which a soldier is discovered bound across a wagon wheel or stakes in a crucifixion-like position. Known as ‘Field Punishment No. 1’, this unpleasant form of discipline was practised in the British and some other armies and was known to troops colloquially as ‘crucifixion’. It could be incurred even for minor offences. Field punishment involved the unlucky soldier attending parades in a full pack, after which the pack was taken off and the luckless victim was trussed up across a wagon-wheel with fetters or handcuffs for an hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon. This treatment went on for as many days as the inflicting officer determined, up to twenty-eight days in the field. If sentenced by a court martial it was possible for ‘No. 1’ to be carried out for up to ninety days. The soldier who suffered ‘crucifixion’ was also given hard labour and lost pay.
New Zealand conscientious objector Archibald Baxter experienced ‘No. 1’ in Belgium at the hands of a New Zealand sergeant at a prison compound called ‘Mud Farm’. Baxter was bound to stakes rather than a wheel and, according to his account, for a good deal longer than the regulation two hours.
He took me over to the poles, which were willow stumps, six to eight inches in diameter and twice the height of a man, and placed me against one of them. It was inclined forward out of perpendicular. Almost always afterwards he picked the same one for me. I stood with my back to it and he tied me to it by the ankles, knees and wrists. He was an expert at the job, and he knew how to pull and strain at the ropes till they cut into the flesh and completely stopped the circulation. When I was taken off my hands were always black with congested blood. My hands were taken round behind the pole, tied together and pulled well up it, straining and cramping the muscles and forcing them into an unnatural position. Most knots will slacken a little after a time. His never did. The slope of the post brought me into a hanging position, causing a large part of my weight to come on my arms, and I could get no proper grip with my feet on the ground, as it was worn away round the pole and my toes were consequently much lower than my heels. I was strained so tightly up against the post that I was unable to move body or limbs a fraction of an inch. Earlier in the war, men undergoing this form of punishment were tied with their arms outstretched. Hence the name of crucifixion. Later, they were more often tied to a single upright, probably to avoid the likeness to a cross. But the name stuck.
A few minutes after the sergeant had left me, I began to think of the length of my sentence and it rose up before me like a mountain. The pain grew steadily worse until by the end of half-an-hour it seemed absolutely unendurable. Between my set teeth I said: ‘Oh God, this is too much. I can’t bear it.’ But I could not allow myself the relief of groaning as I did not want to give the guards the satisfaction of hearing me. The mental effect was almost as frightful as the physical. I felt I was going mad. That I should be stuck up on a pole suffering this frightful torture, a human scarecrow for men to stare at and wonder at, seemed part of some impossible nightmare that could not continue. At the very worst strength came to me and I knew I would not surrender. The battle was won, and though the suffering increased rather than decreased as the days wore on, I never had to fight it again . . .
Towards the end of the afternoon, in the small corner which was visible to me of the enclosure on the other side of the road, heads began to appear and disappear with great rapidity and much blowing of whistles and roars of ‘Double, double!’ resounded from the same quarter. After some time the sergeant came over and released me. I set out to walk to the tent without waiting, as I afterwards learned to, for the slow and painful return of the circulation to my numbed limbs, and immediately fell. I struggled on again, somehow and, stumbling and falling, managed to make my way to the tent . . .
A number of Anzac stories tell of a group of Australians and/ or New Zealanders who come across such a scene and are so horrified by its cruelty that they release the victim from his bonds and otherwise take matters into their own hands. One account appears in Aubrey Wade’s 1936 memoir, The War of the Guns.
Close by the road where the crucifixion took place there ran a narrow road which led to a stream where it was usual for all the artillery in the area to water their horses. At evening stable-time the Australians rode through with their animals on their way to water, and it so happened on the third day of the wheel torture that the victim had been strung up on a wagon in full view of the road, which was an oversight, no doubt, on the part of the sergeant major.
The Aussies, coming along at the trot, pulled up dead and stared in blank amazement. They simply could not understand it. The corporal who appeared to be in charge of them (for so much as they were ever in anyone’s charge) dismounted, handed over his horse and strode across to the scene of punishment while all of us watched him with the keenest anticipation. Then the Aussie spoke: ‘Who in the hell’s name tied you up like this, digger?’ And without waiting for a reply he cut through the new brown straps with his jack-knife, releasing the prisoner who stood looking dazedly, while the guard discreetly found something urgently waiting to be done at the guard-room. ‘Who tied you up, digger?’ came a chorus from the watching Australians. ‘Show us the b——d.’ I prayed for the appearance of the sergeant-major. But no sergeant-major came. The corporal remounted. ‘We’ll be here again tomorrow,’ he called, and with that he led his grinning troop away . . .
The next day, to the minute, the process was repeated. Again the victim was released in a jiffy by the Aussies, four more brand-new straps were ruined and the sergeant-major hid himself in fear of his life. But the crucifixion was not called off; the next afternoon the prisoner was led out and strapped tight, and we gleefully awaited the appearance of the Australians. This time they were a little later than usual, but they came right enough just as the sergeant-major emerged from the field in which the tents lay. He walked right into them before realizing that they were companions of the corporal who was busily engaged in cutting gun-straps to ribbons. Pushing between their horses he yelled at the corporal.
‘Hello, b——d,’ said the corporal pleasantly, looking round. ‘Come down to watch the fun?’ he continued, in a soft drawl which infuriated the sergeant-major. His hand flew to the riding crop tucked under his arm, but the Australian gazed at him steadily and contemptuously. The other rider drew closer. Then the corporal went up to the sergeant-major and told him that for two pins, more or less, he’d tie him to the tails of their horses and gallop him over half France. And for tying a poor digger up like that he ought to be strung up by an extremely susceptible part of his anatomy and flogged to death for a b——d. And every time they came that way they’d cut the prisoner down, and then they’d think about cutting the sergeant-major’s throat. The rescuers formed a ring of horses round the two protagonists so that the sergeant-major should not miss one word for the good of his soul. It was a great day.
The waler is a type of horse bred for Australian conditions. It is a hardy animal with great stamina and can travel for considerable distance on little food and water. These characteristics made the waler valuable as a working horse in the bush and also as a mount for the Australian Light Horse during World War I, where it was well suited to the climate and terrain of Palestine and the Sinai Desert and to bearing the considerable weight of a fully equipped light horseman. The horses served with success and gallantry, winning the admiration and praise of many of the British cavalry who on several occasions observed them performing impressive feats of endurance and strength. One fabled performance was by Major Shanahan’s difficult mount, known as ‘Bill the Bastard’. Shanahan, an officer of the 2nd Light Horse Regiment, found four unhorsed Australians surrounded by Turks, and Bill carried all five men to safety through over a kilometre of soft sand. Such actions added to the reputation of the walers and also to the extensive mystique of the Light Horse units. When the war ended it is said that many light horsemen shot their beloved horses rather than see them left behind. Although historians can find little evidence, this belief persists.
There were roughly 10 000 horses—not all walers—remaining among the Australian forces in Syria, Egypt and Palestine when the war ended in November 1918. The cost of returning these beasts to Australia, together with the quarantine risks they would pose, meant that another solution was needed. Some were reassigned, some were sold. Those that were unhealthy or aged—between 2000 and 3000 horses (estimates vary)—were destroyed under veterinary supervision. Although the procedures for the disposal of the army horses were as humane and well organised as possible under the circumstances, many diggers who had served in the Middle East, light horsemen in particular, strongly resented what happened to their loyal mounts.
‘The Horses Stay Behind’, a poem published just after the war by journalist and soldier Oliver Hogue, who wrote under the pen name of ‘Trooper Bluegum’, was probably the most important initial inspiration for the notion that light horsemen shot their horses.
I don’t think I could stand the thought of my old fancy hack Just crawling around old Cairo with a Gyppo on his back. Perhaps some English tourist out in Palestine may find My broken-hearted waler with a wooden plough behind. No: I think I’d better shoot him and tell a little lie ‘He floundered in a wombat hole and then lay down to die.’ Maybe I’ll get court-martialled; but I’m damned if I’m inclined To go back to Australia and leave my horse behind.
Of the 136 000 horses used by Australian forces during World War I, only one returned home, ‘Sandy’, the mount of General Sir William Bridges. The general was killed on Gallipoli and Sandy was taken into army veterinary care and reposted to Egypt, France and finally back to England. Here the horse was quarantined for three months, found to be free of disease and shipped back to Australia in September–November 1919. He spent the rest of his days grazing at the Central Remount Depot in Maribyrnong, Victoria. In 1923 he was put down due to age and illness. His head was mounted and became a part of the collection of the Australian War Memorial. The head was displayed at the Memorial for many years as the only horse to return, and this perhaps contributed to the belief—although Sandy was not a waler—that these horses had indeed been shot by their riders. Regardless of the historical reality, the story has a firm hold on the Australian imagination. Together with the Light Horse units, the waler remains a powerfully romantic symbol of national identity and wartime pride.
As most things connected with Anzac have more than one story attached to them, it would be surprising if the word itself was not the subject of a few. According to one of these tales, the abbreviation was chosen by General Birdwood, or ‘Birdie’, as the diggers knew him. By his own account:
When I took over the command of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps in Egypt a year ago, I was asked to select a telegraphic code address for my Army Corps, and then adopted the word ‘Anzac.’ Later on, when we had effected our landing here in April last, I was asked by General Headquarters to suggest a name for the beach where we had made good our first precarious footing, and then asked that this might be recorded as ‘Anzac Cove’—a name which the bravery of our men has now made historical, while it will remain a geographic landmark for all time.
Another claimant to the honour is General Sir Ian Hamilton, commander of the Gallipoli campaign. As he himself put it in the foreword to a book published in 1916:
As the man who first seeking to save himself the trouble, omitted the five full stops and brazenly coined the word ‘ANZAC’, I am glad to write a line or two in preface to sketches which may help to give currency to that token throughout the realms of glory.
According to the Australian war historian Charles Bean, a Lieutenant A. T. White, Royal Army Service Corps, of the British Regular Army was the originator.
One day early in 1915 Major C. M. Wagstaff, then a junior member of the ‘operations’ section of Birdwood’s staff, walked into the General Staff office and mentioned to the clerks that a convenient word was wanted as a code name for the Corps. The clerks had noticed the big initials on the cases outside their room—A. & N. Z. A. C. and a rubber stamp for registering correspondence had also been cut with the same initials. When Wagstaff mentioned the need of a code word, one of the clerks (according to most accounts Lieutenant A.T. White) suggested: ‘How about ANZAC?’ Major Wagstaff proposed the word to the general who approved of it, and ‘ANZAC’ thereupon became the code name of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. It was however, some time before the code word came into everyday use, and at the Landing at Gallipoli many men in the divisions had not yet heard of it.
They soon did, though, and the term has well and truly stuck. The word has been controlled by Commonwealth and state legislation almost from the time it first appeared in wide usage. Controversy continues over whether it should be spelled as ‘ANZAC’ or ‘Anzac’. One argument is that it is an acronym and so its original form should be preserved. Others insist that it has moved beyond the acronym stage to become a fully fledged word and so should appear as ‘Anzac’, unless referring to the original telegraphic address.
The most recognisable symbol of Anzac is the Rising Sun badge. Use of a rising sun motif has a long history in Australia, where the concept of a young, growing colony, state or country has an obvious appeal. Rising sun motifs appeared quite frequently in colonial times on coins and also in trademarks and proprietary products such as ‘Rising Sun Jam’.
But the famous ‘Rising Sun’ badge worn by members of the Australian military probably had its origins in South Australia. In 1893 the commander of the South Australian Permanent Artillery had a trophy made featuring bayonets radiating outwards from a central crown. According to legend, the trophy was the inspiration for the first Rising Sun badge, designed for the 1st Battalion, Australian Commonwealth Horse, during the Boer War. Modifications were made to this design when the first Commonwealth forces were formed, and the badge was worn by the First and Second AIF. Some further changes have been made since then, but the badge now worn by the Australian military forces is still the Rising Sun.
Two of the foundation legends of the Anzac tradition concern the identities of the first Australian to step ashore at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and of the last to leave eight months later. There have been and continue to be a number of competing claims for these honours. The passion with which the various first man to land and last man to leave stories are supported or refuted has been a constant theme, and reflects the important place that Anzac holds in the lives and hearts of large numbers of Australians.
An early contender for the title of first man ashore was 34-year-old cane cutter Joseph Stratford. Although he was a New South Wales man from the Lismore area, he had enlisted in the Queensland 9th Battalion. On the basis of some previous military training, he was promoted to sergeant. Stratford struggled ashore from the bow of a leading transport in the first wave. Like many from the boats, he jumped into fairly deep water and was dragged under by the weight of his pack and gun. Unlike many, he managed to get rid of the pack and, with a wet and therefore useless rifle, charged a Turkish machine gun with only a bayonet as a weapon. He stabbed two Turkish soldiers before being shot dead. Stratford’s body was never found. It is said that an officer who witnessed Stratford’s deed thought that he should have been awarded the Victoria Cross.
Research by family members has unearthed a number of eyewitness accounts from contemporary newspapers and letters that lend support to this story. One of his surviving mates, Private Gahan, wrote back to his parents: ‘There was not a man amongst us who did not love and look up to him. He was fair and straight. I felt when he did not answer the roll call that I had lost an elder brother’.
Another 9th Battalion man, Lieutenant Duncan Chapman of Maryborough, Queensland, later claimed that his boat had been the first to land, and that, as he was in the bow, he was the first man to jump ashore. There was some corroboration of Chapman’s claim from comrades who were with him at the time and from Charles Bean. Chapman was later promoted to major and was killed at Pozières in 1916. Despite Stratford’s claim, most historians appear to accept that Chapman was the first man ashore at Gallipoli.
A claim has also been made for a Private James Bostock, also of the 9th Battalion. This has been given little credence by historians who have pointed out that in the chaos of the landings and in the dawn dimness it would have been difficult to determine exactly what happened at any particular moment.
As for the stories of the last Australian to leave Gallipoli in the early hours of 20 December 1915—there are even more contenders for this honour.
Victorian Lieutenant, later Brigadier, Leslie Maygar had fought in the Boer War, where he won the Victoria Cross. At Gallipoli he was in command of a group of 3rd Light Horse given the task of holding the trenches until 2.30 am on the morning of the evacuation, ensuring that everyone else had been safely taken off. An inspirational military leader, Maygar was killed at Beersheba in November 1917.
A different claim was made by Charles Bean for Fred Pollack of the 13th Battalion. Bean wrote that Pollack:
Had obtained permission for special reasons to have a rest in his dugout, having previously arranged with his mates to call him before they left. They, however, understood him to refer to a different dugout, and, having thoroughly searched the one in which he usually slept and found it empty, assumed that he had gone on to the beach. Pollack, waking later, found the area silent. He went along the trenches, but they were empty. Running to the shore, he found no sign of movement until at North Beach he came on men embarking on one of the last lighters and went with them.
The fortunate Pollack survived the war and lived until 1958.
Another bid is made for Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude, known as ‘Joe Maude’. Maude’s claim was supported by General Sir Ian Hamilton, and also celebrated in a lighthearted parody of the Victorian parlour piece ‘Come Into the Garden, Maud’ apparently composed by Maude’s comrades.
Allegedly ‘Found on Helles on January 9th,’ the poem refers to Maude’s lateness in reaching the boat. He was carrying a large amount of equipment and, in the darkness, apparently became entangled in barbed wire, making him an hour late:
Come into the lighter, Maude,
For the fuse has long been lit,
Come into the lighter, Maude,
And never mind your kit,
I’ve waited here an hour or more,
For news that your march is o’er.
The sea runs high, but what care I,
It’s better to be sick than blown sky high,
So jump into the lighter, Maude,
The allotted time is flown,
Come into the lighter, Maude,
I’m off in the launch alone,
I’m off in the lighter alone.
Private Edward Gornall thought he was the last man to leave in 1915, according to a report in a South Australian newspaper under the heading ‘Last Man at Anzac’.
Private Edgar Gornall, son of Mr. W. Gornall, of Bathurst, Victoria, writing to his parents states that he was the last man to leave the Australian trenches during the evacuation of the Anzac positions. The officers hurried their men away, and Gornall and another man were given orders to make a bolt for it. At 3.20 they were the only two men on the post. The Turks failed to realise the truth and continued to hurl bombs and fire at the vacant loopholes.
Gornall further relates that while running his mate sprained an ankle. They suddenly discovered that the path along which they were to retire had been blocked by their own men with barbed wire. Neither of the men was able to scale the barrier, and there were thousands of suspicious Turks only a hundred yards away. On hunting round they luckily found another opening, and while making their way through this the mines in the trenches blew up. The Turks then opened a terrific infantry fire, but the two men successfully over took the last party as it was stepping aboard the last remaining motor barge.
All the next day the empty trenches lately occupied by the Fifth Division received the heaviest bombardment of the campaign; 36 hours after the evacuation the Turks charged the positions, but met with no opposition. The enemy speedily reached the beach, where the war ships, which had been on the lookout, badly cut them up.
Private Gornall explains that just before the withdrawal the troops were invited to help themselves to the stores on the beach, and, besides feeding on the best material available, each man helped himself to a new outfit. He saw ten thousand gallons of rum thrown on the rock on the beach, and in the depressions in the ground there were lakelets of wine and stout; thousands of hogsheads, barrels and bottles were smashed. Immense quantities of other goods were also destroyed, and two motor lorries and stacks of sawn timber were burnt.
Gornall’s version is still accepted in and around Bathurst.
Other claims have been made for different people at different times. One was Tasmanian Captain Burford Sampson, a platoon commander who led troops at Quinn’s Post and Courtney’s Post. A Captain C. A. Littler of the 12th Battalion was in charge of beach movements and plausibly maintained he was the last to step aboard the last boat at 3.45 am. Lieutenant George Shaw, 28th Battalion, also laid claim to the honour of being the last man off, while Lieutenant Colonel (later Major-General) John Paton, who had temporary command of the 5th Brigade, was yet another claimant. Even General Birdwood was mistakenly given the glory by at least one writer, though he had left at 3 am.
Usually overlooked in disputes about the last man to leave is the vital role of the Royal Australian Navy. It was the Navy’s Bridging Train that was the last unit to cast off from the shore at 4.30 am, about twenty minutes after the remaining troops had departed. The sailor who cast off the mooring line on that boat was actually the last man to leave Gallipoli. His name was not recorded.