Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Robert John Peters was born in 1897 at Hay in far western NSW. Sometime later, his family moved to the little town of Hillston, located on the Lachlan River about 100 miles to the north-east of Hay. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he was just 17 years old. He worked at his father’s small grazing property and bush transport business as a bullock driver, hauling wagon loads of wool and hay bales across the western plains of NSW.  By 1915 he was determined to do his part in the great adventure that was the war developing across the seas in Europe and the Middle East. Bob, as he was known to his friends, was a rugged bushman, a keen horseman and skilled with a rifle. It made him a natural fit for the legendary Australian Light Horse. In 1915 he and his best mate, Arthur Watkins, made their way from Hillston to Cootamundra in NSW, a distance of some 200 miles (330 km) where they enlisted in the 1st AIF on the 29th of July. It was Bob’s 18th birthday. Being under 21, he needed parental permission to enlist, which he had obtained from his father, Robert, despite vocal opposition from his Mother, Lizzie. Bob left behind his sweetheart, 15 year old Elsie Cashmere, who promised to wait for him. Bob underwent basic training at Leppington on the outskirts of Sydney before embarking for Egypt aboard the SS Hawkes Bay in October 1915.

By July 1916, the British forces in the Middle East were preparing for a major battle with the Ottoman Turks and their German allies, whose forces were threatening the vital supply line of the Suez Canal. The British 52nd (Lowland) Division and the ANZAC Mounted Division, commanded by General Harry Chauvel, were massing near the Egyptian town of Romani on the northern end of the Sinai Peninsula. Bob was working with his comrades of the 1st and 2nd Light Horse Brigades on reconnaissance patrols to determine the location and strength of the Turkish units. Beginning on 20 July, the 1st and 2nd Light Horse Brigades undertook a series of patrols which continued until 3 August, the eve of the Battle of Romani. The two brigades alternated riding out from their base at Romani towards Katia at about 02:00 and bivouacking until dawn, at which time they advanced on a wide front until German or Ottoman fire was provoked. If the enemy position was weak, the light horse pushed forward, and if a counterattack began, the brigade retired slowly, thereafter to return to camp at Romani at nightfall. On one of those patrols, Bob’s section, led by Gallipoli veteran Sergeant Jock Davidson, became engaged in an intense firefight with Turkish troops near the town of Katia. As was the practice of the Light Horse, the men dismounted and fought on foot. During the skirmish Bob was hit by fire from a Turkish machine gun, which tore the flesh from the inside of both thighs. His squadron was forced to retreat under heavy fire, leaving Bob lying on the sand in the scorching sun. Bleeding badly from his wounds, Bob unwound the rough cloth puttees that bound his shins and boots and used them to create tourniquets around his legs to staunch the flow. The date was 29 July 1916; exactly one year to the day since he had enlisted at Cootamundra, and Bob’s 19th birthday.

Back at the Light Horse encampment, word spread of Bob’s disappearance. His best mate, Arthur Watkins, was determined to find him. That night, Arthur went AWOL (absent without leave), stealing out of the camp under cover of darkness and into the desert to look for his mate. He returned to camp in the morning to face disciplinary action having found no trace of Bob.

By early morning Bob had been found, not by Arthur but by a Turkish patrol. Bob was taken prisoner and then began an agonising 300 mile trip in a dreaded, swaying cacolet of the camel ambulance, north along the coast road. They could only travel at night as the Royal Navy patrolled the coast and shelled all movement. Bob woke up one morning to find a wounded English Yeomanry soldier, Horace Mantle, lying on the ground beside him. Later, Bob was present when an Armenian doctor amputated Horace's fly-blown and shattered arm. The amputation was performed while Horace was lying on the ground under a palm tree in a waddy bed. Bob stayed with Horace nursing him back to health as they continued on to Turkey. A lifelong friendship was forged. The journey eventually took them to a POW camp in Adana, southern Turkey, where Bob spent the rest of the war.

Bob's worst memory as a POW was when he was placed in the Florence Nightingale Hospital in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul). A German surgeon came through his ward inspecting the wounded and pronounced amputations for the two men before Bob. However, after examining Bob's poisoned legs, he recommended treatment, and Bob believed that the massive applications of iodine ordered by the doctor saved him.

Back in Australia, word eventually filtered through that Bob was wounded and missing in action. Having heard nothing more for months, Elsie’s family persuaded her to become engaged to another young man in the district, a banker with good prospects. Finally, word came through from Turkey confirming that Bob was alive and was indeed a prisoner of war. Elsie immediately broke of her engagement. She would wait for Bob.

With the end of the war in November 1918, Bob was repatriated to England, arriving in January 1919. After convalescing and visiting Horace’s family in Kidderminster near Birmingham, he finally embarked for Australia aboard the troopship Dongala, arriving in Sydney in late March 1919. Elsie was waiting but could barely recognise him, so emaciated was his body. In the prison camp he had contracted smallpox, which left his skin pockmarked and his body wasted. Army doctors had predicted that Bob would be lucky to see his 40th birthday.

Bob and Elsie married in 1921 and took a soldier-settlement loan to purchase a small farming block just outside Hillston in 1922. Bob cleared the scrub and mallee from the land on his own with a hand axe, a draught horse and a length of chain. Bob and Elsie raised four children on the farm that they built together; three daughters and one son, Robert. One of the many, sad, lifelong effects of Bob’s war service was that the injuries to his legs meant he could no longer ride a horse the way he had before. He used special padding strapped to his legs inside his trousers so that he could at least sit astride a horse, but the athletic feats of horsemanship that had been so much a part of his early life and had drawn him to the Light Horse were a thing of the past. Bob lived to be 79 years old, dying in 1976 just a year after his beloved Elsie.