Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

My father was deployed to Gallipoli as a stretcher bearer with the First Australian Casualty Clearing Station. The image is a scan from CE Bean's Photographic History Picture volume of my dad in the front carrying a wounded soldier down through wire gully. He remembered the day the picture was taken and marked it specially in the book. The other image is of him in uniform, 1914 after enlistment. He was one of the last to leave Gallipoli. He took the flag with him and it is now in Roseville RSL behind glass. From Harvey Broadbent's book, The Boys that came Home my father is quoted as follows: "We had still expected a lot of casualties, and because the men in the line had no hope of holding the Turks if they came over. the casualty clearing stations were the last t go off. About four o'clock on the morning of the 20th we were moved to the beach and put into a barge. The British naval officer who was in charge of the beach called out two or three times 'Anybody left? Anybody left?. Then he got onto the boat and away we went out to the ships off shore. We went about half a mile off shore when they started to fire shells into the stores dumps. Of course, there was such a lot of equipment left".

My father always felt is was an honour and a privilege to be on the last boat off. He had expected, he told me to be captured by the Turks. They were evacuated through to Egypt where the units were reformed and he became part of the 5th Division serving in the 14th Field Ambulance. And there to Marseilles and Fromelles.