Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Extract from a letter written by Colonel H.E. Elliott, CO of the 7th Battalion to a friend in Essendon dated February 1916,

“With regard to those you ask particulars of, viz., Greig, Danaher and Private A.J. McArthur, McArthur was in the same boat, and was one of the crew. The boat was caught in the machine gun fire, and a bullet passed clean through his neck as he rowed, and then through his thigh, severing the artery. Sergeant Bastin, the Platoon Sergeant, saw the blood spurt out, and attempted to rise to render first aid, but was so encumbered by the bodies of the fallen, that he could not get to his feet. McArthur saw his face and read his intention. "Don't bother with me, Sergeant,"- he called out "I am done for," and it was so. In about four or five minutes at the outside, he fell forward dead but until death relaxed his grasp on the oar he kept on rowing and keeping the stroke. He was a member of the Essendon Rifles - a Sergeant--and I am proud indeed of him and the manner of his death, which deserves to be recorded in the annals of his regiment for all time. As I wrote to you in an earlier letter, he was not alone in his heroic determination. Several others, rowing with their backs to the fire were hit again and again, yet never ceased to row till they dropped dead at the oar. Thus they kept the machine guns busy and by their determination and heroism in keeping on thus unswervingly into the teeth of this terrible fire, they saved the other boats from appreciable loss. You can congratulate McArthur's parents on his magnificent heroism. If death in battle be a glorious end, then to the very fullest extent was this glory won by this brave little cheery red-haired laddie.”