Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Joseph Herman Weinrich (Joseph Devlin) of Wirrabarra, South Australia was born in 1873 near Bangor between Port Germein and Murraytown in the southern Flinders Ranges.
After leaving the School, he worked as a stockbroker’s clerk to and later as a miner in the Bangor slate mines.
He enlisted at Liverpool New South Wales on 28 November 1914 under the alias Joseph Devlin and lowered his age from 42 years to 37. Perhaps he decided to lower his age to ensure he would be accepted and changed his name in an effort to escape the discrimination and jibing his German names would most certainly have attracted.
The 2nd Battalion recruited the majority of its men from New South Wales and sailed from Sydney aboard HMAT Suffolk on 18 October 1914.
Private Joseph Devlin (Weinrich) sailed from Sydney with the 2nd quota of reinforcements for the 2nd Battalion aboard HMAT Seang Bee on 11 February 1915.
The 2nd Battalion commanded by Lieutenant Colonel George Braund landed with the remainder of the 1st Brigade on 25 April as part of the second and third waves.
Soon after the landing, Private ‘Devlin’ was shot through the right thigh and abdomen and died of wounds aboard HMTS Derfflinger on 30 April 1915.

The eight month campaign in Gallipoli was fought by Commonwealth and French forces in an attempt to force Turkey out of the war, to relieve the deadlock of the Western Front in France and Belgium, and to open a supply route to Russia through the Dardanelles and the Black Sea.

The Allies landed on the peninsula on 25-26 April 1915; the 29th Division at Cape Helles in the south and the Australian and New Zealand Corps north of Gaba Tepe on the west coast, an area soon known as Anzac. On 6 August, further landings were made at Suvla, just north of Anzac, and the climax of the campaign came in early August when simultaneous assaults were launched on all three fronts.

Lone Pine was a strategically important plateau in the southern part of Anzac which was briefly in the hands of Australian forces following the landings on 25 April. It became a Turkish strong point from May to July, when it was known by them as 'Kanli Sirt' (Bloody Ridge).

The Australians pushed mines towards the plateau from the end of May to the beginning of August and on the afternoon of 6 August, after mine explosions and bombardment from land and sea, the position was stormed by the 1st Australian Brigade. By 10 August, the Turkish counter-attacks had failed and the position was consolidated. It was held by the 1st Australian Division until 12 September, and then by the 2nd, until the evacuation of the peninsula in December.

The LONE PINE MEMORIAL stands on the site of the fiercest fighting at Lone Pine and overlooks the whole front line of May 1915. It commemorates more than 4,900 Australian and New Zealand servicemen who died in the Anzac area - the New Zealanders prior to the fighting in August 1915 - whose graves are not known. Others named on the memorial died at sea and were buried in Gallipoli waters.

The memorial stands in LONE PINE CEMETERY. The original small battle cemetery was enlarged after the Armistice when scattered graves were brought in from the neighbourhood, and from Brown's Dip North and South Cemeteries, which were behind the Australian trenches of April-August 1915.

There are now 1,167 Commonwealth servicemen of the First World War buried or commemorated in this cemetery. 504 of the burials are unidentified. Special memorials commemorate 183 soldiers (all but one of them Australian, most of whom died in August), who were known or believed to have been buried in Lone Pine Cemetery, or in the cemeteries at Brown's Dip.