Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

When I was a young child at state school, in the early 1960’s, Remembrance Day was always a very special time, when we school children would sit in the class room during that week listening to the stories on ABC radio about our Anzac heroes. When I was eight years old, our headmaster asked us children if we had a relative that died in World War One. I went home and spoke to my father, and he told me that his uncle Albert Doughty was killed in Gallipoli. The next day I told my headmaster my story and I was chosen together with a young girl, to carry and lay the school’s wreath at the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance that year. It turned out that the young girl was my second cousin Lesley Adamson, and she was representing the very same uncle.
The stories that we were told at school about the Gallipoli campaign in those early days, were missing the harrowing accounts that added substance to the real horrors faced by the Anzacs, as they all headed for the beach in their boats, and the hardships they endured while they were fighting their way up the steep inclines against appalling odds. It was only when I became a young adult that I interviewed my remaining relatives, and I put together a sketchy story of what really happened to my poor unfortunate uncle Albert Percy Doughty.
Albert Percy Doughty was the eldest of six children to Henry Richard Doughty and his wife Annie. Henry walked out on his wife and his family in 1902. Annie Doughty, now a single mother of six young children, left her home in Ballarat, and she moved her young family to South Melbourne to be close to her relatives there.
Most of the family history is lost in the past now, but I did learn that Albert Percy Doughty had obtained employment as a labourer on Station Pier in the Port of Melbourne. I found an article from the Melbourne Argus newspaper, published in 1912, that reported a story of Albert Percy Doughty assaulting another man, by punching him and breaking his nose. It was reported that Albert was waiting to catch a cable tram, when he witnessed a young lady who was running along the street screaming and crying. Albert approached her and she told him that a man was following her and she was frightened. Albert immediately confronted the man and punched him in the face, breaking his nose. Albert was interviewed by the police and he was arrested, and charged with assault, and he was fined.
When Albert enlisted into the army in 1914, his mother Annie told him that it was important to her that he had to go to church before his overseas adventure. Albert, his sister Jessie and his mother Annie, attended a service at St Pauls Cathedral in Melbourne. Albert had never been there before and he was so amazed at the beauty of the stain glass windows. While looking up at the beautiful artwork in the stain glass windows, he failed to see someone kneeling to pray in front of him, and he fell over them. One day close to Albert’s final day at home, and his journey overseas, he went to his local hotel to have a final beer with his mates and his three brothers. Two ladies began fighting outside in the street and Albert, always interested in helping damsels in distress, rushed outside to break them up. One of the ladies stuck a long pin into Albert’s thigh, causing him a great deal of pain.
Just before Albert boarded his troop ship he gave his brother-in-law Jack Paton, his treasure pocket watch to look after for him, until he returned from the war. Albert Percy Doughty was given the number 1648, as part of the Second Brigade, 6th Battalion, of the Australian Imperial Forces. Albert’s family said goodbye to him, and there were handshakes and kisses and cuddles from his family and friends, as he boarded the troop ship HMAS A54 ‘Runic’ that was bound for Egypt on the 19th of February 1915. Albert Percy Doughty was 23 years old, five foot eight inches tall, with blond hair and blue eyes and tattoos on both his forearms. His brother nicknamed him ‘Bella’ as he was from Ballarat. They would never see him again.
Albert landed at Gallipoli on the 25th of April 1915. His army record states that he was killed on the 8th of May 1915 in the Second Battle of Krithia. The Second Battle of Krithia was an attempt by the Allies to advance further on to the Helles battlefield during the Gallipoli battle and advance the position from the stalemate they were in. The village of Krithia and the neighbouring hill of Achi Baba had to be captured in order for the British to advance up the Gallipoli peninsula to the forts that controlled the passage of the Dardanelles straits. Not much ground was gained in that battle and their objective was never reached. Half the men who attacked in that action became casualties in just thirty five minutes of fighting that day. Albert’s body was never recovered. His mother received that dreaded telegram on the 15th of July 1915, many weeks after his death.
Two of Albert’s bothers, Henry and Robert, joined up and somehow through luck they fought and survived the horrors of the Western Front.
After World War One, Henry had trouble facing normal life again, and he walked away from his wife and two children. His son Jack told me, many years later, that he had never seen or heard from his father, and he didn’t even know when he died and where he was buried. I found out that Henry, an army Sergeant in the first war, had re-joined the AIF in World War Two, and he died while training soldiers in Melbourne. He was buried in an army grave in Springvale cemetery. Albert’s brother Robert, survived the first war and went on to have a normal married life with children. My great grandmother Annie Doughty never had a grave to visit, and to mourn over her beloved son Albert. The news of Albert’s death devastated her and she never did recover from her sadness until her death ten years later in 1925, when she was just fifty five years of age.
I went to Gallipoli with my wife Sue back in 2005 for the ninetieth anniversary, and as I stood facing the beach on that very cold night, I thought about my great uncle Albert, and those poor young men, fighting their way up the beach, cold and wet, in a hail of bullets, and I wept. I later thought about all the many descendants now living from Henry, Robert, their sister Jessie, and my grandfather William, and it saddens me to think of the possible descendants of Albert that never were, and all the wasted lives of all those many thousands of young men lost in war.
Lest We Forget.