Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Charles ‘Charley’ Khan (2395) the son of Curlanah Khan was born in India in 1885. He migrated to Australia about 1895. He enlisted in Keswick, SA, on 6 April 1915 when he was 30 years and 2 months. Charles Khan, known also as ‘Charley,’ was described variously as a Brahmin, Indian, Afghan, Sikh, Catholic, Anglican, ‘Mohammedan’, ‘coloured man’, but was actually an Indian Muslim from Calcutta. A war veteran of Renmark from more recent times, whose father served in the Second World War, he could recall how his own father had told him, ‘Charlie was a Muslim’. His father, as a young man, had known Charles Khan when he was very old. Charles’s complexion was described as ‘dark’ and the racial abbre-viation ‘Abor’ was added for emphasis. He was a frail little man with twinkling eyes and a smile which would not wear off.

Prior to the war, he was a very well-known Renmark identity. He lived in Renmark and was early on a labourer, then a pie-shop owner and also ran the ‘Corner Restaurant’ selling hot suppers, fresh fruit, tea, coffee, cool drinks, and also distributing merchandise to any part of the River Land District, Renmark, SA. While stationed at the Mitcham Military Camp, and before his embarkation, Charles married Maud May Maynard, an Australian woman from Noarlunga, South Australia.

Charles Khan joined the army as soon as war was declared. With other lads he passed through the Renmark recruiting office at the beginning of February. He left his business for a new venture - he was off to fight in the war. He enlisted in the AIF on the 6 April 1915 at Keswick, South Australia as a Private in the 7th Reinforcements. He was transferred to the 50th Battalion as a cook and embarked on the HMAT Kanowna.

Charles Khan was initially judged to be fit for service and deployed with reinforcements in Gallipoli on 17 September 1915. He was among a couple of Muslims who fought against the Turkish army at Gallipoli. His Muslim ethnic identity didn’t prevent him from fighting in the AIF against the Sultan’s army in the Gallipoli campaign. Indeed, being a loyal and patri-otic soldier, he fought shoulder to shoulder with his Aussie comrades, sharing in common with them those truly challenging times. After serving in Gallipoli, he went to France, Flan-ders (Belgium) and Egypt, and was badly wounded in the field at Bullecourt, France, in 1917. Charles also contracted diphtheria in March 1919 and was admitted to the 14th Station Hospital at the Boulogne Base. He re-joined his unit in France in April and then he was sent to England. On the 15 July 1919 he was returned to Australia and, during the voyage, Charles was admitted to the ship’s hospital with phlebitis for eight days.

Private Charles Khan was a ‘good soldier in his day, had an excellent record, bore a good character’, and was known to be a good citizen, a ‘coloured’ man, but a friend. As an An-zac soldier in the desert of Egypt, through the sore trials of the Gallipoli Peninsula, and in the glory and fury of Pozieres, Charles experienced the deep horror, calamity and so many crimson patches showing the wounds of the Great War. Sergeant V. Dridan, of the 50th Bat-talion, writing a letter from France to his sister, Nurse Dridan, spoke of having seen a num-ber of Renmark men and states that the Battalion cook was Charley Khan, at one time pie shop keeper at Renmark, ‘as residents will remember’. Particularly, he recalled:

Charley has done good service from Gallipoli on. I only wish the shirkers in Australia could have seen the brave faces of the boys here fighting for them when we had an order to ‘stand to’ the other night; it might have moved some of them.

While in the army, Charles maintained his honour, with a contribution that was selfless for which he was well known among members of his battalion. Charles became something of a ‘legend’ - in battle he bore the classic attribute of the ‘born soldier’, and when he made a meal for his unit, he became regarded as a ‘born cook’. His Aussie brother-in-arms re-marked, ‘Everybody in the battalion to which I belonged knew him as Charley’, further stat-ing, ‘He was a most valuable ally. I can testify to that’:

Charley was an Indian and the only ‘coloured’ man in the unit. Everybody liked him; there was no colour line in the trenches.

Charles was one of the most popular men in the Battalion because he was known as the cook whose cooker was always the ‘cleanest and smartest’. Although he was the company’s cook and a good one, on two occasions he and his cooker were knocked over by shellfire and Charles was wounded again on one of those times. However, Charles’s determination to look after others and get the job done is a lasting memory. His brother-in-arms testified, ‘Whenever we came out of the trenches, we could depend upon Charley having a meal ready. If one of the troops returned from a night expedition to a poultry yard with something more appetising than bully beef, Charley could be depended upon to cook it to perfection and say nothing. He was a most valuable ally’.

Kevin Bird, a grand-son of Charles Khan, who could affirm what he heard of his uncle as a little boy, said: ‘Grandfather Charles was a ‘devil’ in the army. He was always mucking around and playing jokes on his mates’. A local newspaper also wrote about Charles Khan, saying that he was well-known in the battalion as the C. O. when the unit was in ‘supports’ near Villers Bretonneux, a commune in the Somme, northern France. Just after the big push in April of 1919, Charles appeared more like a ‘comedian’ or a ‘member of a jazz band’ than a soldier. He went into Villers Bretonneux township one morning during a time when ‘Jerry’ was shelling it, and saved a ‘dress suit, and a top hat and an old-fashioned French carriage’. Shortly after, he wore the suit, and ‘harnessed a pair of mules to the carriage and drove up to the trenches with the midday meal’. During the sojourn of the battalion, Charles looked more ‘stylish’ in a mufti outfit.

Charles Khan was also mentioned in despatches by General John Monash. In the words of Sergeant S. C. E. Herring, Battalion-General commanding the 13th Australian Infantry Bri-gade, and Sergeant E. G. Sinclair, Major-General, commanding the 4th Australian Infantry Brigade: Khan’s work was always carried out efficiently and his cheerfulness and willing-ness in adverse circumstances made his services valuable to the battalion at all times. Be-sides his fighting skills, he was ‘commended for his most willing, able and conscientious work, being responsible in no small degree for the health of all the men in his Company’.

From the Great War, Charles gained honours for valour – he was a soldier with excellent accomplishments and was entitled to wear four decorations. The award, the Meritorious Service Medal, relating to the conspicuous services rendered by Charles Kahn, was pub-lished in the Fifth supplement, No. 31370 in the London Gazette, dated 3 June 1919 as fol-lows: ‘His Majesty, The King, has been graciously pleased to approve the award of the Mer-itorious Service Medal to the undermentioned, in recognition of valuable services rendered with the Armies in France and Flanders: No. 2395 Private C. Khan’. This notice was also promulgated in the Australian Commonwealth Gazette, No. 113, on 6 October 1919. A let-ter was also sent to Charles’s wife at Noarlunga, from the Major at Victoria Barracks, Mel-bourne, informing her of the award and the extract of the newspaper article. Besides the Meritorious Service Medal, Charles was also issued with the 1914/5 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

In particular, Charles would be reminisced by his contribution as an Anzac Muslim in the battle of Gallipoli, in which the Ottomans paid a heavy price for their victory. It was also a costly failure for the Allied forces who expected that the Ottoman ramshackle structure would simply implode. Nevertheless, the Anzacs were closer to accomplishing the seem-ingly impossible than anyone on the Turkish side realised. In 1935, Tasman Malcolm Millington, of the Imperial War Graves’ Commission, stationed at Chanak (Canakkale) in the Dardanelles, gave some impressions in The Mufti, a booklet-tabloid of the Returned Sailors’ and Soldiers’ Imperial League of Australia – Victorian Branch, saying ‘They [Turks] have the greatest respect for the Australian soldiers and the way they fought ... They in no way regard the Gallipoli campaign as a victory for themselves. They are simply thank-ful to Allah [God] that it ended when it did, and they look upon it as a very bloody and very regrettable conflict for both sides’.

Charles was discharged on the 29 September 1919 and continued to live in Renmark where he was a member of the local sub-branch of the RSA. Over time, his health deteriorated. Af-ter a short illness, the direct result of war service, he passed away in the Renmark Hospital in 1936. Charles was often very ill but when under acute pain made little of his suffering: ‘he was ever a fighter’. The people of Renmark, including his war mates, met to pay their last respects to him. Trumpeter Don Mitchell blew the ‘Last Post.’ The flags in the town were flown at half-mast and his remains were peacefully laid to rest. His wife, Maud, with whom he had four children, passed away in 1957. Charles and Maud’s graves are in the Old Section of the Renmark General Cemetery, South Australia.

Like Corporal Abbey Kaus, Private Charles Khan also became a soldier of a much broader collective story of the Anzacs in Gallipoli. Stories also emerged from the Turkish side. A statement obtained by the Special Correspondent through the Turkish diplomatic channels said, Our [Turkish] soldiers in the future seek nothing better than to take heroic Anzacs as ‘models of how men should fight for the cause they believe in’ and an example to all how they developed ‘soldierly virtues’. As a brave enemy, Australian soldiers enjoyed a ‘respect by the Turks’. Liman von Sanders, the German General who served as a military adviser to the Ottoman Army also admitted that a Turkish soldier (asker) has few equals in attack, be-cause it is ‘second nature to him to laugh at death’; however, he found in the Anzacs foeman ‘more than worthy of his steel’. In turn, the Anzacs also entertained a great respect for the Turk, both as a fighter and a man, ‘they are great fighters’ who ‘fight every foot of the ground’.

From the book:

Dzavid Haveric, 'A History of Muslims in the Australian Military from 1885 to 1945: Loyalty, Patriotism, Contribution', Cambridge Scholars Publishing, London, 2024

Meritorious Service Medal

'As a Company Cook under all circumstances this man has proved himself a most willing, conscientious and able worker. he is responsible in no small degree for the general good health of all the men in his company. His work is always carried out efficiently and his cheerfulness and willingness even under adverse circumstances have made his services very valuable to the Battalion at all times.'
Source: 'Commonwealth Gazette' No. 113
Date: 6 October 1919