Opinion & Commentary
The ANZAC story
Stephen Kirchner |
23 April 2010
My grandfather enlisted as a 25-year-old electrical engineer on 28 August 1914 with the rank of lieutenant. Assigned to the 12th infantry battalion, D company, he embarked for the Suez aboard HMAT Geelong on 17 September 1914 and then the EMT Devanha for the Gallipoli peninsula. On the morning of 25 April 1915, his company landed north of Ari Burnu in the area known to the Australians as ‘The Sphinx.’ Charles Bean describes the boats landing ‘under heavy fire all the way to shore … bullet after bullet went home amongst the men in the crowded boats.’ My grandfather is described wading through the water, recovering the oars that were needed to get the boats ashore. One of the handful of men to reach Russell’s Top, he reorganised the survivors into platoons and sections before stopping short of The Nek to entrench. By 22 May, he had been promoted to Captain, but was taken out of action by typhoid on 18 July and sent to Malta, before embarking for Australia in October.
In October 1916, he embarked the HMAT Botanist and rejoined the 12th in France, before being wounded in action in February 1917. He returned to the front in September 1917 and was hospitalised with influenza in June 1918. He later took part in the assault on the Hindenburg Outpost-Line on 18 September 1918, when he lost his foot to a German artillery barrage. He returned to Australia in May 1919 and died in Sydney in 1964.
Bean’s history was written in the 1920s through to the 1940s and reflects the prose style and attitudes of its time. It sometimes reads as quaint today, but it gave me a better understanding of my grandfather and family history and a very personal insight into the story of ANZAC.
For those who may have had relatives who served in World War I, I would recommend consulting the comprehensive index to each volume of Bean's history to find out more about their service as one way of remembering our veterans this ANZAC Day.
Dr Stephen Kirchner is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Finance and Economics, Faculty of Business, University of Technology Sydney. He is also a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.
