2005
90th Anniversary Collection

At 4.30am on April 25th 1915, as dawn's first dim light illuminated the narrow beach and towering cliffs of the Gallipoli Peninsular, the first wave of Anzacs landed amid a torrent of enemy fire. These, the brave men of the AIF 3rd Brigade under Major General E.G. Sinclair-MacLagan, relentlessly charged the waiting Turkish soldiers, pushing across the beach and up the steep cliffs. Within 24 hours, despite continued and fierce enemy fire, 12,000 troops were ashore and the beachhead secured. But a great cost was exacted in this the largest amphibious invasion of its time. In just one day 2,000 Australians had given their lives on the beach at Gallipoli.

Amid the bloodied battle weary that landed on that fateful April day, was John Simpson Kirkpatrick of the Australian Army Medical Corps. A strapping lad born in England in 1892, he was well suited as a stretcher-bearer. ‘Simpson’ had little regard for the formalities of military life. But this larrikin lad had a fierce commitment to his fellow Anzacs. When a lack of stretcher-bearers gave rise to fears that men would be left to die on the frontline Simpson decided he could do better alone. He commandeered a donkey and more than a dozen times each day he and his donkey traversed Gallipoli’s most treacherous ground. Each day he shrugged off warnings of peril, retorting “my worries” to those concerned. The ‘man with the donkey’ continued to ferry hundreds of wounded and dying to care. But on the morning of May 19th 1915 Simpson fell to Turkish guns. Although never decorated for his valour, this young man has come to embody the Anzac Spirit.