by Honor Auchinleck with Ken Curnow OAM
If any one asked me if I knew where returned Light Horsemen from the First and Second World Wars are buried, I couldn’t answer, except to say that my grandfather General Sir Harry Chauvel who died on 4th March 1945 was cremated at Springvale Crematorium. Grevillea Plot, Garden 1, Bed A16 and Rose 38 marks the place where his ashes lie. As Melbourne had been his home in retirement and gardening had been one of his passions, it was appropriate, if not entirely understandable.
I have often wondered why his ashes were not taken to his childhood home at Tabulam on the banks of the Upper Clarence River in northern New South Wales. Perhaps it was simply because that in 1945 fuel rationing and wartime privations made such a journey difficult and possibly even inappropriate. After all, fuel was needed for other essential services. Or was it that my grandmother did not wish such distance to separate them even in death? After her death in 1979, she followed Sir Harry to Springvale Crematorium. Those who might have been able to answer my queries have long since passed away.
Perhaps for reasons of family privacy the final resting places of some other returned soldiers are known only to a few. I wonder how many personal memorials to these brave men are now all but forgotten? We tend to remember those who were killed in action or died of their injuries or disease and had no homecoming. But we often don’t notice or forget those who have passed on from our midst. For all sorts of reasons, some who returned did not want to be remembered. Sometimes, sadly, their families don’t wish to remember them either. Conflict has its hidden tragedies which ran on into the decades following the Armistice at the end of both world wars. While subsequent generations might carry the legacy of the past, it is also important to remember that those who served gave their tomorrow for our today.
For all these reasons and more, many of us only begin to find where the Light Horsemen lie on overseas battlefields on Gallipoli, Egypt, Palestine and on the Western Front.
When my husband and I lived in Turkey (he served at a NATO headquarters there) and we visited Gallipoli, my mother Elyne Mitchell asked me to take a photograph of her father General Sir Harry Chauvel sitting outside ‘his headquarters at Quinn’s Post’ and find the exact spot where his headquarters had been. Perhaps by mistake Elyne had sent me a photograph of her father sitting outside the Anzac Headquarters rather than the one she intended. On our first trips to Gallipoli in 1998 and with inadequate maps and knowledge, I found it impossible to pinpoint where Chauvel’s headquarters might have been – I had a lot to learn and like many others, the Gallipoli Peninsula began teaching me about my history and I’ve been learning ever since.
Knowing that Elyne would be disappointed when I told her that I couldn’t find the exact spot where the headquarters had been, I sent her photographs of Quinn’s Post cemetery and surrounding area, explaining that her father would have known the names of the 40 Light Horsemen whose remains are thought to lie in there. As a caring man, Chauvel was likely to have mourned the passing of each and every Light Horseman in his quiet, soldierly way.
If the number of graves is overwhelming for the uninitiated visitor, the small cemetery and memorial at the Nek is even more so.
The Nek is both cemetery and memorial to an ill-conceived attack that went tragically wrong. At dawn on 7th August 1915, when the 3rd Light Horse Brigade attacked the Turks, the 8th Light Horse Regiment sustained 284 casualties, 154 of whom were killed. The 10th Light Horse Regiment suffered similarly with 80 dead among its 138 casualties. The hearts of many Light Horsemen lie here on an area little bigger than a tennis court.
Only seven Light Horsemen lie in the Lone Pine Cemetery. The Lone Pine memorial lists the names of 3760 of those who fell at Gallipoli and who have no known grave. Once I had visited the Gallipoli Peninsula for the first time, I began to think of the entire ANZAC area as cemetery and a memorial to those who gave their lives and youth to their respective countries.
Research on the Commonwealth War Graves website revealed that at Shrapnel Valley there are the graves of 79 Light Horsemen. At Shell Green there are 122, while at Ari Burnu there 83. 28 Light Horsemen lie in Beach Cemetery. More lie in Embarkation Pier Cemetery. The numbers of the lost wartime generation always saddens.
Visitors to Gallipoli will always leave the peninsula having learned more than they expected and with far more questions for which answers require more research. At Beach Cemetery there is also the much-visited grave of John Kirkpatrick Simpson, (plot 1, row F, grave 1) also known as the man with the donkey. His epitaph reads ‘He gave his life that others may live’. Unsurprisingly his example caught the imagination of many, and memorials to the man and his donkey can be found from Kirkpatrick’s hometown of South Shields in northern England to Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance and outside the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.
Everywhere there are reminders of those from other units and other countries who died at different times and under different circumstances, but in the same conflict. In January 1998 during our wanders near Hill 60, Mark and I found a human long bone, perhaps a femur. We buried it beneath an olive tree. Those who were on opposing sides in life are indistinguishable in death.
Years later when I was working part-time for Cotswold Archaeology I attended a short course in osteo-archaeology at the Oxford University Centre of Continuing Education. We were given soil samples from the Western Front and asked to identify the tiny fragments of human bone – only with a trained eye and with the aid of a microscope could I tell the difference between minute bone and stone fragments. With DNA testing, there is the possibility of discovering identity, but for many they are as the Commonwealth War Graves tombstones testify, ‘Known only to God’. The Gallipoli Peninsula has more than its share of both Allies and Ottomans who are known only to God
The British memorial at Cape Helles (below centre) pays tribute to servicemen who came from all over the Commonwealth while the Turkish memorial commemorates those who lost their lives in defence of their homeland. A short distance from the Turkish Memorial is the French military cemetery. While tribute is given equally to the Dead, of all the participatory nations the French were often the forgotten contributors at Gallipoli.
A few years after our first visit to Turkey, Mark served as the Defence and Military Attache at the British Embassy in Ankara. Although we lived in Turkey for four and a half years and often visited Gallipoli, including for ANZAC Day commemorative events, I didn’t see all that I would like to have seen. I could return and still learn more. Across the Dardanelles on Turkey’s Troad Peninsular lies the site of Troy, the location of some of the earliest battles between East and West. The Gallipoli Campaign is the most recent of those battles.
Ken Curnow O.A.M (whose father Ralph Colman Curnow who served with the 8th Light Horse Regiment in World War One) not only visited the Australian memorials on Gallipoli, but also went to Israel and notably to Beersheba and Jerusalem.
