Gallipoli

[Woody]

The fail in rare excellent article

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... paign.html

[Mrs Ex-Ascot]

Yes, very interesting article.

[Slasher]

Indeed.

[CharlieOneSix]

My grand-uncle emigrated to Australia on his own at 16 in 1909. He joined the Australian Army, fought at Gallipoli - and survived.
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grandunc.jpg (26.62 KiB) Viewed 374 times

[TheGreenGoblin]

How absolutely sad that this chap's memorabilia, which was of such historic value, nearly ended up being destroyed. Very good article and RIP Sub Lieutenant Gilbert Speight.

Whoever threw this collection onto a tip deserves their head read! We live in an historically illiterate society.

[G-CPTN]

Whoever threw this collection onto a tip deserves their head read!

Chances are that the items were removed by 'house clearance' contractors who would have picked-over and removed items that they could easily turn into cash and dumped the rest.

Maybe even a local authority clearing out a rental property after the death of the tenant.

[llondel]

I have stuff from my FIL's past, some of it I've looked at and declared that it must be significant to someone and refused to throw it out. We sent his old high school year book back to the school, turns out he was treasurer of one of the US honour societies during WW2 and we had the membership records and some (damaged) pictures of some formal dinner, they all ended up back with the society. He worked at the MIT Radiation Lab during the war, but many of his classmates were in the forces and shipped out - they'd all write to him and he'd send out a letter to all of them with an update on all of them. Most of it is mundane, but I'm sure has historical interest to someone. There are also family photos dating back to the 19th century in the pile.

[ian16th]

He worked at the MIT Radiation Lab during the war,

This old radar fitter would loved to have had a very long chat with him!

[G-CPTN]

MIT Radiation Laboratory

[TheGreenGoblin]

MIT Radiation Laboratory

It is extraordinary how much technology and people the UK simply gave to the USA in WW2, e.g. the cavity magnetron, nuclear physicists, jet engine etc. etc.

The Cavity Magnetron

I guess needs must when Hitler vomits on your duvet.

Back to Gallipoli whose main flawed plan was formulated by the son of an American import to Britain.

[Undried Plum]

Exactly a hundred years ago a soldier who was present at Gallipoli was buried in a private family gravesite on a property quite close to where I live. The tomb is still there, albeit never visited other than by a sole representative from the War Graves Commission.

I remember an elderly lady who lived nearby telling me that she remembered the funeral cortege. She, now dead, was just a wee girl and what she remembered most vividly was the the enormous black plumes on the heads of the horses drawing the horse up the field to the copse where the walled gravesite is located.

Local gossip used to hold that he had been shot for desertion, but when I researched the story of his time in Gallipoli I found that not to be true. Yes, he was a shirker and a malingerer and yes he escaped Gallipoli by colouring his tongue with beetroot and faking Scarlet Fever to get himself medevaced off the beach to a hospital ship which took him to Egypt.

Ironically for a chronic skyver, he died of Spanish Flu in an Edinburgh hospital. He was on the run from the Army at the time and seems to have been trying to make his way by train to visit his mother when he fell ill. He was, technically, on an in absentia Charge of Desertion at the time he fell ill, but I see that the Charge was crossed off his record on the day he died. A junior officer from his regiment attended the burial and of course wrote a report. I have a copy of that report.

I obtained his Army records which are pretty much complete and the story of his thoroughly rotten time in the Army is very interesting. I shall try to write a summary here if I'm on driving duties this weekend.

The reason why I will not identify him by name is that I think he may have some descendants in Australia who would no doubt prefer to think of him as some kind of Anzac hero, which he most certainly was not, neither at Gallipoli nor at the Battle of Polygon Wood (the Somme) which he also fled.