sign in sign up
<<
Home , John Monash

THE THE LOST LOST BOYS The untold stories of the under-age soldiers This extraordinary book captures the

BOYS who fought in the First World War incredible and previously untold stories In the First World War of 1914 –1918, thousands of of forty Anzac boys who fought in the boys across Australia and New Zealand lied about their PAUL BYRNES First World War, from Gallipoli to the age, forged a parent’s signature and left to fight on the Armistice. Featuring haunting images other side of the world. Though some were as young as of the boys taken at training camps and behind the lines, these tales are Paul Byrnes joined The Morning thirteen, they soon found they could die as well as any both heartbreaking and rousing, full of Herald in 1976, reporting from various man. Like Peter Pan’s lost boys, they have remained daring, ingenuity, recklessness, random corners of the world for a decade,

PAUL BYRNES horror and capricious luck. before specialising as a feature writer forever young. These are their stories. and film critic. He was director of A unique perspective on the First the Sydney Film Festival for ten years, World War, The Lost Boys is military until 1998. In 2007, he won the Pascall history made deeply personal, a Prize, Australia’s highest award for powerful homage to youthful bravery critical writing in the arts. This book and a poignant reminder of the is the result of a lifelong interest in the sacrifice of war. First World War. He lives in Australia MILITARY HISTORY

and France. ISBN 978-1-925870-50-3

9781925 870503 >

www.affirmpress.com.au

20190722_TheLostBoys_Jacket_FA.indd 1 22/7/19 12:19 pm FOREWORD

They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old: Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun, and in the morning We will remember them. ‘For the Fallen’, Laurence Binyon

PRIVATE MILLER MAFFEKING FERGUSSON, from Quorn, , arrived in France on 9 April 1917 as a reinforcement. Nearly a month later, on 5 May, he received multiple gunshot wounds during the 27th ’s attack near Bapaume in the Somme Valley. He was taken back to the 3rd Casualty Clearing Station but died a few hours later. He is buried in the nearby Grevillers British war cemetery. He had claimed to be eighteen years old when he enlisted, but he was really sixteen years and four months old. His two older brothers, Thomas and William, also served; both survived. Miller’s distinctive middle name – although misspelled – commemorates a famous siege in the Boer War, which concluded with a British victory six months before he was born. Private Fergusson was one of several thousand under-age boys who served in the Anzac forces in the First World War. Most of their stories have never been told.

6 THE LOST BOYS

n the First World War of 1914–1918, their manhood, to escape family author- Ithousands of Australian and New ity, to take part in adventures. What’s Zealand boys lied about their ages, surprising to us now is that their parents forged a parent’s signature and went off let them go: did they not care about their to fight in a war on the other side of the children? Did they value patriotism and world. They found they could die as well duty above their own offspring? Has the as any man, but they could never grow world changed that much? This book is old. Like Peter Pan’s lost boys, they have an attempt to understand, rather than remained forever young. condemn, but there is much to under- One hundred years later, they’re all stand. Australia in 1914 was almost a gone, but how well do we remember different country. them? Australian historians have written little about them, perhaps because in a war of such profound horror and loss, this story is just one tragedy among many. Tens of millions died in those he idea for this book began in four years, many of them civilians. Why TYpres in Belgium in June 2017, should we remember these headstrong almost a century after the first rumblings lads, many of whom were almost men? of the Battle of Passchendaele. I was No-one forced them to go, after all. there to research another project on the Nor is it surprising that boys as young Western Front when I came across a list as twelve wanted to go. Teenage boys of 170 under-age soldiers who were on have always been in a hurry to prove the ’s Roll

BOY 1ST CLASS RONALD ROTHSAY WRIGHT was fourteen when he enlisted in 1915 and served on HMAS Sydney. Hailing from Semaphore, South Australia, he died from injuries sustained in heavy seas off Norway in December 1916.

8 THE LOST BOYS of Honour. I knew what that meant: A few stories on that list stood out. none of them came back. The Roll of There was William Arthur Leslie Honour records the Australian dead Richards, aged sixteen, who joined a from all conflicts – more than 100,000 Newcastle battalion in which his former names, of whom 62,000 died in the First teacher was now his officer. There was World War. Those 170 boys represent a fifteen-year-old Jack Harris from Sydney, tiny percentage of the 62,000, but the who died at Lone Pine, eighteen hours list is a work in progress. The legal age after arriving on Gallipoli, because his of enlistment in officer had a 1914 in Austra- death wish. And lia was between They may have been too there was Leslie nineteen and young, too wild and too full Thomas Prior, thirty-eight, so the of romantic ideas for their from , Australian War who could not Memorial initially own good, but these boys stay out of only included boys had grit. trouble. He died under eighteen. at Bullecourt, a When eighteen- battle that should year-olds are included, the list will grow. never have happened, three months Each under-age boy on that list had a after his fifteenth birthday. He was the short biography, enough to form an idea second-youngest Australian to die in the of each soldier. These fragments were First World War, and the youngest to be remarkable: heartbreaking, but full of killed in action. daring, ingenuity and recklessness, random As appalling as some of their stories horror and capricious luck. The more I are, they are not all tragedies. Some of dug, the richer the details became. Jennifer the boys lived through the war and re- Milward, who put that list together, aided started their lives. The youngest Anzac enormously with that task. is a New Zealander, Leslie Shaw, who

10 THE LOST BOYS enlisted at thirteen and eight months. different Australia that sent them. He survived the battlefields to live an As they prepared for war, some of adventurous life after the war. these boys had splendid photographs This book offers just a small selection taken by professional photographers of these boys’ stories, arranged as a who worked around the training camps chronology, taking the reader through in Australia and behind the lines in the war from Gallipoli to the Armistice. France and Belgium. Many families I have tried to address aspects of history have kept these as cherished records and through each story, assuming that some reminders of their loved ones. I thank readers will have little knowledge of this those who shared them. They are all war. I have done that partly because I acknowledged at the end of the book. hope young people will read it. I have tried to find relatives of most remains an important day of the people in this book, with limited in our culture, but the ways and means success. I would be pleased to hear from of commemoration in Australia have anyone who can add more to these stories. long been dominated by militarists, They may have been too young, too rather than pacifists. We remember our wild and too full of romantic ideas for soldiers with sorrow, but not why they their own good, but these boys had grit. went or who sent them. We justify their Their stories are a microcosm of the suffering with words like ‘hero’ and ‘sac- Australian experience in the First World rifice’. The stories of these boy soldiers War: they ate the same food and fought are sometimes heroic, but that was not the same fights as the older men, suf- my purpose in writing about them. If we fered the same privations, indignities and remember them, we should also remem- losses, endured or did not as tempera- ber that they should never have been ment and fate decided. Some of them be- there. It’s right to ask why they went and came men in the process, old before their who allowed them to go, lest it should time. Others never got the chance. happen again. In that sense, it was not a

FOREWORD 11 ALBERT SCOTT, JOHN LYONS & HUGHIE O’DONNELL

OUR THREE SONS

ALBERT SCOTT, a Queensland cane-cutter, was ‘thoroughly anxious to serve’ in the First World War when he was seventeen.

hen war broke out, Andrew now famous phrase: Australia would WFisher was about to become support Britain ‘to the last man and the prime minister of Australia for the last shilling’ against its foes. The crowd third time in six years. He was a quietly cheered lustily. spoken Scot, a miner who had migrated A few kilometres from this hotel to Australia in 1885. He had led the balcony, Albert Stanley Scott ‘heard Australian Labor Party since 1907, the call’. He was the fifth son of Joseph guided by firm and Eliza Scott, socialist principles who had lived in and a high sense Older boys could go to Gympie in earlier of humanity. war as heroes, with a party years. They now The idea of war grew sugar cane in and cheers, and crying appalled him but a beautiful valley his loyalty to Great mothers and sisters waving at Mount Bauple, Britain was firm, handkerchiefs and flags. halfway between even if his belief in Boys who were under-age Gympie and its greatness was Maryborough. qualified. had to steal away and be Before they met At the end of July cunning about it. and married in 1914, as the drums Brisbane, Joe Scott beat their loudest had followed the in Europe, Fisher pledged Australian same path as Andrew Fisher – leaving support for the Mother Country if war Britain for a better future. The Scotts should come. Fisher won the election almost certainly knew Fisher, who had on 5 September 1914, a month into the come to Gympie as a miner in 1887. war. On 7 September he gave a speech After his schooling at Mount Bauple, from a hotel balcony in Maryborough, Albert Scott went cutting cane – back- Queensland, in which he repeated his breaking physical work. The photograph

32 THE LOST BOYS taken just after he enlisted shows he to be eighteen. The recruiters sent him to had the hands to prove it. He looks like Enoggera Camp in Brisbane – where the he’s wearing leather gloves. Even so, 15th Battalion was being raised. at five feet six-and-a-half inches (168 centimetres), he was just tall enough to get into the army. He was a skinny n central , John Thomas fifty-seven kilograms, with tanned face ILyons also ‘heard the call’. This was and ears that look like they could have a popular patriotic phrase at the time. lifted him off the ground in a high wind. It’s probably fair to say that each man With seven brothers and three sisters, and boy heard a different call, whatever those ears are bound to have attracted it was – for some it was the Empire, for comment. others it was duty or God or adventure. Recruiting began in Melbourne on For some it was an escape from poverty 5 August and in Sydney six days later. or misery. Men had to be between nineteen and John Lyons was the eldest in a large thirty-eight, at least five feet six inch- Catholic family that would eventually es tall (168 centimetres) with a chest number eleven children – same as the measurement of at least thirty-four Scotts. They lived in South Murchison, inches (eighty-six centimetres). If under where John Thomas senior was a ‘channel twenty-one, they had to have the written overseer’, working on the Goulburn Weir. consent of a parent. Albert set off for the John Thomas junior was sixteen and a recruiting station with a letter signed by few months old. Older boys could go to both parents. ‘We trust you will en- war as heroes, with a party and cheers, deavour to pass him as he is thoroughly and crying mothers and sisters waving anxious to serve in some capacity.’ handkerchiefs and flags. Boys who were Enlisting at Maryborough on 23 Sep- under-age had to steal away and be tember, he was one month past his sev- cunning about it. John had a friend who enteenth birthday, although he claimed wanted to go too. They knew the train

ALBERT SCOTT, JOHN LYONS & HUGHIE O’DONNELL 33 to Melbourne would be the first place as labourer and was assigned to A people would look, so they hopped on Company, 3rd Battalion. their bicycles in August 1914 and took He claimed he was nineteen years and the road north towards Shepparton. So two months – adding about thirty-two began a very long ride to Sydney, more months. He gave his correct birthplace than 700 kilometres away. That they – Murchison, Victoria – but put down chose this path, rather than ride 170 the name of his second brother Victor as kilometres to Melbourne, tells us some- next of kin. Curiously, he did not bother thing about how determined they were. to change his name. The examining John knew it would take at least a doctor described John as five feet week, maybe more. They would have six inches tall (168 centimetres) and to avoid the towns in daylight, in case a 149 pounds (sixty-eight kilograms), policeman was looking for them. They complexion fair, eyes blue, hair brown. would have to sleep rough or in farm That doctor was Captain JWB Bean, sheds, but the farmers might give them brother of the Australian journalist, food and water, if they explained what , who was preparing to they were doing. They would not be the depart as Australia’s first and only war only ones on this road: many men who correspondent of this new war. didn’t have the money for the train were Captain Bean had qualified in medi- walking to Sydney to join up. There were cine at Cambridge and specialised in an- no country enlistment centres yet. aesthetics and dentistry. It tells us some- John made it to Sydney by early thing about the leniency of recruiting in September. On 3 September, the 1914 that a man as experienced as Bean Australian government offered Britain would allow a boy of sixteen to join the a second contingent of 6000 men, on battalion, but he was hardly alone. Med- top of the 20,000 already promised. ical officers all over the country turned a This was the day that John Lyons signed blind eye to those under nineteen. In the his papers. He listed his occupation case of John Lyons, they even took him

34 THE LOST BOYS when there were many older men trying now carry twenty-nine officers, 2202 to find a place in the new forces. other ranks (and fifteen horses). The John’s plan worked. He spent the next great danger on these ships, with so six weeks hiding in plain sight, as the many men packed in, was infectious unit received equipment and stores in disease. Steaming away from Sydney, the dribs and drabs. They were camped at Euripides already had eight men in the Kensington Racecourse, a pony track sick bay with gonorrhoea, and one case now long gone, where the training was of measles. as primitive as the facilities. The men of Euripides arrived in King George’s the first contingent could march in step, Sound, off Albany in Western but few knew one end of a rifle from Australia, on 26 October, joining the other, and discipline was sometimes thirty-six other transport ships in the optional. Colonel Henry MacLaurin, first Anzac convoy. They sailed on 1 commander of the 1st Brigade, com- November – 30,000 men and 8000 plained that the hurried recruitment had horses, on twenty-six Australian and drawn ‘all the wastrels of the city’. The ten New Zealand ships, guarded by September arrivals from the country, three escorts: HMS Minotaur, HMAS like John, were considered much more Melbourne and HMAS Sydney. The suitable. They were bigger, stronger, Japanese armoured cruiser Ibuki joined fitter and most of them already knew them two days later with two more how to shoot. transport ships out of Fremantle. This John left Sydney on the Euripides, on convoy, twenty-four kilometres long 20 October 1914. He hit the jackpot and nineteen kilometres wide, was the in terms of vessel: Euripides was the largest ever to leave Australia. largest passenger and cargo ship in None of the soldiers on board knew the Aberdeen White Star Line, built to where they were going, but they all carry 1200 paying passengers. After a knew it was going to be big – the most lightning refit in Brisbane, she could wonderful and terrible adventure. The

ALBERT SCOTT, JOHN LYONS & HUGHIE O’DONNELL 35 terrible started immediately: thousands except his age on his forms, which sug- were seasick. The smell of vomit and gests he had his parents’ blessing. He horse shit must have been overpowering. put his mother Lily as next of kin. His real age was sixteen and two months. After basic training at Blackboy Hill, he shipped out in late February on the en days after John Lyons sailed, transport ship Itonus from Fremantle, THugh Brian O’Donnell presented bound for . himself for medical examination at the Kalgoorlie recruiting office. Dr Samuel Mathews looked him over and saw a splendid lad, five feet eleven inches (180 hile John Lyons was on a ship centimetres) tall, weighing 126 pounds Wheading north, cane-cutter Albert (fifty-seven kilograms), with blue eyes Scott was on a train heading south for and fair hair. Hughie said he was a Melbourne. The 15th Battalion was miner from nearby Kanowna, where comprised mostly of Queenslanders but his parents ran a pub. He claimed to be a quarter were from Tasmania. The two nineteen years old, and Mathews did groups were about to meet at Broad- not argue. Hundreds of miners from meadows Camp. Kalgoorlie, Kanowna and Boulder were They were now part of the 4th Bri- already on their way to war in the first gade, a dinkum coalition of men from convoy. Hughie arrived at Blackboy every state, under John Monash, a Hill in Perth two days later and was al- portly and ambitious civil engineer located to C Company, 11th Battalion. from Melbourne. The 13th Battalion Hughie had not lied about anything was from , the 14th

PRIVATE HUGHIE O’DONNELL, from Kanowna, Western Australia, is likely to have had his parents’ permission when he enlisted at sixteen years and two months old.

ALBERT SCOTT, JOHN LYONS & HUGHIE O’DONNELL 37 from Victoria and the 16th from South Front in France and Belgium, mired in Australia and Western Australia. This trench warfare after seven months of was the first fully national brigade in attrition. Churchill wanted to take the the AIF. Some were meeting men from pressure off the Russian army, so that other states for the first time. Rumours they might break through against the were rife. Indeed, there were so many German forces in the east. Turkey had untruths in the air they soon attracted entered the war on the German side at the a nickname – ‘furphies’. A Shepparton end of October. Churchill was determined firm called Furphy provided the wagons to force the Dardanelles by sea and knock that hauled away the human waste from the out of the war. the Broadmeadows latrines. When the British navy failed to do so Albert was not perhaps the most in March, Churchill convinced the War natural soldier. On 18 December, he was Cabinet to mount an amphibious landing absent from a roll call. Two days later, on the Turkish Aegean coast. They would he was found in bed after the buglers rout the Turkish guns that protected the sounded ‘Reveille’. He may have decided, straits, then storm on to Constantinople. like hundreds of other men, to have a The Australians and New Zealanders night on the town before departure. He in Egypt were keen to fight. The British, was fined a day’s pay and admonished. French and Indians would join them for a Three days later, Albert’s unit embarked landing in late April. on the White Star Line’s SS Ceramic. The fate of Albert Scott – and that They too were bound for Egypt. By early of every Australian and New Zealand February, they were at Zeitoun Camp soldier then in Egypt – was now set. The outside Cairo, wondering what was next. Australians would join this European war The only person who could have told at the point where Europe begins – the them was Winston Churchill, First Lord Bosphorus. None of them knew the plan of the Admiralty. The British and French yet, and very few would have known the armies were deadlocked on the Western name of the Gallipoli peninsula.

38 THE LOST BOYS None of the soldiers on board knew where they were going, but they all knew it was going to be big – the most wonderful and terrible adventure.

ALBERT SCOTT, JOHN LYONS & HUGHIE O’DONNELL 39 In Egypt in December, as Albert was landed on the Asian side as a diversion. still on the high seas, the NZ Expedi- The Australians and New Zealanders tionary Force (NZEF) and the first three would go in to the north of Cape Helles, brigades of the AIF were combined to on a five kilometre stretch of the Aegean become the Australian and New Zealand coast largely guarded by harsh cliffs and Army , which clerks quickly short- ravines. They were to come ashore at ened to ‘ANZAC’. This crew was motley: the lowest part, between the Gaba Tepe it also included the Indian Mounted headland and an old fisherman’s hut. and the 29th Indian Brigade, the Historians still argue about why the Ceylon Planters Rifle Corps, two British 30,000 Australian and New Zealand divisions and the Zion Mule Corps, con- forces landed in the wrong place, sisting of 650 recruited in Egypt. 1.6 kilometres north of where they Hundreds of ships had gathered for intended. The terrain here was much the assault. steeper and rougher, making the advance The Turks knew they were coming, inland much harder. Blame has been just not quite where or when. They had laid variously on the currents and reinforced defences all along the peninsu- the inexperience of the British sailors la, digging in on the high ridges to wait. commanding the landing boats, but They were commanded by experienced this rougher spot was also less heavily officers, both Turkish and German. guarded. The mistake may have reduced The British commander Sir Ian Hamil- the casualties. ton decided to confuse them by seeming In truth, the campaign was a debacle: to land everywhere at once. Ships lined badly planned, badly resourced and up all around the peninsula and feigned badly led. The British, from a firm sense landing preparations. The real landings of superiority, assumed the Turkish were to be on several beaches at Cape troops to be inferior and demoralised: Helles, on the tip of the peninsula, they would dissolve and run. Some by British forces, while French forces did, but most fought like lions for a

40 THE LOST BOYS cause they believed in: defence of their Turkish trenches were just a few metres country. The Turks thought they were away, which meant that bombs could fighting ‘the British’. When they realised be thrown by hand. The Turks were they were also fighting Australians and masters at this and they had plentiful New Zealanders, they were as confused supplies of what the Australians called as some of their opponents. God is great, ‘cricket ball bombs’. The Anzacs had to but where is New Zealand? make their own. They set up a factory on the beach, filling jam tins with nails and explosives. We know the names of at least twenty under-age boys who fought on Gallip- lbert Scott’s 15th Battalion came oli, but the real number is much high- Aashore at what we now call Anzac er – almost certainly in the hundreds. Cove in the evening of 25 April 1915, No-one has compiled a list of those who twelve hours after the initial landing. Its lived through it, only those who did not. companies were sent up the ridges to plug Albert Scott, the smiling cane-cutter, gaps in a patchy Australian line. Like has the sad distinction of being the first everyone else, they became hopelessly frag- Anzac boy soldier to die on Gallipoli. mented. The Turks, by now reinforced, There is no record of where he died, counter-attacked in several places. The simply a date, 28 April. That means Anzacs clung to a series of outposts and he experienced at most three days of ridges on the heights, short of their objec- fighting, but those three days were tives and in danger of being over-run. merciless. The continual sniping made Albert would not have slept much the rudimentary trenches of Quinn’s in the first seventy-two hours. The Post ridiculously dangerous; it was little 15th were concentrated on Pope’s better at Courtney’s Post and Pope’s Hill. Hill, Courtney’s Post and Quinn’s Post Albert was buried at Pope’s Hill Ceme- – high ridges above the beach. The tery, so we know he died nearby.

ALBERT SCOTT, JOHN LYONS & HUGHIE O’DONNELL 41 His parents were notified of his ughie O’Donnell’s 11th Battalion death by telegram. In the early years of Hwas among the first ashore at the war, these were usually delivered Gallipoli on 25 April, but Hughie was by a local clergyman. Albert’s name not with them. He had been struggling was then wrongly included in a list to catch up since he enlisted, always one of wounded published in the Sydney step behind. While a battalion was at Mail in mid-June, raising hopes that full strength of about 1000 men, it had he was still alive. Albert’s father wrote no need to call up reinforcements, except to see if it could be true. The army to replace men who were sick or absent. wrote back that, as far as they knew, Once the 11th Battalion went into action he was dead. at Gallipoli, things moved quickly, In 1923, his remains were reinterred at because of the casualties. On 5 May, the Quinn’s Post Cemetery, Pope’s Hill plot. battalion had lost thirty-eight men killed His inscription, decided by his parents and 200 wounded since the landing, Joseph and Eliza, says: and another 197 were still missing. The ‘Dearest son, thou has left us, we thy battalion was effectively at half strength loss most deeply feel.’ after ten days. In September 1919, Albert’s brother Hughie finally arrived on Gallipoli on Walter, aged ten, took part in a tree- 7 May in a group of 214 reinforcements. planting ceremony for Arbor Day at the He went into C Company under Captain Rossendale State School, in honour of Raymond Leane, who had already distin- boys of the district who had died in the guished himself as a leader during the first war. Walter planted a camphor laurel for weeks. Ray Leane had been a successful Albert, the brother he had barely had merchant in Kalgoorlie before the war, and time to get to know. a resident of Boulder. As in many battal- ions, men from the same town or district were kept together, as much as possible. Hughie’s C Company was largely made

42 THE LOST BOYS up of men from the West Australian and John Lyons – a long-distance cyclist goldfields. He had friends among them, – were now within coo-ee of each other’s like David Crisp, who had worked at the positions, in a line of trenches that ran post office in Kanowna when Hughie was from the beach near Gaba Tepe to the a boy. Crisp was ten years older, and an hill known as Baby 700, where the Turks Anglican like Hughie. could see most of their positions. Soon after Hughie arrived, the 11th John, the sixteen-year-old from Battalion was sent to hold a section of Murchison, came ashore in the second the line at Bolton’s Ridge, with the 2nd or third wave on the first day of the and 3rd on their left. Hughie landing. He survived those first terrible

This memorial holds the only known photograph of JOHN LYONS, a long-distance bike rider from South Murchison, Victoria.

ALBERT SCOTT, JOHN LYONS & HUGHIE O’DONNELL 43 weeks, while many around him in was in well-prepared trenches. Now the 3rd Battalion did not. Colonel he came at them out of the pre-dawn, MacLaurin, his brigade commander, thousands of voices crying ‘Allah’, was one of the dead. bayonets glinting in the moonlight. The After three weeks, a stalemate had set attack was sheer madness and over the in. The British and French had failed in an next ten hours, it became a bloodbath. attack at Krithia on 8 May, but kept up On Johnston’s Jolly, where John was the pressure on Turkish battalions at Cape firing, the initial waves of Turkish troops Helles. The Anzacs clung to the heights were mown down by machine guns. above Anzac Cove, opposite determined They kept coming and dying. The men Turkish defences, caught between the of the 3rd Battalion climbed up on the Aegean Sea and razor-backed ridges. parapet to continue firing, as dazed and The German commander of the wounded Turks tried again and again to Turks, Otto Liman von rush forward, against all odds. Anzacs Sanders, wanted to drive the Anzacs fought each other for the best positions, back into the sea with a wide frontal their guns overheating as dawn broke. assault, starting early on 19 May. New And with the light, the Turks could see battalions arrived from Constantinople, the Australians sitting cockily on the including young officers straight from parapets – and took careful aim. the academy. The plan was simple and Ten thousand Turks fell in that assault, blunt: 42,000 Turkish would for no gain. Charles Bean, witnessing fling themselves at 17,000 Anzacs the slaughter, wrote that the Australians’ and overwhelm their positions with attitude to the Turkish soldier changed sheer numbers. The Anzacs could tell that day. A fierce hatred had motivated something was about to start, and made the Anzacs since the landing. That now ready to repel the attack. disappeared, as the Turkish soldiers Until this point, the Anzacs had rarely displayed a sobering discipline and seen their enemy, concealed as he usually bravery, refusing to surrender or retreat.

44 THE LOST BOYS These three boys were among the first casualties of the war for Australia, their families among the first to experience the grief that would hit so many others over the next four years.

ALBERT SCOTT, JOHN LYONS & HUGHIE O’DONNELL 45 Anzac losses amounted to 160 men same day. Both boys died during the killed and 468 wounded. Unfortunately greatest firefight that the Anzacs had yet for one family in South Murchison and seen – and during the greatest victory another in Kanowna, those numbers they would have on Gallipoli. included their sons, Private John Lyons The tactics used there are hard now and Private Hughie O’Donnell. to understand. Frontal assaults against Hughie was killed by a shrapnel blast. machine guns were doomed to failure, Captain Leane wrote to Jack and Lily and still, both sides attempted them. The O’Donnell soon Anzacs would use after to say that the same tactics The tactics used at although he had a few weeks later not known their Gallipoli are hard now on a smaller scale son long, Hughie to understand. Frontal in the August had impressed assaults against machine offensive, with him as a lad who huge losses. To would fearlessly do guns were doomed to some extent, 19 his duty. ‘He lived failure, and still, both sides May was a turning but a few minutes attempted them. point in the fight and his last words for Gallipoli. The were addressed Turks gave up the to Private Crisp also from Kanowna,’ idea of winning by offence and settled in wrote Leane. A chaplain also wrote to to win by implacable defence, knowing the family, telling them that Hughie’s last that winter would eventually be on their words had been: ‘Tell my mother I died side. The Anzacs, in turn, now knew fighting’. He was one of nine men in the the determination of the men they were 11th Battalion killed that day. facing, if they had not already. We know less about John Lyons’ The Murchison Advertiser of 25 June death, except that he fell nearby on the 1915 acknowledged that John Lyons,

46 THE LOST BOYS now seventeen, was the first soldier from embraced the war as a holy duty and a the district to die in the First World cleansing fire. One of Hughes’s first acts War. They mentioned his age without was to promise 50,000 more Australian using the words ‘under-age’. John’s men to the conflict. Meanwhile, in father would enlist in February 1916 South Murchison, Mount Bauple and and follow in his late son’s footsteps to Kanowna, three mothers and three Europe. He was luckier: at forty-two, fathers wept for three sons. he developed rheumatism soon after arriving in France and was invalided back to Australia. Hughie O’Donnell is thought to be the youngest West Australian to die on Gallipoli, aged sixteen years and eight months. These three boys were among the first casualties of the war for Australia, their families among the first to experience the grief that would hit so many others over the next four years. Albert Scott’s siblings had many children. There are now at least 300 descendants of that large family, according to Adrian Scott, who grew up on the same farm at Mount Bauple. A number of them have been to visit Albert’s grave on Gallipoli. In October 1915, Prime Minister Andrew Fisher resigned in favour of his deputy, the belligerent London-born Welshman William Morris Hughes, who

ALBERT SCOTT, JOHN LYONS & HUGHIE O’DONNELL 47