Patriot Realm

Just before dawn on August 7, 1915, the men of the 8th and 10th Australian Light Horse Regiments waited in silence on a narrow strip of Turkish soil known as the Nek. They stood shoulder to shoulder in the dark, clutching rifles with bayonets fixed, their nerves tight as piano wire. In the trenches behind them, mates shared final words, quick prayers, a letter home folded into a breast pocket. Some kissed crucifixes, others stared ahead into the blackness, hearts thudding. Then, as the first grey wash of light crept over the ridgeline, the whistle blew.

They went over the top in lines - neat, ordered, hopeless. They charged not into glory, but into annihilation. Within minutes, dozens lay dead, cut down by Turkish machine guns positioned just yards away. Still the whistle blew again. And again. And again.

It is not often that a hero can also be a larrikin and vice versa. But John " Scotty " Simpson was such a man. A deserter who found himself thrust into the horror of Gallipoli instead of implementing his plan to jump ship in England  

John Simpson Kirkpatrick was an Englishman of Scottish parentage who wanted to get away from his wife.... so he joined the Merchant Navy in 1909. 

In 1910 he deserted from his ship when it was docked at Newcastle in Australia. He led an itinerant lifestyle as a cane cutter, coal miner and various jobs on coastal merchant ships. He also became a left wing activist with The Industrial Workers of the World. Hardly the stuff of heroes.  

But he went on to become a hero. 

On ANZAC Day we remember the fallen, the brave, the heroic. But behind every name etched in stone was a mother who gave life, and often, gave that life up to forces beyond her control. I suppose I am thinking about a reflection on grief, not just of war, but of all we have lost and still carry. It is a quiet meditation on the love that never stops, even when the world does.

At what point does loss become grief?

Loss can live quietly for a time. It can trail behind us like a shadow we refuse to turn and face. We speak of absence, of change, of distance. We say things have been lost - as if they might be found again. We tell ourselves stories of adaptation, of coping. But grief? Grief doesn’t ask us to cope. It asks us to stop and feel. To stand still in the debris of what once was and realise...  our problem is that we remember too much to ever truly let go.

Loss becomes grief not when something leaves us, but when we realise it will not return. And then....what then?

Two names. Two battles. One legend. At Chunuk Bair and Lone Pine, ANZAC soldiers faced hell on earth and forged a legacy that still shapes Australia and New Zealand more than a century later.

They climbed in darkness and fought in blood. In August 1915, on the rugged hills of Gallipoli, New Zealanders stormed Chunuk Bair while Australians clashed hand-to-hand in the trenches of Lone Pine. These weren’t just battles....they were crucibles. From the smoke, terror, and sacrifice, the ANZAC spirit emerged: fierce, loyal, unyielding. Though separated by ridges, Chunuk Bair and Lone Pine stand together in memory as the defining moments of courage, tragedy, and national identity.

It has been truly said that Australia arrived in Gallipoli as six separate States and returned as a Nation with its own national identity. In achieving this, of the over 50,000 Australians who served at Gallipoli during a period of 260 days, there were 8,159 deaths in total, comprised of 5,482 killed in action, 2,012 deaths from wounds, and 665 deaths from disease.   

To the armchair Revisionists, these are merely numbers and not men who gave their lives for their country and are buried in a far-off land.  

Recently, a young man I know preparing for the HSC had to write an essay contrasting the saying that Australia discovered its identity at Gallipoli from both a traditional and revisionist viewpoint.

The traditional viewpoint is said to be a statement of history favourable to the march of civilisation with the facts altered to suit, while the revisionist viewpoint is said to be a statement of what actually happened according to the facts. In order to promote the revisionist viewpoint, it was pointed out that the first war fought by the white Australians was with the aboriginals, and in any event, Australia was defeated at Gallipoli.

What the Revisionists ignore is that until Federation in 1901, the present Australia consisted of six separate British colonies, each with its own Governor and laws, even in relation to customs duties between the States-to-be. By the time of the Gallipoli campaign, Australia had only existed as a nation on paper for 14 years.