By Roderick (Whiskers) McNibble, Special Correspondent for Ratty News
Roderick Whiskers McNibble here, tail fluffed against the dawn chill and heart heavy with reverence.
I’ve scampered through many stories in my time, from the murky shadows beneath Canberra restaurant bars and lobbies to the marmalade-slick contraband lanes of Dusty Gulch, but none quite so stirring as the memory I unearthed this ANZAC Day morning.
It’s a tale that rises like the Rotorua mist, warm with the scent of ANZAC biscuits and the ache of old truths. A tale from Australia that was born in New Zealand and needs to rise again.
A tale of two countries bound together in blood and memories of battles fought and lives lost. Of friendship. Of mateship. Of the ANZAC tradition.
This isn’t just a story - it’s a soul-marking memory, born at dawn and carried through decades. And if you’ve ever felt your fur bristle at the bugle's cry or your eyes sting with tears you didn’t expect, well then, dear reader… you’ll understand why I had to share it.
Read more: A Dawn Service, a Biscuit, and the Awakening of a Patriot
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Each war seems to produce its own under-appreciated heroes who, for reasons that have nothing to do with their courage, competence or devotion to duty, are by-passed for promotion or otherwise demoted.
In the Boer War it was Breaker Morant, in WW2 it was Brig Arnold Potts and in more recent days Cpl Ben Roberts-Smith. In WW1 it was Brigadier General Elliott, otherwise known as “Pompey”. Elliott was one of the most direct and forceful brigade commanders in the Australian Army.
Loved and admired by the troops he commanded because they knew that he would never ask them to perform tasks that he was not willing and able to carry out himself. He was an outspoken critic of the British Army higher command and of the Australian as well when they deserved it. His belligerence and refusal to kow-tow to British higher authority was the seed of his undoing. He clashed with Kitchener, Haig and Birdwood and the fact that he was usually proved right, probably carried more weight against him that his insubordination.
Pompey Elliott was born in an era when Australia seemed to have an endless supply of natural leaders, adventurous explorers and trail blazers, innovative business people and an inborn ethic that gave precedence to common sense.
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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.
Read more: The Whistle at the Nek: Glory, Grief, and the Price of Obedience
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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.
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