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By mid-morning on April 26th stretchers had become a scarce and
precious commodity at ANZAC. Used to carry the wounded and taken out with
them to the ships they mostly weren’t being returned, forcing the bearers
to improvise. The wounded were being carried over men’s shoulders. For
those seriously wounded in the chest or abdomen etc this of course wasn’t
possible. Then groundsheets had to be used. Lieut. Tom Chataway remembered
this experience well. “The transportation of the wounded to the beach was
in itself a nightmare”, he writes, “even when stretchers were used. But
[where stretchers were not available] oil sheets had to be used. Then [for
the bearers] - slipping and sliding down the steep hillside, their hands
cramping from the insecure hold upon the corners of the sheet, the heavy
shrapnel fire continuously above them, and a persistent urge to halt - if
only for a few seconds so as to ease the cramp in their hands -made the
journey one long agony.”
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(Left) An ANZAC
carries a wounded mate to the nearest dressing station, for
treatment (Australian War Memorial G
599). |
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(Right) Sketch by Ellis Silas, 16th Battalion, ‘Stretcher-bearers
in action at the head of Monash Valley.’ |
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With four-man stretcher squads (as the bearers had been taught to
operate and would again in later months), with one man on each end of a
stretcher pole, bearing the weight of a wounded man hoisted up on his
shoulder, a team could carry their burden for considerable distances
without becoming exhausted - “for miles”, according to Bert Baker. But a
two-man squad was an entirely different matter. Then the work was cruel.
Then the man at either end of the stretcher had to rely entirely on the
strength of his arms, shoulders, stomach and back muscles. “You could only
carry for about a hundred [metres] at a time, before you had to stop for a
rest, before going on,” Bert remembered. Fortunately the distances at
Anzac were comparatively short. But this was more than compensated for by
the savage terrain and vegetation which the men had to fight their way
through or around.
During the morning hours of April 26th Jack did what many of his mates
were doing - carried casualties back to the beach over his shoulder -
until he was stopped dead in his tracks by something he saw; something
he’d been passing for hours, but in common with the rest of his mates had
paid little attention to.
A number of donkeys had been landed, along with their Greek drivers, to
carry kerosene tins of water for the troops. Some of these donkeys had
been abandoned by their drivers and now sought shelter and what little
grazing there was in amongst the wild overgrown gullies. Jack was
responding to a call of - “Stretcher-Bearer!” - when he saw, grazing
unconcernedly near the wounded man, a donkey.
As he approached closer no doubt there suddenly appeared in Jack’s mind
another picture - one all too familiar, and from his not-too-distant past.
Sitting on the back of that funny little long-eared creature he would have
seen - a child, laughing and care-free as he was being led along the
sands, with Jack walking along next to the donkey, looking back at him
over his shoulder every now and again. But if a child Jack must have
thought - then why not a man! Of course! It was the perfect answer.
Jack had none of the essential equipment he needed - but he did have a
pocketful of field dressings. They’d have to do for the time being. He
knew that once he got his hands on the necessary materials he’d be able to
fashion something much more substantial and appropriate.
A portion of one bandage served as a primitive “head-stall”. Then a
first field dressing provided him with a “lead rope”. There was no way in
the world his passenger was going to be able to stay on the donkey’s back
by his own efforts - with no saddle, stirrups, reins or anything else to
hang on to. He’d just have to hang on to Jack, as this donkey-man
carefully guided his little beast of burden along. Jack lifted his
passenger aboard, then, sufficiently equipped for the moment, set off for
the beach, on his first donkey-ride, and on his new career.
During the first days at ANZAC the field ambulance bearers and the
regimental stretcher-bearers were forced into doing very much the same
work, in the confused conditions and hectic fighting. Regimental bearers
were infantrymen, specially trained by their regimental medical officer in
first aid. Their job was to carry their wounded mates off the battlefield
for immediate treatment at a nearby aid post. When they put down their
rifles and picked up a stretcher they were entitled to put on an armband
(for protection from the enemy) bearing the letters “SB”. Field ambulance
bearers, on the other hand, were members of the Medical Corps, and wore
the Red-Cross armband. Their job was to carry the more seriously wounded
from the regimental aid post to a field ambulance dressing station, for
more expert medical attention.
A regimental aid post could be, and often was a very makeshift affair
(as it might well be of a temporary nature). It could be located in a
ditch, or in a shell hole, covered over with a tarpaulin “roof”, or in an
improvised dugout; or in a cellar, or an abandoned building -anywhere
which provided shelter and protection from enemy fire.
Dressing stations, on the other hand, were supposed to be relatively
secure, at least two to five kilometres from the front line, and at the
very least under canvas. At ANZAC the medical services available during
this first week were primitive in the extreme.
During these first days Jack had to rescue his casualties off the
battle-field, sometimes in clear sight of the enemy. In 1915 E.C. Buley
collected a number of eye-witness accounts from wounded ANZACs in
hospital, of Jack at work. In Buley’s words:
When the enfilading fire down the valley was at its worst and orders
were posted that the ambulancemen must not go out, the Man and the Donkey
continued on placidly at their work. At times they held trenches of
hundreds of men spellbound, just to see them at their work. Their quarry
lay motionless in an open patch, in easy reach of a dozen Turkish rifles.
Patiently the little donkey waited under cover, while the man crawled
through the thick scrub until he got within striking distance. Then a
lightning dash, and he had the wounded man on his back and was making for
cover again. In those fierce seconds he always seemed to bear a charmed
life. Once under cover he tended his charge with quick, skilful
movements.
Jack would then have administered the emergency first aid
treatment which was second nature to all stretcher-bearers. First, the
first field dressing (which every soldier carried as part of his
equipment) would be taken out of the man’s right hand tunic pocket. Or
Jack might well have used one from his own supply. This consisted of “a
khaki cotton cloth containing in a linen cover two dressings, each
composed of 2 1/2 metres of bandage, some gauze and a safety pin.” Jack
would have torn open the soldier’s uniform to get to the wound. Next, the
iodine ampoule which every soldier carried would have been taken out of
its hard cardboard, cylindrical container. Jack would have snapped the end
off the ampoule, soaked a cotton wool plug with iodine and applied this to
the wound. Then the dressing would have been applied and the wound
bandaged up. If required Jack would have applied a tourniquet, improvised
if necessary, using a handkerchief, a stick and a stone - to stop
uncontrollable bleeding. Tourniquets would have to be released every
twenty minutes to prevent gangrene.
Within a few days of the landing a kind of order was being established.
On April 29th zones of responsibility were laid down, with the 3rd and 4th
Field Ambulances responsible for clearing casualties from the head of
Monash Valley, and the wounded of the 4th Brigade (the 13th, 14th, 15th
and 16th Battalions) on Pope’s Hill and at Quinn’s and Courtney’s
Posts.
Jack and his mates carried their casualties down the “Long Valley”, of
Monash Valley and Shrapnel Gully (as it was known then) to the clearing
hospital on the beach. The distance was about twelve hundred metres. Using
his donkey and working all day and halfway into the night Jack could make
between twelve and fifteen trips a day. The two-way trips took about an
hour, and this still left Jack time for a mug of tea and a chat with his
mates at the cove after dropping off his casualty at the clearing
station.
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(Left) The
Advanced Dressing Station of the 4th Field Ambulance at the head of
Monash Valley, below Pope’s Hill - an early photo. It was from here
Jack collected most of his casualties after the first week.
(Australian War Memorial A 2693). |
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(Right) Walking wounded going past 3rd Battalion Aid Post in
Shrapnel Gully on April 26th. (Australian War Memorial
G920). |
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(Left) Ellis
Silas’ impression of the dressing station at the head of Monash
Valley during the first days at
ANZAC. |
The other two-man stretcher teams were hard pressed to make six trips a
day down the valley. Cpl. E.H. Kitson, a stretcher-bearer with the 4th
Field Ambulance, made the same trip as Jack daily, and he has left a
detailed description:
Many snipers being in the hills made the carry down the gullies
rather unhealthy. For the first fortnight or so the carry from Quinn’s to
the beach was beset with all sorts of inconceivable difficulties. The
carry... had to be done without reliefs over a very muddy and narrow
track. At various places... it was necessary to sprint past these warm
points, from one safe place to another, as snipers were very diligent and
accurate, and shrapnel was also uncomfortably plentiful. We had at times
to assist the regimental bearers in answer to oft repeated calls from the
hills - “Stretcher Bearers wanted on the left, or right!” as the case
might be... After the first fortnight however conditions began to improve
by widening of the track and protecting the same by building sandbag
barricades at exposed points and by the construction of dug-outs, mainly
consisting of holes dug into the side of the hills.
Jack used a number of donkeys, which he called by a variety of
names: Murphy, Abdul - even Queen Elizabeth. But his favourite name was
Duffy. Andy described how Jack’s career had begun on that second day: “The
original order was amended to two men [to a stretcher] as the bearer
numbers were badly depleted. The hard fighting throughout the day caused
heavy casualties, until the bearers had inadequate means to do their work.
The shortage of stretchers was relieved in a measure by improvised
equipment sent ashore by the warships. But the need was still so great
that it inspired [Simpson] to commandeer a stray donkey, which he named
Duffy.”
Capt. Victor Conrick added: “At the landing, April 25th 1915, he went
ashore with his bearer squad of four; his three mates were either killed
or wounded and Simpson was left alone.”
Jack only carried men wounded in the leg (and some head wounds); that
is, men who could sit astride a donkey with assistance. He left the
serious chest and abdomen wounds, those who had to be stretchered down to
the beach, to the scant resources of the two-man bearer squads available.
Colonel Monash fully recognised the value of Jack’s self-imposed role,
stating that “Simpson was worth a hundred men to me.”
From April 26th Jack “ran his own casualty carrying service” (in the
words of Andy Davidson), refusing to go back to his own unit at the end of
each day’s work along with his mates. He knew what he had to do, and
nobody was going to stop him. Jack knew that he could rescue many more
casualties using a donkey, than as part of a stretcher team. He had a
natural way with animals, especially donkeys. But he also knew that he was
very soon going to find himself in trouble with the authorities, because
what he was doing simply wasn’t a part of army regulations.
Young Jack Simpson Kirkpatrick learned all about donkeys on the
sands of South Shields at the beginning of the century. As a young
lad during his summer holidays from Mortimer Road School he used to
work as a donkey-lad for Mister George.
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(Left)
Donkey-rides on Herd Sands 1897. Mr George is on the right
of the picture. (South Tyneside Libraries)
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South Shields was at
that time, and still is, a popular seaside resort in the north-east
of England. Jack used to lead donkeys along Herd Sands beach, with
little kids, or toddlers, or sometimes young ladies on board, for a
penny a ride. He worked from 7.30 in the morning until 9 at night,
when he helped Mister George take the donkeys back the three
kilometres (riding one all the way) to the farm where they were
stabled. For this Jack was paid the princely wage of sixpence a day.
But if only Mister George had known, Jack would gladly have done it
for nothing. He loved donkeys. In fact he loved all animals, but he
loved donkeys in particular. Back home at 10 South Eldon Street,
Jack kept rabbits in a hutch in the backyard, rabbits he sometimes
used to swap with his friend Billy Lowes. Billy kept Flemish Giants.
Jack’s rabbits were of the
black-and-white Belgian Giant variety. To his menagerie (which
already included his dog Lilly) Jack would later add a ducket-full
of pigeons - not to mention the four-legged, dappled-grey pony, and
friend who would accompany him around the streets of Shields, for
three years, on his milk round.
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(Left)
Tram stop number 8 in South Eldon Street, 1906. The
Kirkpatrick family lived in this street from the time of
their arrival in South Shields until they shifted to 14
Bertram Street, some time before Jack left home in 1909.
(South Tyneside Libraries)
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For the first eleven years of his life Jack Kirkpatrick enjoyed a
normal childhood in South Shields, where he’d been born in 1892.
Jack was a Geordie, that is, a person who is born on Tyneside, in
the north-east of England, and who speaks with a strange,
Scottish-like accent. Jack’s parents were both Scots; his father
Robert, originally from Edinburgh, was the captain of a collier
which sailed out of Tyneside carrying coals to the English cities of
the south. He had formerly worked for the London and Edinburgh
Shipping Line for twenty years as mate then master.
In 1886 he’d brought a freighter
to Tyneside to be sold, and liking the area, and the people, he and
his wife Sarah decided to settle here. They were very friendly
people on Tyneside.
Jack had two older sisters, Sarah
and Peggy, and his favourite younger sister, Annie. He had also had
three elder brothers who had died in infancy, and an older sister,
Martha, who died at the age of eleven, in 1900. Jack’s mother was
naturally very protective of her only son, “Jacky-Maa-Lad”, as
she called him, and whom she adored.
With Jack’s father a
ship’s captain it is scarcely surprising that his greatest wish
was to follow him to sea one day. Jack used to go down to Mill Dam
in the mornings sometimes, where the sailors assembled outside the
Shipping Offices for the signing on. Then he could mingle amongst
them; rubbing shoulders with all these strangely dressed - Oriental
seamen, with pigtails in their hair, or with sombre,
severely-dressed, black-peak-capped sea captains, or with bearded,
unkempt sailors of every nationality. They were all here, jostling
and talking, in a multitude of accents, and dress - this wild,
curious, exciting mix of seafaring humanity. Then he could imagine
himself as one of them.
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(Left)
The South Shields Ferry at the beginning of the century.
(South Tyneside Libraries) |
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The Tyne packed with shipping, 1895. (Newcastle upon Tyne
City Libraries & Arts) |
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Jack loved all the sights and sounds and smells on the river - the
tarry smell on the boats, and the salty tang of the spray coming off
the water. But most of all Jack loved to be on the river, and he
could do that - for a halfpenny. That’s all it cost, to go on the
ferry from Shields across the river to North Shields. And he could
stay on as long as he liked, all day if he wanted to. On board the
Shields ferry and on his way across the river, yet again, hanging
over the rails, Jack could look up river at all the river traffic on
this, one of the busiest ship-building centres in the world at this
time.
Jack could look back at the scummy
wash lapping up against the pylons of the ferry landing. So what if
they called it “the filthy Tyne”. That was ‘alreet’. He
didn’t mind. All the way up on both banks of the river, as far as
he could see - through the smoke haze, that is - was a solid mass of
shipping, with ships lying at anchor out in the channel. In some
places there hardly seemed room for ships moving up or downstream to
get past each other. He loved listening to all the noises on the
river, the “music” on the river.
Every boat and ship had its own
siren - its own voice, he liked to think, setting them all apart,
making them all different. He loved watching and listening to the
tugs, these fussy little old ladies of the river, bustling about,
full of their own self-importance, sounding off officiously with
their shrill little whistles and toots to the rest of the river
population, demanding clear way. Then a freighter might make its
lumbering way upstream, its slow, steady passage preceded well ahead
of it by a series of long, loud blasts. Or a liner might go sailing
graciously by, in amongst all these filthy colliers and tramp
steamers. Or a sleek grey warship, a destroyer no less might appear
from nowhere, gliding menacingly by. Everywhere he looked there was
a feast of ships - trawlers, tugs, freighters, liners, warships, and
sailing ships. They were his favourites. And he could identify every
one of them, thanks to his Dad, all the barques and brigantines and
schooners and yawls that came into the Tyne.
From both banks all the way up and
down the river, from the shipyards and engineering works came yet
another kind of “music” the never-ending racket of banging and
clanging, which rises to an awful ear-splitting intensity as Jack
approaches the far bank, with the sudden machine-gun hammering of a
riveter nearby, followed by the screaming whine of tearing metal
(accompanied by a shower of sparks) which goes echoing across the
water. And Jack loved it. He loved all this noise, the excitement,
the activity. One day he was going to be apart of all of this. One
day.
In 1904, at the age of twelve, Jack
had to suddenly stop being a child and become the man of the house.
His father was brought home after a crippling accident on his boat.
He would never work again. Indeed, he only had another five years
left to live.
Before the accident it had always
been expected that Jack would become an engineer with one of the
local engineering works, like Hawthorne Leslie or Tyne Dock
Engineering. Now all that was changed. There were no unemployment
benefits, workers’ compensation or old age pensions in 1904. Jack
left school to become the breadwinner of the family. His mother took
in washing. Between them the Kirkpatrick family managed to survive.
Jack went to work for Fred Patterson, the local milk merchant in
South Frederick Street. Jack had to leave home when it was still
dark to get to the dairy by 5 am. In those days the farms sent their
milk to the towns and cities in seventeen-gallon churns. Someone
from the dairy had to be at the station to meet the train with a
horse and cart and bring the milk back to the dairy. So everything
had to be made ready so that the milk floats and bogies could go
straight out. The horses had to be fed and harnessed for one thing.
So from the moment Jack arrived he would be hard at it.
For his first two years as a milk
lad Jack pushed a milk bogie around the streets and backlanes of the
Tyne Dock area, where he lived, ringing his bell and calling out in
a sing-song voice - Milko. Women would come to their doors with jugs
which Jack would fill from a hand churn which he kept topping up
from the big churn on his bogie. Then he’d take payment. He
usually finished his round by about midday, then went back to the
dairy where his work was far from over. All the hand churns and the
big seventeen-galloners had to be cleaned. As had the dairy itself,
not to mention all the unharnessing and feeding and grooming of the
horses -which Jack didn’t mind in the least. In fact it was often
Jack who went back to the dairy at night, to give the horses their
evening feed.
At the age of thirteen Jack’s
love of the sea was as strong as ever. But he knew there was little
chance of that dream being realised, things being the way they were.
Every chance he got, however, he was on or near the river. Jack had
a friend, John Shaw, a few years older than himself, who worked for
a shipping butcher, Andrew Anderson, to whom Jack delivered milk,
which was taken out to the ships in a sculler boat. Jack was forever
pestering his friend to let him go along on these deliveries, and on
one occasion they were out on the river when the wind blew up quite
fierce. They were nearing the ship to make their delivery when Jack
fell overboard. With all the movement on the water it took some
doing for Shaw to haul him back on board, and in the process Jack
fell in again. Eventually the older boy managed to get him back safe
and sound into the boat. But Jack’s immediate thoughts weren’t
for his safety. “Look at me tabs!” Jack complained, looking at a
penny packet of Woodbines he’d pulled out of his pocket. The
cigarettes were soaked through and useless. “Never mind your tabs,
man”, Shaw replied. “It’s your life you should be thinking
about.” John Shaw recalled this incident often in later years, and
the kind of character his young friend was.
Jack had another memorable
encounter with the murky waters of the Tyne at around this time,
when he dived into the river near the Tyne Dock Gut, and pulled out
two drowning children.
When Jack was about fourteen he was
given charge of a milk float, together with the dappled-grey pony
that pulled it, and who would be his companion and friend over the
next three years. Jack’s milk round was still in the same general
area, around “the Deans”, but it was now extended, and it was
along the backlanes of Dean Terrace, Alexandra, Francis and Florence
Streets Jack now wandered, ringing his bell, as well as along Conway
Terrace, John Williamson Street, Temple Street and Dean Road. But
Andrew knew the route blindfolded, where to stop, and when to move
off again. Jack virtually just had to walk alongside, measuring out
the milk and taking payment.
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(Left)
Jack’s four-legged companion around the streets of
Shields, Andrew. (Courtesy of John Simpson Parkin)
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Jack liked the outdoor work. The
bitter cold and darkness of early morning might have taken some
getting used to at first, and he had to cop a drenching now and
again. But that was OK. He could take that. He liked to think that,
like most Geordies, he was pretty tough. In winter it was especially
rough - exposed to the howling, freezing wind and the driving rain,
with little or no protection. He couldn’t wear gloves. Apart from
contaminating the milk they would have become saturated in no time,
with him constantly dipping his measure down into the milk. So he
just had to put up with almost perpetually frozen hands. And if it
was bad for him it was just as bad for Andrew. Just making headway
on the icy streets at times, was a hazard. At times there was
nothing for it but to hammer metal studs into Andrew’s shoes to
let him get a grip on the icy surface. Then the studs would be taken
out again in the afternoon, after the round was finished.
In the second week of October, 1909
Jack’s father died. Two days after the funeral Jack left home.
He’d signed on as a storeman/steward with the SS Heighington,
bound for the Mediterranean and North Africa. It almost broke his
mother Sarah’s heart to have her beloved son leave home and go off
hundreds, even thousands of miles away. But they both knew that this
was the only solution. It had always been Jack’s dream to go to
sea. He’d get a steady wage, from which he’d be able to send a
regular allotment back home for the family. And they’d be able to
take in a lodger now. The Kirkpatrick family would manage.
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Information
resource & page design by ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee (Queensland)
site.(www.anzacday.org.au)
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