Australia and the World Past and Present

John Simpson Kirkpatrick.

Better known as John Simpson.

Even better known when he is paired with his donkey.

Simpson was a stretcher-bearer in Australia’s Gallipoli campaign. He and his donkey (he actually used a number of them) ferried injured soldiers from the battlefield to medical care. He carried on in this way for a little over three weeks – before succumbing to a bullet.

He is one of the most well known of ANZAC figures.

But a closer inspection of Simpson leads one to conclude that he was, in many ways, not a natural choice for an Australian war hero.

To begin with, he wasn’t even Australian.

He was born in Country Durham, England.

He joined the British Merchant Navy in 1909. But only a year later he deserted his post in Newcastle, New South Wales. This future Australian war hero was an deserter.

So began his travels around Australia.

He traveled here and there, picking up odd jobs.

He cut sugarcane in Queensland and tried his hand at coal mining in New South Wales.

After a while he decided to reenlist – this time with the Australian Imperial Force.

It has been suggested that rather being stirred from a sense of patriotic duty, he was simply seeking passage back to the land of his birth.

He was the most unlikely of Australian war heroes. An English man with penchant for going AWOL. More of a swagman than professional soldier. It also needs to be said that he was a non-combatant at Gallipoli. Military heroes are are more likely to be those who storm the beaches, rush headlong into the fold or rush machine gun nests single-handedly.

This is not to diminish the role that Simpson and others like him played at Gallipoli. Stretcher-bearers were an indispensable part of the campaign. So too were the doctors and nurses who tended to the wounded soldiers.

In Simpson we can see another side to war. One more caring and nurturing. He may not have held a rifle in his hands but he served his fellow soldiers. He tended to them and looked after them. He went time and again into the imposing gullies of the Gallipoli peninsula to transport Aussie troops back towards safety. He must have well known that any trip could be his last. For the wounded soldiers he helped, he was their lifeline. He was perhaps their only hope for survival. He displayed a trait that forms a key strand of Australian nationalism – mateship. He stood by his fellow soldiers in a time of severe adversity. He stood by his mates under fire. Perhaps this why is his memory lives on in Australia.

The Gallipoli campaign formed the basis of ANZAC memory. Gallipoli is an interesting choice in many ways. Troops from this land had been in battle before. For example, troops had bent sent to Sudan in the 1880s. But these troops were attached to their respective states. There was no national army at this stage. So it was hard to use this experience as a basis for a national identity.

By 1914, Australia was federated. The colonies were part of a single whole. Still, Galliopli was a military failure. After a period of intense fighting, a retreat from the peninsula was ordered. Nations normally use military successes as a key component for nationalism. But Australia was will to content to spin this unsuccessful military venture into something more positive. Moreover, many Australian soldiers considered themselves to be fighting for the British Empire. By World War II it was clearer that Australian soldiers were fighting for Australia itself rather the motherland. The Japanese advance through Asia had much to do with this. Suddenly the Japanese were occupying parts of New Guinea and bombing Darwin.

For whatever reasons, John Simpson found himself elevated in the national consciousness. And his memory lingers on.