- The Last Gallipoli ANZAC -
17.05.2002 12:23:48
Mr Alec William Campbell was the last Gallipoli ANZAC. The last living link with a legend that defined a nation. His life spanned three centuries, linking our heroic past with the minds and hearts of the present.
Like the ANZAC legend, Mr Alec William Campbell`s life was one of spirit, determination and endeavour. Though his status as a national hero is owing to his months spent as a young soldier at Gallipoli, Mr Alec Campbell`s exceptionally varied 103 years were filled with gallantry and adventure.
Among the dignitaries the Hon John Howard,
Prime Minister of Australia
To the many friends and vast family he leaves behind, nine children, 33 grandchildren, 35 great grandchildren and two great-great grandchildren.
Mr Alec Campbell was more than a war hero. His life was full and eclectic. Mr Campbell was a father and a husband, a jackeroo and a carpenter, a union official, an economist, a railway carriage builder, a yachtsman and a boxer, to name but a few.
He put himself through university as a mature-age student; he taught himself to sail and competed in six Sydney-Hobart yacht races. Born at the end of the 18th century, Mr Alec Campbell`s mettle was a tribute to his generation. He never shied from work and never shirked a challenge.
Most notably, he was never deterred by the constraints of age. Whether in old age or in youth, Mr Alec William Campbell defied conventions. And, when he volunteered to fight in World War I, young Alec even defied the law. He admitted in interviews he lied about his age to be accepted into Australian Imperial Force.
"I had to put my age up if I wanted to go and everyone was going" he had said.
Mr Alec William Campbell was born in Launceston on February 26, 1899. The son of a commercial traveller and grandson of a Scottish migrant, Alec was the eldest of four, three brothers and one sister.
Alec completed his schooling at Scotch Oakburn College, Launceston, from 1910 to 1915. During his schooldays he excelled in football and cricket. His first job was as an insurance clerk, but he had been in the position only a couple of months before fate and his adventurous spirit beckoned. Alec was a fresh-faced youth of 16 years and four months when he enlisted in June 1915, one of 324.000 who volunteered to fight overseas. But this baby-faced fighter did not even need to shave.
Looking back on his eagerness, Mr Alec William Campbell had told The Australian: "I did not have much sense at that time and most of my mates were joining up for a bit of fun." But his family took the departure less lightly. His father was so upset he would not see his son off to war. His heartbroken mother, meanwhile, did farewell young Alec at the dock, dreading his fate would be the same as her nephew, who had already died in the slaughterhouse that was Gallipoli.
Alec Campbell`s widow Kate is greeted by
the Very Reverend Dr Stuart Blacker, the
Dean of the Cathedral Church of St David
One of Mr Alec Campbell`s daughters, Mary Burke, said: "I`ve been told his (Mr Campbell`s) mother was terribly, terribly upset because her brother`s only son was killed at Gallipoli. "So when Dad went she was very upset. She ran along the length of the pier as the ship pulled out. It was very hard."
The young soldier, nicknamed "The Kid" because of his youthful looks, trained in Hobart before sailing with the 15th Battalion for Gallipoli. Mr Alec Campbell was one of 50.000 Australians who fought at Gallipoli, forming the nation`s identity in our greatest and bloodiest battle. He fought in the trenches for two months, dodging bullets by day and keeping his head down by night as he slept in a damp hole in the ground.
Like many who have survived such horrors, Mr Alec Campbell was reluctant to talk about his time at Gallipoli. He told The Mercury in 1997: "There`s not much to remember. You were stuck in a barren country being shot at and shooting at other people." After a bitter winter ("My word I remember the snow and the damn cold," he had said), the soldier fell ill with common afflictions: enteric fever, the measles and the mumps.
The illnesses led to Private Campbell falling victim to a relapse of Bell`s palsy, a partial paralysis of the face which he first contracted during dental problems as a child. The paralysis stayed with Mr Campbell all of his life, rendering his right eye incapable of closing. The eye, which constantly wept, was finally removed in 1999. Just after the evacuation of Gallipoli in December 1915, Mr Alec Campbell was shipped to a hospital in Eqypt, where he arrived on Christmas Day, 1915.
He spent the next six months in and out of the foreign hospital. Unfit for any other theatres of war, he left the Suez in June 1916 on the Port Sydney to return to Australia. He was medically discharged on August 23, marking the end of his war career. Though the ANZAC legend is painted by historians as the rich and glorious cornerstone of our nation, Mr Alec Campbell rarely edified his time in the trenches.
He recalled the scrubby bush, the bitter cold, the "nasty Turks" and their sea of bullets.
But he was not one to continually relive the glory or the horror.
Click here to read on:
THE LAST GALLIPOLI ANZAC
acknowledge:
by The Mercury
http://www.news.com.au
>>> Click Here To See All Archives 2003 Headlines <<<
|
|
