Gallipoli and the Anzacs

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Members of the 1st Royal Australian Naval Bridging train. Chief Petty Officer Edward Perkins is shown, second from right in the back row. [AWM P06855.001]

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Chief Petty Officer Edward Perkins, Royal Australian Naval Bridging Train, extreme left, top row. [The Argus, 19 October 1915]

Chief Petty Officer Edward Charles Perkins

Royal Australian Naval Bridging Train AIF
Special Memorial 47

Twenty-one year old Edward Charles Perkins, the fourth and last fatality of the Royal Australian Naval Bridging Train on Gallipoli, was the only one to be buried on the peninsula, the other deaths in the unit having occurred at sea or on Lemnos Island, Greece.

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Special memorial of Chief Petty Officer Edward Perkins, Royal Australian Naval Bridging Train, killed in action, on 6 September 1915, Hill 10 Cemetery, Suvla Bay. [Commonwealth War Graves Commission]

The personnel of the Bridging Train received five days instruction in the use of pontoon piers before landing under the command of Commander Leighton Bracegirdle at Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, on 7 August 1915. Two days later, under heavy Turkish shellfire, a detachment rowed pontoons two miles to Old ‘A’ Beach where it constructed 120 metres of pier. Within five minutes of its completion, the British were evacuating their wounded from the pier. On 15 August, a member of the unit recorded in his diary:

Very heavy fighting has been going on all week and our casualties are heavy. We have passed 965 wounded through our hands one day and 956 the next.

[Sergeant Alfred Ernest Miles, Diary, PR00806, AWM]

Their work over the next four months was frequently carried out under heavy fire with more than sixty of the unit being wounded, injured or evacuated suffering from illness. On 6 September 1915, Chief Petty Officer Perkins, of Essendon, Victoria, was killed instantly – his head being blown clean off - by the direct hit of a Turkish shell on the dugout he was sheltering in. The exact position of his grave in Hill 10 Cemetery is unknown and he is commemorated by a special memorial.

The men of the RAN Bridging Train at Suvla Bay were the last Australians to evacuate the peninsula on 20 December 1915 at 4.30am, the last Australians having left the Anzac area at 4.10 am.

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Lance Corporal Herbert Peters, 8th Australian Light Horse, of Digby, Victoria, third row, second from right. [The Argus, 15 November 1915]

Lance Corporal Herbert John Peters

8th Light Horse Regiment AIF
Plot 1, Row 1, Grave 18

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Grave of Lance Corporal Herbert Peters, 8th Australian Light Horse Regiment, Hill 10 Cemetery, Suvla Bay. [Commonwealth War Graves Commission]

Lance Corporal Harold John Peters was the youngest child of John and Jane Peters, of Glenorchy, Victoria, and was described by his brother James on his Australian War Memorial Honour Roll Circular as ‘a prominent member of the Stratford Rifle Club’.

The 8th Light Horse Regiment suffered enormous losses on 7 August when the men of the unit were ordered to charge in the first two waves of attacks on The Nek. The depleted force also fought at Hill 60, north of Anzac, later that month and on 30 August 1915 Lance Corporal Peters, aged 39 years, was killed. His family chose his epitaph:

Duty Nobly Done
For God, King And Country

In his home town of Digby, Victoria, his memory is preserved in the Avenue of Honour where a Miss Shaw planted tree number 13 in his memory. Peters’ grave in this cemetery, well to the north of the old Anzac area, must qualify as one of the most isolated Australian graves at Gallipoli.