Gallipoli and the Anzacs

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Private Roy Holcombe King of D Company, 19th Battalion, AIF, who died on 4 September 1915 from wounds which were received in action at Gallipoli.[AWM H18737]

Private Roy Holcombe King

19th Battalion AIF
Special Memorial 1

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Special memorial of Private Roy Holcombe King, 19th Battalion, who died of wounds on 4 September 1915. [DVA]

Private Roy King, a farmer, from Goulburn New South Wales, was thirty-four years old when he enlisted in February 1915. His battalion, the 19th, was raised at Liverpool in New South Wales in March as part of the 5th Brigade and sailed on the Ceramic for Egypt in June 1915. The unit landed on the peninsula on 21 August and participated in the closing stages of the ‘August Offensive’, including the attack at Hill 60. Two weeks later, on 3 September, while camped on the left side of Hill 60, a shrapnel shell burst over the camp, wounding him in the stomach. He died the following day at the 16th Casualty Clearing Station.

The uncertainty and confusion over his whereabouts caused his widowed mother, Louisa King, considerable anguish over the next few years. Sergeant Laycock said he saw him buried at Anzac while ‘dozens of others’ attested that he had been placed on a hospital ship bound for England. Despite exhaustive investigations his remains were never located and a Special Memorial was erected in this cemetery in 1923, where he was believed to have been buried. The epitaph chosen by his family for his memorial reads:

In Loving Memory Of The Only Son Of J.G. & L.H. King

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Private John Strutten Carter (front row, centre), who was killed in action at the landing, pictured in Melbourne before his departure with members of D Company, 7th Battalion. Five others of the group including Lance Corporal Alexander Stewart Burton (front row, right), who was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions at Lone Pine in August 1915, lost their lives on the peninsula. [AWM P03318.017]

Private Strutten John Carter

7th Battalion AIF
Plot E, Grave 12

Private Strutten John Carter, the son of Strutten and Ruth Carter, was born at Guildford, near Castlemaine, Victoria, and enlisted at Shepparton in August 1914, just two weeks after the beginning of the war. He gave his occupation as ‘labourer’ and embarked from Melbourne on the Hororata on 19 October 1914 with ‘C’ Coy, 7th Battalion, for Egypt. His unit landed on the Gallipoli peninsula on 25 April 1915 as part of the second wave of troops, with thirty officers and 940 other ranks. During the ensuing week the 7th Battalion suffered 541 casualties, including seventy killed of which Private Carter was one. A Board of Enquiry later established that he had been killed in action on 25/26 April and buried by men of the 14th Battalion. It is possible Carter was one of those killed by Turkish fire from these hills as they tried to land from the boat bringing them from the troopship Galeka.