Gallipoli and the Anzacs

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Damaged photograph of Private Sydney Smith, 6th Battalion, AIF, once attached to the Mumbannar School Honour Roll at Dartmoor, Victoria. [Vern McCallum Collection, Dartmoor, Victoria]

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Believed to be a photograph of Private Sydney Smith, 6th Battalion, killed in action, 25 April 1915. [The Argus, 20 July 1915]

Private Sydney Smith,

6th Battalion AIF
Row A, Grave 6

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The ‘Over the top’ sculpture crafted from the tree originally planted in Dartmoor, Victoria, to remember Private Sydney Smith, 6th Battalion, who died at Gallipoli in 1915.

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Grave of Private Sydney Smith, 6th Battalion, AIF, Plugge’s Plateau Cemetery. [DVA]

Police constable Sydney Smith, from Dartmoor, Victoria, enlisted in the 6th Battalion within days of the outbreak of war. His battalion came ashore from the Galeka under heavy shellfire on 25 April 1915. By 7a.m., half the battalion had landed as part of the second wave and were assembled at the foot of the Razorback feature ready for the assault on 400 Plateau (Lone Pine). Private Smith died that day in the blistering enemy fire as the battalion made its way up Pine Ridge. He was one of 411 casualties suffered by the battalion in the first six days of the campaign.

News of Private Smith’s death reached Dartmoor in late June 1915 when the Reverend Craig of Heywood, Victoria, motorcycled to the Smith family to deliver the sad news. At a memorial service in the Union Church, Mumbannar, Craig commented that Smith was a man of:

… quiet, unassuming nature, placing stern duty before social position [and he] exhorted all those that had no ties to keep them back to go and enlist and help avenge their fallen brethren.

[Reverend Craig, quoted in Michael Greenham, The World War One Veterans of Dartmoor and District, 1995]

In September 1918, to commemorate the sixty servicemen and women of the Dartmoor district, an avenue of Atlantic cedar trees was planted and nameplates affixed to each tree. In recent years, some of the trees have become unsafe and, rather than remove them completely, it was decided, in consultation with family members to sculpt the tree trunks into memorials depicting aspects of the town’s military history. The tree planted in memory of Private Sydney Smith in 1918 was sculptured into a digger going ‘Over the Top’.

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Grave of Private George Bell, 11th Battalion, AIF, killed in action, 25 April 1915, Plugge’s Plateau Cemetery. [DVA]

Private George Bell,

11th Battalion AIF
Row B, Grave 6

The staff of the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau made numerous attempts to discover the fate of Glasgow-born Private George Bell who landed at Gallipoli with the men of the 11th Battalion in the early hours of 25 April 1915. It had been speculated that he had been taken prisoner after his disappearance from an advance party but investigations revealed that he had been severely wounded. Two companions bound his thigh wound but when the party had to retire, Bell being unable to walk, had to be left behind. He was not seen alive again.

Some time later, Captain Bigwither of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, found Bell’s identity disc at Baby 700 and passed it to Australian Headquarters in Egypt. A Court of Enquiry held in April 1916 found that Private Bell had been killed in action on the day of the landing. In December 1919, his aunt was advised that his remains had been located and buried in Plugge’s Plateau Cemetery. The epitaph chosen for his grave reads -

Beloved Son
Of Mrs McFadyean
Of Scotland