Gallipoli and the Anzacs

Enlarge

Boer War veteran Major Thomas James Logan, 2nd Australian Light Horse Regiment, killed in action, 7 August 1915. [AWM H19242]

Major Thomas James Logan

2nd Australian Light Horse AIF
Special Memorial 14

Queensland farmer Thomas Logan was a Boer War veteran with nineteen years experience in the Light Horse when he was appointed to the rank of Major on 20 August 1914. The men of the 2nd Australian Light Horse, raised in Queensland, had to leave their horses in Egypt when they embarked in May for Gallipoli where they fought as the infantry.

On 7 August 1915, at 4.30 am, two hundred men of the unit in four successive waves were ordered to cross the narrow no-man’s land at Quinn’s Post after an unsuccessful bombardment of the Turkish positions by the machine guns at the post. Like the more famous charge of the 8th and 10th Light Horse at The Nek, this was a diversionary attack aimed at drawing enemy attention away from the main New Zealand advance towards Chunuk Bair further up the range. The enemy was well prepared and, as the first wave scrambled out of the trenches, they were cut down by intense enemy machine gun and rifle fire. All but one of the first line was either killed or wounded. Major Logan, who led the charge, was killed before he had gone a few metres. In less than a minute, three officers and fourteen others were killed with an officer and a further thirty-six wounded. Logan’s left a wife, Beatrice, and six children.

Enlarge

Private Arthur Bolger, 14th Battalion, killed in action, 27 April 1915. [AWM H05619]

Private Arthur Ernest Bolger

14th Battalion AIF
Special Memorial 33

Arthur Bolger landed on Gallipoli with the 14th Battalion on 25 April 1915. Two days later, two companies of the battalion under Major John Adams were sent to Quinn’s Post. Arriving there, the commanding officer was soon wounded by machine gun fire and the effect of Turkish machine guns on the battalion was deadly as it strived to ‘dig in’ in the rugged terrain. In the three days and nights that the battalion was at Quinn’s it suffered the loss of Captain William Hoggart and nearly a third of its men. Amongst them was Private Bolger who had been killed in action on 27 April.

Enlarge

Special memorial of Private Arthur Bolger, 14th Battalion, killed in action, 27 April 1915, Quinn’s Post Cemetery. [DVA]

Just after midnight on 27 April, Chaplain Frederick Wray made his way up to Quinn’s Post to bury the dead. It is probable that Private Bolger, a twenty-one year old draper’s assistant from Carlton, Victoria, was one of the twenty-nine men of the 14th Battalion that Wray buried there during that dark, cold night.

In 1924, Private Bolger’s adoptive mother Charlotte, the former Matron of the Ragged Boys’ Home, Frankston, Victoria, who had cared for him since he was six weeks old, was advised that a Special Memorial would be erected in Quinn’s Post Cemetery with the inscription ‘Believed to be buried in this cemetery’. His mother added the epitaph –

He Gave
God's Greatest Gift To Man
His Life.

Enlarge

Lieutenant Robert Harold Crow, killed in action 3rd of May 1915 [AMW H06448]

Lieutenant Robert Harold Crow

13th Battalion AIF
Plot D, Grave 8

On board the transport ship Ulysses when it sailed in December 1914 was Second Lieutenant Robert Crow, a former clerk with the Postmaster General’s Department in Sydney, who had enlisted in the 13th Battalion.

Enlarge

The grave of Lieutenant Robert Harold Crow, 13th Battalion, Quinn's Post Cemetery [DVA]

The battalion landed at Gallipoli late in the day on 25 April 1915. Under a heavy bombardment from British warships standing off the peninsula and artillery they moved off at dusk on 2 May to launch an assault from Quinn’s Post uphill towards Baby 700. The 13th Battalion held Pope’s Hill and moved up on to the Chessboard, which was said to be ‘crawling with Turks’. The 16th Battalion, also attacking, called for reinforcements and a platoon of the 13th moved off under the command of Lieutenant Crow. Crow was subsequently killed on what Chaplain Frederick Wray described as ‘an awful day’ in which the 13th Battalion lost 200 men.

Colonel Stanley Perry, 13th Battalion, wrote to Lieutenant Crow’s mother:

… if it is any consolation at such a time, accept my assurance of the high regard, and true love, the men of Bob's command, and the officers of his Battalion at all time showed him, especially in the hour of danger, and the brave unselfish and soldierly manner Bob gave his life.

[Colonel S L Perry, 1DRL 546, AWM]