ANZAC Songs

BY LLOYD GORMAN

JOHN PATRICK O’DONNELL AND HIS TWIN BROTHER THOMAS HENRY WERE IN THEIR EARLY TWENTIES WHEN THEY LEFT THEIR HOME IN TULLOW, CO. CARLOW TO MIGRATE TO AUSTRALIA AROUND 1911.

Following in their father’s footsteps, the O’Donnell boys found work with the Bank of Adelaide in South Australia and stayed with an uncle in their adopted home. When World War I broke out, John – like many thousands of other eager young men – quickly enlisted aged 23 on August 26 1914 with the 10th Battalion (his brother enlisted with the same battalion in 1916). His hometown for enrolment was given as Balaclava, Wakefield, South Australia but his next of kin was given as Mrs Elizabeth M. O’Donnell, C/O National Bank Ltd, Carlow. Co. Carlow. Ireland. The young bank clerk shipped out for Egypt on October 20 1914 and it would be another five years before he returned to Australia. O’Donnell was amongst the men of the 10th Battalion who landed at Gaba Tepe, Gallipoli on April 25. According to a newspaper report he was “hit 10 times and wounded four times” and there was another strange incident where: “[he] with 28 others he was posted as missing, but subsequently the whole of these Australian heroes reappeared in the trenches”. He would later serve on the Western Front. We don’t know if O’Donnell might have ducked across to Ireland while he was back in Europe, but we do know that a poem (see right) he wrote about Gallipoli was published in the Dublin Evening News on 18th September 1915 and then reprinted in the Advertiser (Adelaide) on 2 November 1915. In the final months of the war, O’Donnell had a chance to pen some more poetry while he was recuperating from war wounds in Netley Hospital in Hampshire. One of those was a poem in memory of his twin who died at Weshoek, Flanders on 28 September 1917. That poem (far right) touched on their emigrant past and the sacrifices made by so many in that war. O’Donnell returned to Australia in June 1919 where he would live out the rest of his life. He died in Adelaide, on March 7 1982, aged 91 years.

Corporal John Patrick O’Donnell

LINES ON AUSTRALIAN GRAVES AT GALLIPOLI

BY CORPORAL JOHN PATRICK O’DONNELL

The ghastly moon comes creeping Across old Seddul Bahr The sobbing wind goes whispering Its mournful news afar. The stars look down upon the land, the white mist covers allotted Those gallant hears who aired their bloodshed And heard their country’s call. Oh, many a home is desolate, And many a heart is sore, Away beneath the Southern Cross, That far Australian shore. Their lvoe ones lie a-sleeping now Where Grecian heroes lie: The same pale looks down on them, the same stars in the sky. The teamster cracks his rawhide thong, the horses strain anew, Old Mulga Bill comes rattling in As only he can do. Mick Flannigan’s bar is chock-a-block, for half the town is there, the latest list of casualties to spread upon a chair. A cheery word to Mrs F, A nod to Lanky Mick, He shoves his way across the bar to where the crowd is thick. A whisper circles round the place, the men fall back a pace, he slowly scans the long, long list until he finds the place. No need to ask of news of him, The only son he had – Killed at the front – not twenty yet – Why, he was but a lad. A score of hands stretch out to grasp, He sways, and almost falls. Then slowly leaves the crowded place, and heeds not all their calls.

So many another heard is sad. Through all that peaceful land: The touch of “German Culture” now Is felt on every hand. Their fame shall live unsullied Through ages yet to be, Those gallant dead in lonely graves Across the Aegean Sea.

TO TOM

BY CORPORAL JOHN PATRICK O’DONNELL

Do you recall way back on sunny shores, The grand old gumtrees by McCarthy’s creek; The Kookoburas laughing in the trees, And all the world asleep. Sometimes I think I hear your merry laugh, As down the gully distant hoofs drew nigh, And all around the wondrous tropic night And starry sky. But when again the Spring in France shall break, With scarlet poppy and wild Somme flowers, Perchance some little sky lark’s note shall shake Departing Winter’s stillness in the bowers. And when the tempest of my life is o’er, And night draws nigh – may I so hope to chance To sleep as peaceful, when my Spring shall break, As those who fell for France.

O’Donnell’s collection of poems were published in 1918 in a small book called ‘Songs of an Anzac’. Publishers Browne & Nolan were based in Dublin, adding to the suggestion that he might have returned to Ireland at some point. Two copies of ‘Songs of an Anzac’ can be found in the reading room of the library inside the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

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GRAVE CONCERN FOR BROTHERS LEFT BEHIND

More than 30,000 Allied troops and nearly twice as many Turkish soldiers were killed during the failed Gallipoli campaign. Burial details were ad hoc and haphazard at the beginning of the conflict but as the death toll increased it became necessary to better organise the removal of corpses – that could be retrieved. Several graveyards were opened by the Allies, a force which included Australian, Irish (British), France and Indian soldiers. In the months’ long bloody fighting there was just one day in May when both sides agreed to a one day truce Top: HRH Prince Harry, President Michael D Higgins, President of the Republic of Turkey H.E. Recep Tayyip Erdogan and HRH Prince Charles at Helles Memorial, Gallipoli in 2015 Image: www.dfa.ie Above: One of the Allied forces cemeteries from the Gallipoli campaign near

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so they could recover and bury their own dead. Before they evacuated the Turkish peninsula under the cover of night, the Western powers chartered and surveyed the graves of their war dead for future reference. The Allies would not return to the area until 1919, after the war had ended. By this time many of the isolated and smaller graves had become grown over or lost. Many of the wooden crosses on the graves themselves had been taken away or used as firewood. The daunting task of relocating the graves and remains fell to the Imperial War Graves Commission. By 1924 the majority of that work had been carried out with the building of permanent cemeteries. Those with no known graves or who were buried at sea (if they died on nearby hospital ships or islands) are commemorated with memorials at Hill 60, Chunuk Bair, Lone Pine and Cape Helles. In total there are 47 different cemeteries for all those killed on both sides of the battle, which proved to be a brutal failure for the Allies. In April 2015 President of Ireland Michael D Higgins became the first head of the Irish state to visit Gallipoli for the 100th anniversary.