Edgar & Alf: A Roll of the Dice With Two ANZAC Legends

April 25, 1915. In time, it would be framed in history as the first ANZAC Day. But Great Uncle Edgar wasn’t to know that; for him, it was simply the day he enlisted in the Army.

Some months after, his little brother – my Grand-Dad, Alf – followed him into the AIF - and had much better luck, of which more later.

Edgar sailed away, bound for the tragedy and horror of Gallipoli.

He was only a bantamweight: five-feet-seven-and-a-half, and 138 pounds – less than ten stone in the old money. But at 27, he was older than many of his fellow recruits. That may have helped his promotion from Private to Lance Corporal in July, and to Sergeant in October.

He managed to survive long enough to leave the Turkish beaches behind in January, but it was no escape: the troop ship took him to Egypt, then onto France, where the slaughterhouse of the Somme awaited.

Amid murderous fighting on the bloody battlefield of Pozieres, as his comrades fell by the hundred around him, he was promoted again – this time to Second Lieutenant. Six days later, bullets tore across his chest. Four days after that, Great Uncle Edgar died in a military hospital. He’s been lying for 95 years now in the war cemetery at Puchevillers in France.

But chance is a funny thing.

Edgar’s brother, Alf – a strapping six footer, sixteen stone, with a massive chest, and arms thickened by his work as a farrier – joined up in 1916. He was posted to the 12th Field Company Engineers and served in France.

His papers show that he was even allowed six months’ paid leave to work in London as a boat-builder.

I suspect they were rowing boats he was building, because after his discharge from the military, he went on to win the world single sculls championship, drawing 150,000 spectators to the banks of the Parramatta River for his unsuccessful title defence against the Englishman Ernest Barry.

Too proud to exploit his sporting fame, he worked as a nightwatchman for the Commonwealth Bank, and died in 1951, missing the birth of his first grandchild by just six weeks.

So I never got to meet my Grand-Dad Alf. My father and his sisters say he was stern, sometimes gruff, and a disciplinarian, who hid his emotions – like many men of his generation. I have a feeling I would have liked him, though. Certainly I’m enormously proud of his achievements.

But all I can glean about Edgar comes from the 65 digitised pages of his army service records, which are held in Australia’s National Archives. It’s a priceless experience to be able to sit at a computer screen in 2011, and see the very papers he signed as he went off to war nearly a century ago.

It’s touching to read some of the other documents in the file – the handwritten letters from Edgar’s parents, unfailingly polite and effortlessly formal, seeking photos of their son’s final resting place, and the clipped, impersonal tone of the replies. The photos, incidentally, arrived in 1926 – ten years after Edgar’s death.

But what’s truly heartbreaking is the typed inventory of the few meagre possessions Edgar left behind. The list accompanied the kit bag sent by the Army to Edgar’s mother after his death.

“2 Singlets, 1 Cigarette Case, 1 Wallet, 1 Leather Belt, Socks, Handkerchiefs, 2 Small Books, 1 Pocket Knife, 1 Pr. Canvas Shoes, 1 Gun-Metal Wristlet Watch (Damaged).”

It’s hard not to think that that’s all he left. But I’d hate for anyone to regard that list in any way as the sum total of his life.

Great Uncle Edgar – we’ll never know what sort of a man you were. I can’t even find a photograph of you anywhere. But I feel I owe you a debt of gratitude that can never be repaid. You mightn’t have changed the course of history, even though you died trying. But you might just have made a big difference to our family history.

Like my father and my children, I can only be eternally thankful that that it was you, and not Alf, who took those bullets at Pozieres. I’ll think of you and your mates when I go to the Dawn Service in Melbourne this ANZAC Day. And I’ll come to Puchevillers Military Cemetery in France one day soon. Just to say thanks, in person.