Project blog

Charles Ulm with his mother and father, 1914

One hundred years ago, today, a 15 year old Mosman boy signed up for the A.I.F. It was the start of an adventure that would make him a household name.

This year the ANZAC Day Dawn Service at Gallipoli commemorated the centenary of the landing there of the Australian and New Zealand Imperial Expeditionary Forces at ANZAC Cove on the 25th April 1915.

In the words of historian Peter Hart

These were pointless attacks and if they typified any British trait it was a lunatic persistence in the face of the obvious.

Survivors of the Australian 13th, 14th & 18th Btn’s attack on the 22nd, joined into 4th Brigade for a 2nd attempt on Hill 60. Again they were joined by the NZ Mounted Rifles, 9^th and 10^th Australian Light Horse, Connaught Rangers, Ghurka Riflemen, Welsh Borderers and New Hampshires. The battle lasted into the night as both sides struggled desperately - and paid dearly.

Cigarette card, ‘Hot Trench Work’ State Library of NSW

The 18^th Battalion volunteers — raised mainly from the Sydney area, including Mosman — were described as ‘great big cheery fellows, whom it did your heart good to see.’ Within 48 hours of landing at Gallipoli, 50% of them were either dead or wounded. A few days later 80% of the 760 men who started the battle had become casualties.

George W Lambert
Cartoon for ‘The charge of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade at the Nek’

One hundred years ago Light Horse regiments attacked well-entrenched Turkish positions at “The Nek.” Their fate — charging into certain death — lives large in the Australian psyche. Among those killed that day was Major Thomas Harold Redford of Holt Avenue, Mosman.