November 11th: The Man with the Donkey
To commemorate 11th November, here’s a photograph I took in Melbourne, Australia, of ‘The Man with the Donkey’ – a statue of a stretcher bearer with his donkey carrying a wounded comrade, to epitomise the courage and compassion of the Australian soldier.
In the First World War, many Anzac soldiers wounded at Gallipoli owed their life to the stretcher bearers, who braved enemy fire to rescue men from the front line and carry them to dressing stations on the beach.
The best known of the bearers was John Simpson Kirkpatrick, featured here, who commandeered a donkey to aid him as casualties grew and manpower was stretched to its limits. Simpson, as he was known, landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and was killed less than a month later.
The statue, designed by Wallace Anderson, is near the Shrine of Remembrance in the King’s Domain in Melbourne. Lest we forget.
November 11th: The Man with the Donkey
To commemorate 11th November, here’s a photograph I took in Melbourne, Australia, of ‘The Man with the Donkey’ – a statue of a stretcher bearer with his donkey carrying a wounded comrade, to epitomise the courage and compassion of the Australian soldier.
In the First World War, many Anzac soldiers wounded at Gallipoli owed their life to the stretcher bearers, who braved enemy fire to rescue men from the front line and carry them to dressing stations on the beach.
The best known of the bearers was John Simpson Kirkpatrick, featured here, who commandeered a donkey to aid him as casualties grew and manpower was stretched to its limits. Simpson, as he was known, landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and was killed less than a month later.
The statue, designed by Wallace Anderson, is near the Shrine of Remembrance in the King’s Domain in Melbourne. Lest we forget.