Alec Campbell: last veteran of disastrous Gallipoli campaign

ALEC Campbell, the last Australian known to have fought in the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign of the First World War - and possibly the last from any nation - died yesterday. He was 103.

Campbell was one of the youngest soldiers at Gallipoli, after lying about his age and enlisting when he was just 16. In November 1915, he landed at Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula where ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) forces, as the backbone of a 200,000-strong, British-led allied force including French and Indian units, were trying to open up a sea route for their ally, Russia.

For about six weeks, Campbell braved heavy fire to carry ammunition and water from the boats to trenches on the front line before he became ill and was evacuated to Egypt.

The campaign, lasting more than eight months, was a disaster. Allied and Turkish troops suffered more than 300,000 casualties in the fighting.

The volunteer ANZAC troops, fighting under their own flags for the first time, lost more than 10,000 soldiers at Gallipoli, which is now viewed as the birthplace of the national identity, forging the characteristics of "mateship" and equality.

The president of the veterans’ National Returned Services League, Peter Phillips, said yesterday that while Australia had sadly lost its last living link with Gallipoli, it would never forget the ANZAC spirit symbolised by Campbell. "It was its spirit, its baptism of fire, and the spirit of the nation that was forged there at Gallipoli," Mr Phillips said. "We’ll move on, but we’ll never forget Gallipoli."

The Australian prime minister, John Howard, paid tribute to Campbell and said his family would be offered a state funeral. "Not only is he the last Australian ANZAC, he is also the last known person anywhere in the world who served in that extraordinarily tragic campaign," Mr Howard told parliament. "It is very much a moment in this country’s history, the severing of that link, and I know that all of us would mark that."

Campbell, nicknamed The Kid at Gallipoli, went from achievement to achievement after the war. He became a builder, served as a senior public servant and gained an economics degree in his fifties. He also sailed in the gruelling Sydney-Hobart yacht race six times and fathered the last of his nine children at the age of 69. In 2000, he was featured on a special Australia Day stamp as one of Australia’s living legends, alongside the other two Gallipoli veterans still living at that time.

In recent years, he rarely spoke of his time in Gallipoli, but when he did he recalled an "incredible hail of bullets" on landing on the beach. "People were always getting hit," he remembered. He said he did not kill a single Turkish fighter.

"I’m not a philosopher. Gallipoli was Gallipoli. That’s all there was about it," he said.

Campbell was last seen in public three weeks ago when, wheelchair-bound and half-blind, he led an annual 25 April parade to commemorate the anniversary of the battle that has become the day Australia remembers its war dead - Anzac Day.

Every year, thousands of Australians also travel to Gallipoli on 25 April to pay their respects to the nation’s veterans. It is believed there are now only 16 known Australian veterans from the First World War.

The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, a poignant song of the Gallipoli tragedy written by the Australian-based Scots folk-singer, Eric Bogle, is now sung all over the world.

Campbell died in a nursing home in Hobart, in his home state of Tasmania, the island off Australia’s south-eastern tip, with his second wife, Kathleen, by his side. He is also survived by nine children, and at last count, 33 grandchildren, 35 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.