In a surprising revelation, Able Seaman Musician Jessie Bartlett learnt she had three relatives who fought on the shores of the Turkish peninsula during World War I.
Jessie anticipated that being present at the site of the battle of Gallipoli would elicit an emotional response. After the discovery of her own familial link to the Anzacs, however, the experience affected her more than she’d first imagined.
“Three of my relatives fought at Gallipoli and only one survived,” said Jessie, who trains at HMAS Cerberus.
Two of the boys were her great-great-grandmother’s nephews. Joseph (Joe) Horrocks enlisted at 21 and served in the 11th Battalion, one of the first to land on the Gallipoli Peninsula. It was Joe’s regiment – soldiers from Western Australia – who posed on the steps of Cheops Pyramid in a famous photograph taken in January 1915. Four months later, Joe would be dead.
“Reading the letters Joe wrote to his family was a chilling experience,” Jessie said. “He writes about landing at Gallipoli, saying ‘It put a funny feeling in a man being fired at in an open boat’, and ‘The first three days fighting were the hardest we had’. I can’t even start to imagine the fear and exhaustion they would have felt.”
Sadly, Joe never made it home. After a shelling in the trenches resulted in the amputation of his left leg, he died of his wounds on board HMHS Soudan. His body was buried at sea in the Dardanelles.
“In a tragic twist, Joe’s younger brother, Edwin – who had enlisted at just 19 years old and travelled to Gallipoli with the 28th Battalion – was likely sent to war before hearing the news that his brother had already died,” Jessie said. “According to his mother’s notes on his roll of honour, Edwin was known to be a ‘good shot’ and volunteered as a sniper, but was shot through the spine just eight days after landing on the peninsula.” He was buried at sea from the RN hospital ship HMHS Somali.
Joseph and Edwin Horrocks’ names are on the Lone Pine Memorial at Gallipoli. “It was interesting learning about their stories but it felt very surreal to actually be there and see their names carved into the stone and think about what they went through.”
Only one of her Anzac relatives survived. Harold Frank Bolding, her great-great-great uncle, was wounded fighting at Gallipoli with the 4th Light Horse Regiment, but recovered and went on to commission with the Royal Army Service Corps.
“It’s hard to grasp how little these boys might have known about what they would be facing before being sent to war. They didn’t have access to TikTok or social media to hear stories from people who had fought before them to understand what they would experience. Many were teenagers thinking they were off on an exciting adventure, but many never came home. Can you imagine leaving family and friends before turning 19 to spend nearly a month at sea sailing to fight in a war in an unknown land?”
