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Lost Gallipoli Anzac Ned Attfield finds place in history after being shunned as a deserter

Rob Harris, Herald Sun April 20, 2018 9:16pm

Ned Attfield was no deserter. It just didn’t make sense.

In 1914, he tried to enlist seven times to fight in the Great War. Every time he was knocked back. Five foot, 3½ inches was too short for the Australian Imperial Force, he was told.

On his eighth trip to the St Kilda Road barracks, three days before Christmas, officials relented. Nothing would to stop Ned’s determination to serve king and country.

In April 1915, the 24-year-old labourer from South Yarra found himself on a boat with reinforcements for the 5th Battalion, bound for Gallipoli.

Ned Attfield, believed to be standing second from left with 5th battalion, 4th reinforcements members at Cairo, 1915.

On May 26, he was shot in the hand and back. He survived, was treated at a hospital and a month later was back on the battlefield.

Three weeks later, he was back in hospital with dysentery. The disease killed 600 Diggers that summer.

But Ned went back a third time to help his fellow Victorians of the 2nd Brigade. In December, he and 80,000 allied troops were evacuated from the peninsula having survived the horror that killed more than 8000 Australians.

Back at camp, near Cairo, he cashed his pay cheque a month later and posted a letter home to his parents.

Then Private Edward Attfield, regimental number 1701, was never heard from again. As if he’d disappeared without trace.

More than a century later, his name graces no honour roll. The army rendered him an illegal absentee. No medals have been awarded for his efforts. His mother was denied his pension.

But those who loved him would not have it. And his descendants have fought to clear his name.

The Australian Army had the highest rate of illegal absentees of any national contingency in the British Expeditionary Forces.

However, unlike other nations, the government did not want to execute volunteer soldiers for the crime.

Edwin Kettle was convinced his brother-in-law was not a deserter. He wrote as much in an affidavit to the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1930. “He gave up a good constant position to enlist,” he swore.

“He was too short and went to the Victoria Barracks practically every day for some weeks endeavouring to enlist. He was always fearless.”

After months without contact from Ned, whose battalion headed to France, his parents Charles and Mary raised the alarm with the Red Cross and army officials.

They’d read in the newspapers that the forces in Egypt were sent to England, so Edwin sent a cable to London. They received no news of his whereabouts.

Ned’s half-brother, James Tyler, enlisted in 1917 and was urged by his family to investigate when he landed in England. He could not trace him. Edwin asked his uncle and his father, both in Europe for the war, to help find Ned. They could not.

“I visited practically every boat with troops abroad that returned to Australia and questioned anyone with Edward Attfield’s battalion colours,” Edwin wrote a decade later.

“I frequently asked returned men in the street ... whether they knew anything of him but did not get any satisfaction from anyone.”

Adding to the mystery, Ned’s army records mistakenly claimed he’d boarded HMAT Ballarat from Alexandria and headed to the Western Front. But he’d been reported missing by his battalion a month earlier.

Ned Attfield was officially declared AWOL on March 26 in Cairo. But confusion still reigned.

A letter from the Red Cross in November said “as far as can be ascertained” Ned was “well and with his unit in France”. Various letters and telegrams were sent back and forth across the world but nothing could be found of his whereabouts.

On January 25, 1919, Charles Attfield died. His death notice in The Argus newspaper listed his son, Ned, “on active service”.

In truth, he hadn’t been heard of in three years.

Three months later, a letter arrived at the family home at Lang St, South Yarra, which confirmed Ned was officially a deserter.

“His father died of a broken heart,” Ned’s great-niece, 81-year-old Beverly Warren says.

His mother, she says, “lived with heartache ... and never recovered”.

The last letter Ned Attfield sent home before disappearing in 1915.

HMAT Wiltshire departed Port Melbourne for Alexandria on April 13, 1915.

On board for the six-week voyage were the 5th Battalion, 4th Reinforcements.

Together with the 6th, 7th and 8th Battalions they would make up the Australian Imperial Force’s 2nd Brigade, 1st Division.

Ned Attfield and his new comrades had trained together at Broadmeadows. Among them was John Williams, a 29-year-old farmer from Quambatook, who would be awarded a distinguished conduct medal for gallantry.

Williams led repeated bomb attacks in the Lone Pine trenches. His right arm was badly wounded but he kept throwing bombs with his left until he collapsed.

Walter Allan, a labourer from Carlton, was on the ship too. He would be killed the day he landed at Gallipoli.

Ned’s letter home on June 5, sent from the Alexandria hospital, did not hint at the horror he’d have seen at Gallipoli.

Letters in October, following a second stint in hospital, talk of trips to the pyramids, the museum and the zoo. He seemed worried about his parents’ health.

He asked after his sister and her young daughter.

“I suppose Lilly is all right and still running up the passage. I suppose Dad has learnt her to sing by now,” the young man wrote..

THE body of an unknown Australian soldier was found near Ghezireh Base in Egypt on January 28, 1916. A medical examination determined the cause of death was asphyxia due to strangulation. Attempts to identify the soldier were fruitless. Records are not available to suggest what efforts were made to find the culprit. The unidentified soldier was buried in plot D285 at the Old Cairo cemetery on February 1.

Melbourne-based amateur military researcher Martin Elliget stumbled across Ned Attfield’s file notes in 2014.

He was intrigued that case notes from 1923 raised the possibility that unidentified body could be linked to Ned’s disappearance. WHY AVENGERS IS FACING A MASSIVE AUSSIE BOYCOTT

“Once I read his service record and the note about the likelihood he’d been murdered, I was hooked,” he said.

Further research revealed only one Australian soldier went missing from the area. It had to be Ned.

But a letter on December 31, 1923 from defence secretary Thomas Trumble to Ned’s mum said: “All efforts to connect your son with the soldier whose dead body was found at Ghezireh on 28th January, 1916, have failed.”

A royal commission later revealed many administrative errors by the army during wartime.

But Trumble, the younger brother of Australian cricketer Hugh Trumble, was lauded for his efforts, despite the huge demands placed upon him.

Elliget points out one of the “efforts” Trumble was referring to was showing photographs of Private Attfield, supplied by his mother, to an ex-member of the army, who gave evidence at an inquiry held immediately after the death of the unidentified soldier.

“He was unable to identify the man in the photograph but that hardly seems surprising, seeing as it was seven, almost eight, years later,” Elliget said.

In 2015, Elliget wrote to the Office of Australian War Graves and then-defence minister Kevin Andrews, highlighting the likelihood that the Unknown Soldier in a Cairo grave was Private Attfield. He urged his case be reconsidered.

Susan Morrison stumbled across the story of her husband’s distant cousin when researching her family tree. Her curiosity led to Elliget’s research online. She says the family long believed the body in Cairo was Edward Attfield.

“If the army had made greater efforts to identify the body of this soldier ... or were quicker to realise the possible link with Edward Attfield, his disappearance could have been resolved almost immediately,” she said

“This would have eased some of the heartache suffered by Edward’s family, who were not well treated by the army.”

AS the Last Post plays during Anzac services next Wednesday, a newly polished headstone will be unveiled in a Cairo war cemetery on a plot previously marked as an unknown Australian soldier.

The Australian Army Identification Board has reviewed the evidence and concluded the remains are that of Private Edward Attfield.

Beverly Warren, whose two-year-old great-grandson is named Ned, will be presented with the first issue of the 1914-15 Star, British War Medal and the Victory Medal.

“Australia failed this man and he needs to be remembered,” Beverly said.

“He was wounded twice — if he was a Yank, he would be hero.”

What happened to him will remain a mystery. But his family finally knows where he is and comrades can know he never gave up on them.

His headstone reads: “Edward Attfield, Beloved Son of Mary and Charles; I once was lost but now am found.” rob.harris@news.com.au