Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War

by E. C. Buley

They started together, Captain Sass with his rifle and Captain Shout with bombs. Captain Shout had a good look round to see the position and then pushed the barricade down. They went forward two abreast, Captain Sass shooting and Captain Shout bombing. As Captain Shout's bombs fell those following could hear the bustle of accoutrements and scrambling cries round the next corner. They finally reached the point where it was decided that it would be suitable to build the last barricade. Captain Shout all the time was laughing and joking and cheering the men immensely by his example. He resolved to make a big throw before the final dash. He tried to light three bombs at once, so that they might be quickly thrown, and the Turks prevented from hindering the building of the barricade. He ignited all the three and threw one, then either the second or the third burst as it was leaving his hand, shattered one hand and most of the other, destroyed one eye and laid open his cheek, and scored his breast and leg. Captain Shout was nevertheless conscious and talked cheerfully. He drank tea and sent a message to his wife. Since the day of his arrival he had been the heart and soul of his section of the firing line. His invincible buoyancy and cheerfulness was a great help to the men. He succumbed to his injuries.

Captain Tubb of the 7th Battalion also won the Victoria Cross in the defence of Lone Pine, and associated with him were Sergeant William Dunstan, and Corporal Alexander Stuart Burton of the same battalion, both of whom were similarly honoured. In the early morning of August 9 Captain Tubb, then a lieutenant, was holding with his company a section of newly-captured trench of the utmost importance to the defence of the whole position. A fierce bomb attack was delivered upon the centre of the trench and maintained for hours with the utmost fury.

Every man worked like a hero, the officer setting a shining example. The bombs were fielded as they came over the barricade and returned before they had time to explode. Dunstan himself returned over twenty bombs in this fashion, and his work was equalled by Burton and others. One nameless and devoted soldier, seeing a bomb about to explode at the feet of Captain Tubb, threw himself upon it and saved his officer's life at the cost of his own.

Three times the enemy blew in the barricade which separated them from the brave Anzacs, and as often Captain Tubb led his men forward, drove them off, and rebuilt the barricade. Once again they came forward, and in rebuilding the barricade under a perfect hail of bombs the gallant Burton lost his life. The Captain was wounded in the head and the arm, but he still cheered his men on, and eventually the enemy were beaten off.

Sergeant Dunstan, who came from my own native city of Ballarat, is further the hero of an act of self-denial which it is pleasant to record. The Mayor of the city, proud of his gallantry, promoted a testimonial which had already grown to a very substantial sum when the knowledge of it came to Dunstan. He at once wrote a letter, couched in terms of modest dignity, refusing to be the recipient of any testimonial for the mere performance of his duty.

On the preceding night, not far from the spot where these gallant actions were performed, Lieutenant William John Symons, also of the 7th Battalion, was similarly hard pressed by the Turks. With a gallant little band of this brave battalion he was holding a section of the freshly-captured trench somewhat to the right of that held by Captain Tubb. The enemy came in force, and rained bombs into the trench. He repelled a number of furious attacks, and early in the morning was called to a sap-end where six officers in succession had been killed or wounded, and a portion of the sap retaken by the enemy.

The lieutenant led a charge which resulted in the recapture of the whole sap, and in the charge he shot two Turks with his revolver. He then withdrew for fifteen yards and ordered the construction of a barricade across the sap. His part in this work was to hold up an iron shield which covered the men at work with the sandbags, while he was exposed. The enemy succeeded in setting fire to the woodwork and fascines of the head cover, but Lieutenant Symons put the fire out, and continued the work of building the barricade. His coolness and determination finally compelled the enemy to discontinue their attacks.

Lance-Corporal Leonard Keyzor, of the 1st Battalion, obtained his V.C. chiefly for his actions in the south-eastern corner of the Lone Pine, where the situation was so difficult on August 7 that a section of the outer trench had to be abandoned, and which has not since been held by ourselves or the Turks, and in personally superintending the retirement from which the gallant Colonel Scobie was killed. Keyzor was one of the best bomb-throwers in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. During these fierce attacks he was throwing for fifty hours almost continuously. He was sent to first one corner of the trenches and then to another, but mainly to this warm corner, not only throwing bombs but constantly smothering with his coat or sandbag the enemy's bombs which had fallen in the trench. He often threw them back. Finally, when the enemy cut down the time of the fuses, he caught several bombs in the air like a cricket ball and threw them back before bursting.

On August 8, at the same place, Private Keyzor bombed the enemy out of a position, from which a temporary mastery over his own trench had been obtained, and was again wounded. Although marked for hospital, he declined to leave, and volunteered to throw bombs for another company which had lost its bomb-throwers.

Private John Hamilton, of the 1st Battalion, won his V.C. on August 9, also at the Lone Pine. About daybreak, when the Turks were beginning to creep up the communication trenches to attack the captured trenches with bombs, Hamilton climbed up on to the top of the parapet and waited there in the open overlooking the trench up which the enemy came, and making a little position behind the sandbags, told the officer below whenever the Turks were coming up to attack. Several other men were up beside him a portion of the time, doing the same, but Hamilton stayed up there, under the open sky and entirely unprotected from shrapnel or snipers, five or six hours, shooting the approaching Turks and passing down the word of their advance.