Under oath at the Dardanelles Commission, convened in 1917 to investigate the Gallipoli campaign, Surgeon General Sir Neville Howse, Director of Medical Services (DMS) for the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), stated that ‘as far as the Australian troops were concerned’ medical arrangements for the Gallipoli campaign ‘were so inadequate that they amounted to criminal negligence’.1 He squarely laid the blame for this ‘negligence’ on the shoulders of the British General Staff and informed the commissioners that he intended to share his concerns with Australia’s leaders. A palpably frustrated Howse stated: ‘I personally will recommend my Government when this war is over, that under no conceivable conditions ought they ever to trust to the medical arrangements that may be made by Imperial authorities for the care of their sick and wounded.’2 His scathing critique not only called into question the British General Staff’s ability to plan and execute a comprehensive strategy but also revealed his doubt regarding the benefits of Australian deference to Britain in medical–military matters.

In 1915, four months after the first convoy of Australian soldiers disembarked in Egypt, venereal disease (VD) infected roughly 10 per cent of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF).1 In the Official History, Butler described it as ‘a startling outburst’ that resulted in 3 per cent of the force being ‘constantly sick’.2 Given that a significant number of soldiers were not only incapacitated but also occupying hospital beds that would be needed once combat casualties started to arrive, VD had serious implications for the efficiency of the AIF and its medical services.

‘In the very elaborate medical arrangements for “Messines” every possible factor in the problem of collecting, clearing, treating and evacuating casualties, was foreseen and exactly provided for,’ wrote Butler in the official history. He continued: ‘As it turned out, “events” were in so close accord with “arrangements” that, as an exposition of military medical technique, an account of the medical features of the battle may be based on either.’1 This glowing description of the medical provisions at Messines stands in stark contrast to the medical care provided to wounded and sick soldiers at Gallipoli.

At the end of 1918, the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) was a different organisation from the one that had existed when war was declared in 1914. Commencing the war with a regular staff of four officers, the AAMC rapidly expanded and developed. Almost entirely dependent on assistance from Britain and the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915, the AAMC, during the remaining years of the war, became more independent, developed its own practices and procedures, and asserted its expertise in order to have Australian medical control of Australian casualties.

In November 1914, an Australian couple living in Middlesex, England, offered their house for use as a convalescent home for sick and wounded Australian soldiers recovering from injury. The AAMC accepted Mr and Mrs Charles Billyard-Leake’s offer, and their house and its grounds, Harefield Park, became a convalescent hospital before eventually becoming 1st Australian Auxiliary Hospital (1AAH) Harefield. The AAMC originally intended it to house fifty to a hundred patients plus staff but, eight months after opening, the accommodation had been increased to provide a thousand beds for convalescing soldiers. While at least one soldier mused that its purpose was to house those who were not ‘fit to die in their own homes’, its main function was to rehabilitate sick and wounded soldiers for a return to duty.1 The hospital eventually included surgical, medical, X-ray, massage and electric therapy as well as recreation and study departments. Along with the other auxiliary hospitals in the Australian network – 2nd Australian Auxiliary Hospital (2AAH), Southall, and 3rd Australian Auxiliary Hospital (3AAH), Dartford – it formed an integral part of the medical services provided to Australian soldiers wounded in the First World War.

The European winter of 1917–18 was a time of change for the Australian Imperial Force. In Australia, two plebiscites to introduce conscription had failed, and plans to raise a sixth Australian division were scrapped. Recruits originally destined for this new division were distributed among the existing five divisions, which had suffered significant losses in the fighting in September and October 1917, during the Third Battle of Ypres. In November 1917, having been withdrawn from the line the month before, the five Australian divisions were reorganised into one Australian Corps and attached to the British Fourth Army. The British and New Zealand divisions that had been part of II ANZAC became the British XXII Corps, part of First Army. General Sir William Birdwood, who had been Commanding Officer of I ANZAC, was originally put in charge of the new corps, but in May 1918 he was made Commanding Officer of Fifth Army. As a result, Major General John Monash was promoted to lieutenant general; the Australian Corps was in his command from May onwards, marking the first time an Australian was in command of a fighting unit at corps level on the Western Front.1

On 25 April 1915, when John Simpson Kirkpatrick set foot on the Gallipoli peninsula as part of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), it is unlikely that he had an inkling of the frequency with which his story would be told, retold and mistold to generations of Australians. Nor is it likely he had any idea of the extent to which that story would grow, distort and become part of Australia’s national creation myth. The idea that the Australian nation was ‘born on the shores of Gallipoli’ through the sacrifice, endurance, initiative, resourcefulness, mateship and larrikinism of the Anzacs codified the First World War as a moment of national significance in the formation of an Australian identity. Kirkpatrick’s story is entirely enmeshed in this myth-making; as ‘Australia’s most famous stretcher-bearer’, he has come to embody both the ‘Anzac spirit’ and the work of the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) in the First World War.1