This cemetery lies to the right off the road leading northwards from the Anzac Commemorative Site about 190 metres in from the road. It was named for the 7th Australian Field Ambulance, which landed on Gallipoli in September 1915. Despite its name, among this cemetery’s 640 burials and commemorations there are only sixty-eight Australians of whom forty-seven are ‘believed to be buried’ here and are commemorated with Special Memorials. Most of the Australian burials occurred during the ‘August offensive’ of 6-10 August 1915, the last major attempt to break out of the initial Anzac position. After the war, over 300 bodies were brought in from fifteen smaller burial grounds in the vicinity.

Padre Frederick Wray, from Rushworth, Victoria, was chaplain to the 4th Australian Brigade at Gallipoli and was with the brigade near Chunuk Bair during the ‘August offensive’. He recorded details of the action on 9 August:

Our forces and Ghurkas and others had gained a small footing on top of Chunuk Bair yesterday morning and had strong supports well up the sides … Our troops advanced up the hill, but not in regular line – a kind of go as you please charge. A few got up to the Turkish trenches, but the supporting ranks were behind, the first ones wilted away. This was in front of the position held by our men, the attack was repulsed.

As the fighting escalated, Chaplain Wray attended to the burial of the increasing number of dead:

Three burials in early morning, three in afternoon in saps [small trenches], six at night … Three men had been buried there and I said a service for these and several other bodies lying about behind the trenches which could not be recovered… burial early, 5 [of the] 13th [Battalion AIF] down on flat behind HQtrs … Three more burials in afternoon at same place, including Lt McLeod1 who died last night at 4th FA [Field Ambulance], shot in stomach.

[Chaplain William Frederick Wray, PR00247, AWM]

Like many men on Gallipoli, Chaplain Wray fell ill and was evacuated to Imbros two days after the August offensive.

Portrait of Second Lieutenant Charles Pulling, Australian Army Medical Corp AIF, killed in action, 7 August 1915. [Sydney Mail, 25 August 1915]

Second Lieutenant Charles Willoughby Lee Pulling

13th Battalion AIF, Plot II, Row C, Grave 4

Armidale school teacher Charles Pulling enlisted in the 13th Battalion, AIF, and landed at Gallipoli in the afternoon of 25 April 1915. For the next four months the battalion was heavily involved in the fighting to defend the front line at Anzac.

On 7 August, as part of the ‘August offensive’, an attempt was made by the Australians to take Hill 971 near Chunuk Bair along the main ridge leading up from Anzac. This position was the highest point in the range. The 13th Battalion, after a night march from Anzac in which the unit got lost in the foothills and valleys leading towards 971, came under heavy enemy machine gun fire. The least movement made by the Australians attracted sniper fire and shrapnel from enemy field-guns forcing the men to lie all day in the shallow rifle-pits that they had made. One of the casualties was Lieutenant Pulling whose death in action was recorded by Chaplain Wray:

Grave of Lieutenant Charles Pulling, 7th Field Ambulance Cemetery. The inscription is from the Roman poet Lucretius (c94BC – 50BC) ‘vitai lampada traditit [sic]’ - They hand on the torch of life.

We had a fairly easy day, but lost a few men from rifle fire in our trenches. Two and a half companies strayed last night but came in today. One officer, Lt Pulling and 11 other ranks killed, 3 officers and 8 others wounded, 3 missing, a officer and 12 men sent away sick. Total 89. Indian Bgde [Brigade] well up on 971 in three places … 3 burials in evening including Lt Pulling.

[Chaplain William Frederick Wray, PR00247, AWM]

Lieutenant Alfred Dowling at the grave of Lance Corporal Henry Stout, 4th Field Ambulance, killed in action, 21 August 1915. [AWM C00662]

Lance Corporal Henry Stout

4th Field Ambulance Australian Army Medical Corps AIF, Special Memorial C 17

Lance Corporal Stout enlisted at Richmond, Victoria, in August 1914, and sailed overseas with the first AIF convoy in November 1914. His unit landed on the peninsula on 25 April and, despite the establishment of their camp in the comparative safety of Anzac Gully immediately above General Birdwood’s quarters, the unit had by mid-June suffered over 40 casualties. On 21 August 1915, Lance Corporal Stout was hit by shrapnel and died a few minutes later.

In October 1916, Lance Corporal Francis Catchlove, 4th Field Ambulance, recuperating in England, gave an account of Stout’s death to the Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau:

I knew him well. He was buried at Australia Valley, Gallipoli, the next day. The Chaplain was from our 4th Brigade but I do not remember his name … I have seen Stout’s grave. There was a small wooden cross erected with his name and number. His relatives have been told. One of the chaps who had been wounded and was over in England went to the Isle of Man to see them.

[Lance Corporal Henry Stout, Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau File 2650106, AWM]

The Special Memorial of a ‘splendid fellow’ Lance Corporal Henry Stout, 7th Field Ambulance Cemetery.

The visit to Lance Corporal Stout’s parents was not unusual. Friends of deceased soldiers frequently travelled long distances to make contact with bereaved families and friends and recount the times that they had shared with their deceased friends. Fellow members of his unit who recalled Henry Stout as being a ‘splendid fellow’ took photographs of his grave and sent them to his family. On his permanent memorial in the 7th Field Ambulance Cemetery is the epitaph:

Their Glory Shall Not
Be Blotted Out.

This is a standard inscription, chosen by the Imperial War Graves Commission (now Commonwealth War Graves Commission) for such Special Memorials where the soldier is believed to be buried in the cemetery but his grave could not be identified. It was chosen by the Commission’s literary advisor, the well known poet and novelist Rudyard Kilpling, and it comes from a book of the Apocrypha known as Ecclesiasticus:

Let us now praise famous men,
And our fathers that begat us …

Their seed shall remain for ever,
And their glory shall not be blotted out.
Their bodies are buried in peace;
But their name liveth for evermore.

Lieutenant William Cameron, 9th Australian Light Horse AIF, killed in action, 4 September 1915. [AWM H06630]

Second Lieutenant William Cameron

9th Australian Light Horse AIF, Special Memorial B 33

The men of the 9th Australian Light Horse, having left their horses in Egypt, landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula on 16 May 1915. From the day of his arrival William Cameron, a commission agent and farmer from Rushworth, Victoria, kept a diary of his experiences in the trenches. He described the 24 May armistice when he took the opportunity to look over the battlefield … the sight is gruesome and peculiar. Its awfulness is appalling. June 7, he described as ‘the saddest day of my life’ when he learned of his mother’s death. Having survived the fierce fighting throughout August, Lieutenant Cameron could only muster eight effectives in his troop of forty-two at the end of the month. The final entry on 30 August recorded an attack by the 9th Australian Light Horse:

… last night the Hill [Hill 60] was further attacked. The 9th, or what was left of them, on the left … They cleared the intervening space like greyhounds, hoisted out the Turks, and thus we won the whole line and joined up the positions with what was taken the previous night … We lost only two or three.

The Special Memorial for Second Lieutenant William Cameron, 9th Australian Light Horse AIF, 7th Australian Field Ambulance Cemetery.

His friend and fellow officer, Lieutenant John Chanter, added a postscript to William Cameron’s diary –

Killed Saturday morning Sept 4 1915 about 9.15am, buried same evening.

Lieutenant Cameron, aged 28 years, was killed in action at Hill 60 and interred originally in the former South Wales Borderer’s Officers’ Cemetery. When this cemetery was abandoned after the war, the remains of those buried there were transferred to the 7th Field Ambulance Cemetery and any identification there was on Lieutenant Cameron’s grave was clearly lost as he is today commemorated by a Special Memorial.

• 1. Second Lieutenant James McLeod, 13th Battalion AIF, died of wounds, 10 August 1915, Special Memorial A42, 7th Field Ambulance Cemetery.