Shrapnel Valley (also known as Shrapnel Gully) Cemetery was laid out near the exit to the beach from the valley, south of Anzac Cove in early May 1915. After Lone Pine it is the largest battlefield cemetery in the old Anzac sector. Despite being some 1,000 yards (914 metres) from the Turkish lines the cemetery was constantly exposed to enemy sniper fire. On 9 May 1915, Chaplain Ernest Merrington wrote of his visit there:

The bullets often fell thickly around our little parties of workers on this site which has become forever sacred to Australians and New Zealanders … I was down there by myself at dawn, and found the fallen men laid side by side ready for internment. For hours I worked, laying the bodies in the graves, with no assistance except for a few men of a fatigue party making a track near by. I placed the identity discs and personal effects at the head of each grave. I counted 42 Australians and 10 Turks. The sun arose over the eastern hill revealing the awesome scene around me, of death, nobility, valour and sacrifice.

[AWM 1DRL/496 Chaplain Ernest Northcote Merrington, 1st Light Horse Regiment.]

Shrapnel Valley Cemetery, 1915 [AWM P00188.021]

Reverend Walter Dexter organised working parties to build a low rock wall around part of the cemetery to protect it from flooding winter rains and obtained paint and other materials to ensure the neat appearance of the graves.

Today Shrapnel Valley with its distinctive Judas tree is considered to be amongst the most beautiful on the peninsula. Largely completed during the Gallipoli campaign, a small number of graves were incorporated into the cemetery after the war. Of the 683 burials in the cemetery, 527 are Australians, fifty six New Zealanders, twenty eight British and seventy two unknowns. Special Memorials commemorate twenty three men believed to be buried here.

Major Hugh Quinn [AWM H17420]

Major Hugh Quinn

15th Battalion, AIF, Plot III, Row C, Grave 21).

An accountant from Queensland, Hugh Quinn had served in 1914 with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force in New Guinea before joining the 15th Battalion, AIF. Within the first few days of the landing and in command of his company, Quinn took over a position at the head of Monash Valley on the northern edge of the front line that was afterwards known as Quinn’s Post. This was a vital position that had to be held at all costs to prevent the Turks breaking through into the Anzac sector. Frequently under attack, Quinn’s quickly earned a reputation as being one of the most dangerous places at Anzac:

Stories were related of Turkish attacks during which the garrison fired until rifles jammed with the heat and bayonets became twisted. Men passing … and seeing and hearing the bombs bursting up at Quinn’s used to glance at the place (as one of them said) ‘as a man looks at a haunted house’.

[Charles Bean, Story of Anzac, Vol II, Sydney, 1935, p.91]

Major Hugh Quinn’s grave in Shrapnel Valley Cemetery. [AWM H16894]

At 3.20 am on 29 May, Quinn’s was shaken by a series of loud and heavy explosions closely followed by rifle fire and shrapnel bursting overhead. The enemy had exploded a mine killing many men and then burst into the post. The order was given for the 15th Battalion to retake the lost trenches at all costs and Quinn himself was detailed to lead a charge over the top of the trench. He was reluctant to start until he had properly reconnoitred the area and while doing that he fell dead to a sniper’s bullet. By 8.00am all the Turks who had broken into the post had either been killed or captured at a cost of thirty three Australian dead and 178 wounded.

Aged twenty seven, Quinn had only recently been promoted Major. He was taken to Shrapnel Valley for burial and on his grave his mother placed this inscription:

Some time, some day, I trust to see the dear face, I hold to memory.

Private George Grimwade’s portrait is featured in the lower righthand corner of War Service of the Old Melbournians [Melbourne Grammar School] ...

Private George Risdon Grimwade

6th Field Ambulance,Australian Army Medical Corps, (Plot II, Row D, Grave 34)

George Grimwade, age 20, a medical student and nephew of enlisted in February 1915. An ex-student of Melbourne Grammar School, he was an all round sporting champion and a popular man in his unit. The 6th Field Ambulance reached Gallipoli on 5 September. On 23 September while on guard duty at a water tank Private Grimwade was hit by shrapnel pellets. He was taken by stretcher-bearers to the medical post, but died within minutes. Fellow ex-students of Melbourne Grammar School insisted upon digging the grave for his burial later that evening. In April 1922 his parents from Melbourne visited the cemetery and placed a stone upon his grave from his Melbourne home, inscribed in ‘ever loving remembrance’.

Headstone of Private George Grimwade at Shrapnel Valley Cemtetery, Gallipoli [DVA]

Graves of the 10th Battalion, AIF

10th Battalion graves. [AWM C02199]

At 4.30 am on 25 April, the 10th Battalion from South Australia, 950-strong, South Australian 10th Battalion landed on Gallipoli. Within five days the battalion sustained 466 casualties. Grouped together in Shrapnel Valley Cemetery in Plot III, Row D are the graves of ten of the twelve men of the battalion who were killed during the great Turkish counter-attack of 19 May 1915. At 3 am the Turks surged forward but were cut down by intense rifle and machine gun fire from the Anzac lines. Corporal [later Captain] George Mitchell of the 10th Battalion wrote:

All morning one of the heaviest Turkish bombardments that I have ever experienced has been raging. A pall of smoke from the bursting shells continuously hangs over this gully… there were terrific bursts of rifle fire, so loud was it that one had to yell into a man’s ear to make himself audible. It was the Turks attacking. They came up six and seven deep and every time were repulsed by our fire… Just outside the opening trench were twelve Tenth men – stark. Four of them were pals of mine and one belonged to my section – Glorious war.

[AWM 2DRL/928 Capt George D Mitchell, MC, DCM]

Among the graves of the 10th Battalion is that of Englishman Private John Routledge, age eighteen, who enlisted under the name of Albert Baswick. A coach trimmer from Oaklands, South Australia, he had emigrated from his home in Manchester, England, at the age of sixteen.