THE medals of Newcastle World WarI veteran and Herald writer Frank Mattocks have come back to the Hunter, thanks to military historian David Dial, who bought them on eBay.
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Frank Mattocks worked in The Newcastle Morning Herald’s Maitland office before he joined up in September 1914. He was a corporal in the Army Service Corps and went ashore at Gallipoli in the first days of the campaign.
Letters about his experiences appeared in both the Herald and The Maitland Mercury in 1915 and he was recommended for mention in despatches in 1917 for coolly repairing a damaged road while under German fire, enabling trapped transport to escape the enemy guns.
Mattocks returned to Australia in 1920 with the rank of Lieutenant and in later years, after he resumed his journalistic career, wrote some fascinating reminiscences for the Herald about his time in uniform.
His writings included descriptions of his encounters with General Monash and also with the legendary ‘‘man with the donkey’’ John Simpson Kirkpatrick – known as ‘‘Murphy’’ to the Australians on Gallipoli.
Mattocks wrote that ‘‘Murphy’’ was a nickname, given purely to Simpson because he was Irish.
‘‘The snipers made life extremely hazardous for Simpson and his donkey, now a legendary figure. He passed me often, and there were times when he stopped and talked with us. When we had occasion to go down that track we ran from a low wall of sandbags to the next. Simpson moved around like a man taking a Sunday stroll down Hunter Street,’’ Mattocks wrote.
In another article he wrote: ‘‘Murphy would pick up a wounded man, one slightly worse than a walking wounded case, and take him to the dressing station on the beach, to be transferred later to the hospital ship.
‘‘He wore on his arm the red cross band of the field ambulance and had a large red cross of some material spread over the rump of the donkey.
‘‘Of all the wounded he took past us we never heard a whimper from them. Some of them were heavily bandaged; tough fellows, more than often with a cigarette between their lips. ‘‘Murphy’s calm bearing and his cheery disposition must have helped his ‘passengers’ no end.
‘‘The inevitable happened. There came a time when the charmed life of this heroic figure came to a close. I don’t think he was awarded a decoration. They were very sparing with medals in the Gallipoli campaign.’’
Mr Dial was thrilled to be able to bring Mattocks’s medals back to the Hunter.
‘‘I regard him as almost the Hunter’s answer to C.E.W. Bean [Australia’s official World War I historian]’’, he said.
