OPINION: Anzac legend flame burns on brightly

OPINION: ON the way into the War Memorial in Canberra there’s a small but iconic statue in the gardens outside.

LANDING AT GALLIPOLI April 25, 1915. . Picture: Courtesy of the Australian War M

ON the way into the War Memorial in Canberra there's a small but iconic statue in the gardens outside.

It features a Gallipoli medic with his trusty donkey ferrying a wounded soldier back to a field hospital.

Simpson and his donkey became a powerful symbol of that particular campaign, which many historians paint as the real birth of the Australian nation.

I was always fascinated by the story of Simpson and his donkey and it led me to read more about that ill-fated campaign.

The bravery of those first Anzacs as they stormed ashore on the Gallipoli peninsula on that fateful day in April 1915, is the stuff of legends.

I was particularly interested in Simpson and his donkey for a couple of reasons, not least that his full name was John Simpson Kirkpatrick.

He changed his name when he enlisted in the army because his surname sounded "too Irish". At least that is what my childhood history book told me.

But he was an unlikely hero, as the English-born Simpson had deserted from the merchant navy in 1910.

The other part that fascinated me about Simpson was that he only lasted four weeks on Gallipoli, before he was killed.

But he went out day after day, completely unarmed, to collect the wounded from the front line and bring them back for medical treatment.

It takes a rare form of bravery to do that when enemy bullets are flying all around.

So the Anzac legend burns strongly in me.

Lest we forget.