Maurice Delpratt: a Queenslander imprisoned by the Turks was our first POW

The story of Maurice Delpratt, captured by the Turks, offers fresh insight to the Gallipoli campaign. “I went out too far that day and got inside the enemy’s lines. But that story will keep for another time.”

WHEN an Australian soldier in Gallipoli failed to return from delivering a message to troops in an area known as the Balkan Gun Pits, he hadn’t been killed or wounded.

Instead, the soldier, having become isolated from his comrades, was captured by the Turks, making him one of the first Australian prisoners of war during the First World War.

The soldier was 28-year-old Sergeant Maurice George Delpratt, one of a large family from Tamborine in the Gold Coast hinterland. He enlisted in the 5th Light Horse in November 1914 from Longreach, where he was an overseer at a large sheep station called Kensington Downs.

He had attended The Southport School on the Gold Coast as one of its first students and had worked as a housemaster at the school before heading to Longreach.

Delpratt was one of 196 Australians who would be taken prisoner by the Turks at Gallipoli and during subsequent Middle Eastern campaigns.

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Had he been an officer, Delpratt’s years of captivity might have been relatively easy. Under The Hague Convention of 1907, officers were not made to work. They generally received preferential treatment and many endured the war years in relative comfort.

Enlisted men such as Delpratt did it tougher. They were often housed in makeshift camps and employed on public works projects. Like many of his fellow prisoners, Delpratt worked on the Berlin-Baghdad Railway in the Taurus Mountains. Among other duties, he blasted rock to create tunnels through the mountains for the rail line. This work was physically demanding and often dangerous – several prisoners and civilian labourers were killed in accidents.

Complaints regarding substandard accommodation, limited medical care and poor quality rations were common.

Many Turkish soldiers lived in similar circumstances, for the Ottoman Empire was economically troubled and relatively poor compared to Australia or Britain.

Delpratt and his comrades relied on food and comforts parcels sent by the Australian Red Cross POW Department in London. The items contained in the parcels offered a vital lifeline and connection with home. Their arrival was cause for celebration. Jam, tea, sugar and tinned beef became the basis of veritable feasts, with Delpratt and his camp-mates producing several memorable Christmas dinners by hoarding the ingredients for plum puddings during the year.

Goods were distributed with precision equality. On one occasion, Delpratt had to measure a block of chocolate and divide it as accurately as possible. “It is a rum go,’’ he wrote in a letter home, “measuring chocolate in millimetres and working it out on paper”. Parcels of medicines offered the captives a means to treat common diseases, including malaria, dysentery and typhus – though not always successfully.

But food and medicine could help only a little with the psychological strain of captivity. Boredom, lack of privacy, the uncertain duration of their internment and limited contact with the outside world took their toll.

Like many other POWs, Delpratt was also dogged by feelings of guilt over his surrender. Worried that he had spent more years serving the enemy than his own nation, he was anxious as to how his POW status would affect others’ opinions of him. He told his family they would have to warn his nieces and nephews “not to ask Uncle Maurice anything about the war”.

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His family at home also suffered during the 3½ years of his captivity. His mother died while he travelled to Egypt for training before combat. Eldest sister Nell assumed the role of chief correspondent and assured Delpratt he was never out of their thoughts. Anxious about her sibling’s health and wellbeing, Nell sent parcels, letters and money orders though she knew their arrival was not guaranteed. She asked: “How can we ever do enough for you when you are back to make up for all this weary time?”.

Delpratt’s time in Turkey ended with the Armistice of November 1918. He took the opportunity offered to many Australian ex-servicemen to spend time in Britain and visited friends and relatives who had supported him by sending letters and parcels before returning to Tamborine in July 1919.

He was married in Palmwoods in the Sunshine Coast hinterland before moving to Warwick where he worked at the post office.

When Delpratt enlisted for the war, he had no idea of the fate that would befall him, one which would make him a unique part of Australian history. As the centenary of the outbreak of war approaches, Delpratt’s story offers a timely reminder that the experiences of Australians during the First World War varied greatly and widely.

GALLERY: The pictures that bring to life 100 Years of Untold Stories

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Kate Ariotti is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, focusing on the impact of wartime imprisonment on Australians during World War I, specifically those held in captivity in Turkey.

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