Anzac Day 2025: Uncle Reginald’s Gallipoli war lasted just a few weeks

A sister’s search for answers over a lost brother amid confusion over how and when he died: remembering one young soldier more than a century after he was killed.

The 10th Light Horse Regiment parading in Perth before shipping out to Gallipoli. Picture: Australian War Memorial

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When I was a boy in the 1970s, the loungeroom of my grandparents’ war service home in North Perth seemed enormous.

A piano, black & white television, Pa’s comfortable reclining chair, a family couch and bookshelves filled what was, in reality, a modest space judged against the loungerooms of today.

Sitting on a shelf, high up on one wall, was a bronze disc about the size of a saucer.

Pa had glued it into a block of pine wood. It caught my eye and proved to be a fascination to me as the years rolled on.

I spent a lot of time in that loungeroom and a fair amount of it staring up at the shelf.

“That’s Uncle Reginald’s,” Pa responded when I asked him what it was.

One day Pa, a veteran of World War II, reached up and handed it to me. Uncle Reginald’s name – Reginald Malcolm Reid – was ­engraved alongside an image of Britannia and a lion along with the inscription: He died for freedom and honour.

“Killed at Gallipoli. His trench was only a few metres from the Turks. They’d throw grenades over and he would catch them and throw them back. One blew up in his hand and that was it,” Pa explained matter-of-factly.

When Pa died in 2000, my grandmother handed me this symbol of family grief.

“It’s yours now,” she said.

The plaque was among the countless handed to families of men who died in the Great War of 1914-18.

Dubbed a “Dead Man’s Penny” or “Widow’s Penny”, they’ve sat in family homes across the commonwealth for generations.

Trooper Reginald Malcolm Reid's memorial plaque.

Uncle Reginald now sits on a bookshelf in my loungeroom in Victoria.

A couple of months ago, it caught my eye again.

I thought it was time to start digging into the story of this young man who died 51 years before I was born.

Thanks to the nation’s digital war service records, within minutes I had downloaded Reginald Malcolm Reid’s documents detailing his brief war as a soldier with the Australian Imperial Force.

Enlistment papers, medical records, field reports of his death and his grieving sister’s attempts to get more details of his demise opened on my laptop.

His handwriting and signature came to life after in all likelihood going unread for more than a ­century.

The Australian Imperial Force’s “attestation paper of ­persons enlisted for service abroad” reveals Reginald ­Malcolm Reid joined the Perth-based 10th Light Horse Regiment on December 5, 1914. He’s listed as having blue eyes and brown hair and stood at 5’ 10” (1.77m).

The 27-year-old was working as a bank clerk in Guildford on the city’s outskirts when he ­became one of Australia’s earliest volunteers and was designated Trooper 186.

He signed the oath swearing to “well and truly serve our ­Sovereign Lord the King in the Australian Imperial Force” and to “resist His Majesty’s enemies”.

Uncle Reginald and his 10th Light Horse brothers shipped out of Australia in February 1915 for training in Egypt.

The brigade left its horses behind in Egypt and landed on Gallipoli as infantry in May, just weeks after the initial invasion force.

10th Light Horse Regiment in Egypt before deploying to Gallipoli.

There’s no record in his file of what Trooper Reid experienced at Gallipoli in the few weeks he served on the frontlines before he was killed in action but the documents do reveal confusion over the date of his death.

A “field service” document – and other papers – list him as being killed in action on May 30. Other service documents say he was killed in action on June 15.

Correspondence, dated Nov­ember 1915, goes some way to ­explaining the confusion.

“These discrepancies occurred in the early stages of the operation through a misconception of the dates quoted on the cables advising casualties,” the letter states.

“This was soon discovered to be wrong and consequently discontinued.”

Regardless of whether he died on May 30 or lived another two weeks to die on June 15, Uncle Reginald’s war in Gallipoli lasted only a matter of weeks.

The unmarried trooper’s few possessions sent back to his sister, Berril Reid, in England are listed in the document as a cigarette case, disc, money belt and a watch (damaged).

Uncle Reginald’s military records also contain a flurry of letters between military authorities and a law firm hired by his sister seeking answers about how her brother died.

The tone of the letters is formal, but they speak to the tragedy millions of families were enduring around the world at the time.

The confusion over the date of her brother’s death can only have deepened her grief.

One letter, dated July 14, 1915, to Australian military authorities reflects the pain she was dealing with.

“Mrs Reid has desired us also to ask you to be good enough to refer her to someone who will be able to give her details of how Mr Reid met his death,” the letter states.

“She is naturally anxious to have full particulars if possible.”

A follow-up letter, dated ­November 1915, makes another plea for more details asking for any “supplementary information which you may have received respecting the action in which Private Reid was killed”.

A response, dated July 26, 1917, talks in terms of the “regrettable loss of your brother” but aside from informing her that his body was buried the same day he was killed in the cemetery at Shrapnel Gully in a ceremony officiated by “Rev. Makeham”, there are no more details about how her brother was killed in action.

Trooper Reid’s regiment would within a few months be involved in the bloody battle at The Nek in Gallipoli and later in the war be involved in celebrated battles through Palestine.

10th Light Horse Regiment in Gallipoli.

The story of the exploding grenade might be true. It might be family folklore that evolved over the decades. But ultimately it doesn’t change the fact he was killed in action at Gallipoli.

Reginald Malcolm Reid’s war story, as detailed in the service records, is far from complete. The search for a photo continues. But almost 110 years after his death, as Australia marks another Anzac Day, it’s important we remember young men like Trooper Reid and reflect on his sacrifice.