My Grampa was an adventurer and a spinner of yarns. The son of farmers-turned-publicans, Arthur Hull was born in Plymouth in November 1891.
I imagine him as a small boy gazing out across the Sound and wondering what lay beyond the horizon.
In 1910, he set sail for a new life in Australia with his best friend, Ernest Hoare.
Arthur became a sheep drover and tamer of horses before enlisting with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps at the outbreak of World War I, fighting at Gallipoli and then in France.
At the end of the war, he returned, wounded, to England on a hospital ship and never went back to Australia. Ernest was killed in action and is buried at Courcelette cemetery. His name is on the national war memorial in Canberra.
The two of them are pictured here together (Grampa is on the right).
Arthur became one of Somerset County Council’s first tenants in its smallholding scheme for returning soldiers.
My mother, who remembers her father-in-law very fondly, says adjusting to life in a near feudal village after his years in Australia and then four years of war must have been very hard for him, with the land agent and other retired army officers representing the local gentry. Apparently, Art (as he was known) had developed somewhat socialist tendencies which were very unusual then, especially in farming circles, and he had a flamboyant personality, wearing a snakeskin band around his hat and a red and a white spotted neckerchief. He was well known for his exceptional skills with a stockman’s whip for separating cattle. He’d always have a roll-up at the corner of his mouth and a well-trained dog by his side.
He died in 1966 so I barely remember him, but I’ve always been fascinated by the family stories, tall tales and the photos of him as a strong young man – he reminded me of Popeye. Gramp had tattoos of a butterfly on his chest, a cowgirl on one forearm and a cockerel chasing a hen on the other, although I never saw them.
Today, 25 April, is ANZAC Day, a national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand.
The Gallipoli campaign of 1915-16 was a costly failure for the Allies, with an estimated 27,000 French, and 115,000 British and dominion troops (Great Britain and Ireland, Australia New Zealand, India and Newfoundland) killed or wounded. Some 8,000 Australians were killed. Over half the casualties (73,485) were British and Irish troops.
The Ottoman Empire paid a heavy price for their victory: an estimated 250,000 Turkish and Arab troops were killed or wounded defending Gallipoli.
(Source: https://nzhistory.govt.nz/media/interactive/gallipoli-casualties-country)
My mother says Art never really forgave Winston Churchill, who had planned the disastrous campaign.
She also remembers him telling her that, at the end of the battle, after nine months, he still had the same twopence in his pocket he had set out with. There was nothing to spend it on.
‘More pleasantly, he remembered those little Greek islands which seemed to wink white in the sun as they passed by on their sea journey to Turkey.
‘He was touched that his two horses recognised him when they got back to Italy from Gallipoli. Then they had to take their horses on to France. There they took part in the Battle of the Somme at Delville Wood. They just seem to have gone from one horror to another.’
Dreamers by Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)
Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time’s to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
Maddie Grigg 