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Old 08-09-14, 03:19
Catherine Catherine is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2014
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Post Cleve's real Anzac story

Hi Diane,
Fantastic photo. I think that's Cleve's older brother Ray beside him. How prophetic, since they both grew up to be WW1 soldiers. Cleve was in one of the very first boats of the Gallipoli dawn landing and was one of the first handful of Australians to die there as soon as he landed on the beach, without firing a shot and was dead before the sun came up. That version in the newspaper clipping seems to be embellished for the benefit of the family. Cleve's older brother, Ray, also joined the engineers and served through the Western Front with many of Cleve's comrades, so he knew the real story, and told his own children, of whom my mother was one. Research through primary documents, including the diaries of Cleve's mates, backs up Ray's story.
It also, astonishingly, reveals the presence in those first boats of no less than 150 men who history has completely overlooked, from the 1st Field Company Engineers, who landed in the so-called first wave with the advance battalions of the 3rd Brigade.
Five engineers died at the landing. Two of Cleve's Section died beside him on North Beach in those opening moments. Their Section landed with the 11th Battalion. Another from two men from his Company died at the same time, one on Anzac Beach, while landing with the 9th Battalion and the other still on the deck of his ship, as he was climbing into the landing boats with the 12th Battalion, as part of the so-called second wave. Yet no history book or webpage has ever included them in the story of the landing.
Cleve and his fellow engineers were in the very front boats, and among the very first ashore because their first job was to destroy the barbed wire defences it was thought were protecting the beaches and the cliffs so that the infantry, (and engineers) could attack. They carried grappling irons and wire-cutters for this purpose. Their next job, after attacking the Turkish trenches, was to blow up the Turkish guns, and they carried explosives and spiking tools ashore with them to do this. As it turned out, there was no barbed wire on the beaches and the Australians failed to successfully capture any Turkish guns that day, so the engineers fought as infantry, charging the hill, battling for the ridges and fighting the Turkish counterattack.
Diane, I wonder whether the brothers (if that is Ray, and it certainly looks like him), are dressed up in their father's uniforms? They're too big, and the cuffs are rolled up. Cleve was well over six feet tall as an adult. His mate's Anzac diary is full of jokes about his height.
Diane, I'm keen to hear what you have learned about Reuben and Reuben senior. Can I contact you?
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