A CENTURY ago William Duffy sat and waited for the order.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It was the night of April 24, 1915, and he with 12 other Goulburn men were on ships, a half a mile from the beaches of Gallipoli, nervously waiting for the order to go ashore.
But the order never came.
Instead Mr Duffy watched as 10 of his Kenmore mates boarded the row boats, packed with ammunition and supplies, to proceed to the fight. One of whom, Cecil Rowlands, would never return.
For a week he waited and watched.
He saw the shell fire burst on the cliff faces, the naval barrages rain down on the ravines and the heroism from a distance, but that’s the closest Duffy ever got to the Turks.
Then he left, his ship chased back to Egypt by two enemy submarines, to restock and reload.
That was Mr Duffy’s Gallipoli, Goulburn’s last surviving Anzac who passed away in 1982 at the age of 90.
While he never saw action at Gallipoli, Mr Duffy had more than his fair share of wartime experiences.
In an interview with Ray Williams in the April 23 1982 edition of the Goulburn Post, he revealed how as a young man he fought in the muddy trenches of the Western front, dodging shells on the Somme as he transported supplies through ‘Hell’s Corner’, and he saw action in the bloodbath that was Pozieres.
Then, after being sent to hospital in England with acute appendicitis at the end of 1916, Duffy saw the other side of war - shellshock, PTSD and men broken by battle horrors.
Maybe it was his gentle nature, or his training as a Kenmore attendant, but he and the remaining Kenmore men spent the rest of the war assisting mentally wounded men.
More than once they made the trip to escort shell shocked soldiers return home to Australia. On one occasion Mr Duffy even rescued a deranged man who had climbed towards the ship’s crow’s nest.
The man resisted and attempted to kick Mr Duffy off the ladder. Luckily he wasn't successful.
“Bill was a beautiful gentle man,” remembers his niece Patricia Charter.
“When our Dad was away in the Second World War he was very kind to us and he took my brother Ted under his wing and was like a father to him.
“As far as I know he helped my Mum in every way all the time Dad was at War.
“He was a generous, loving man.”
Now 77-years-old herself, Miss Charters remembers her uncle as a man who continued his kindness until the day he died.
He married a fellow Kenmore nurse named Thel after the war, but the two never had children. Instead his nephews and nieces became the object of his affections.
She says he use to wait until his wife left the room to secretly spoil the children with sweets and coins.
“... Even into our adult lives he was slipping us $20 or $50 every time we visited,” she reminisced.
“I loved him dearly and my kids/grandkids can thank him because I have carried on that lovely “secretive” gift giving gesture to this day.
“He used to always give a mischievous wink and say “Don’t tell Aunty Thel”.
Mr Duffy died in 1982, a few months after his last Anzac day.
After his four years and 219 days serving his country, he rarely missed a parade.
But his last was spent contently sitting on his favourite chair, watching the Sydney march on the TV in his Auburn Street home.