War horrors sent returned soldier to an early grave

Anzac Jack Moore, wearing an Australian Army uniform, outside his tent at Mena Camp in Egypt shortly before sailing for Turkey.

A Turkish bullet fired at almost point-blank range tore through 26-year-old Jack Moore's shoulder on May 19, 1915.

It slowed the Paeroa-born soldier only a little on the Gallipoli parapet where he had climbed to get a better aim at the advancing Turkish troops.

Bleeding badly, with several bones broken by the bullet, he threw the butt of his Lee Enfield .303 rifle against his injured shoulder and shot the Turk dead.

"I got three shots into the chap who put the window into my shoulder before I dropped off the parapet," he told his mother, Mary Anne, in a letter from the hospital ship Soudan a few days later.

"He never stirred again, but the kick from the rifle did shake the broken bones up in my shoulder."

The Turks retreated, leaving 7000 dead and wounded, and only then did Jack Moore - who fought in the Australian Army - think about first-aid.

"I toddled off, after saying good luck to the boys, down to the beach about a mile from the firing line," he wrote in his letter.

"They could not spare anyone to go with me so after a few spells on the way I managed to get there all right.

"My boots were full of blood by the time I got to the bottom of the hill and I felt pretty sticky."

At the medical post at Anzac Cove, where thousands of Australian and New Zealand troops had landed three weeks earlier, Jack Moore adopted the laconic attitude that had become an indomitable part of the Anzac spirit.

"I knew I was not hurt much, for in the field we say a man's hurt when he's got a leg or two missing or the side of his head off."

His astonishing story is told in a book by his son - also Jack Moore - who turned 80 today.

Anzac Jack Moore was lucky enough to survive the war, but what he had seen haunted him and led to his early death in 1929.

His widow, Elsie, remarried and it was not until well after her death that Mr Moore learned the tragic truth about how his war-hero father had died.

His stepfather gave him a box of letters and photographs Anzac Jack had sent back from several war zones.

That started Mr Moore, now retired at Whangamata on the Coromandel Peninsula, off down the emotional road of researching and writing about a father who died when he was 4, and whom he barely remembered.

He did not know that for years his father hid the mental anguish created by World War 1's five years of living hell.

He also did not know that as New Zealand headed into a depression, the pressure finally got the better of Anzac Jack, who killed himself.

Mr Moore learned the truth from an elderly relative in 1978.

On June 29, 1929, Anzac Jack ended it all. He was 40. His young family also included Alex, who was 2, and his daughter Colleen was about to be born.

Mr Moore now believes the huge pressure of brutal war and living with the daily death of many mates finally took its terrible toll.

The signs of a troubled soul were not obvious for the decade after his father left the Army but it finally overwhelmed him.

In a book simply called Anzac Jack, Mr Moore wrote that his father was a remarkable man who had endured the "tribulations of a living hell for five years of his short life but in a moment of despair was unable to cope with the subtle pressures of post-war living".

"It was probably an action he took at a time when he couldn't think straight."

"He had helped to win the Great War but he lost his own battle in the end."

Mr Moore said in the 13 years it took to write his book and publish his father's letters, he began to understand the man.

 

As a 17-year-old in 1905, Anzac Jack began an engineering apprenticeship with the Waihi Gold Mining Company, completing it at the Waikino battery in 1910.

When war broke out in 1914, he was working in Australia and was one of the first in the queue to volunteer.

At 6am on April 25, 1915, he left the British battleship Prince of Wales and landed at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, with thousands of other Australian and New Zealand soldiers.

He lasted three weeks before the shootout with the Turkish soldier ended his Gallipoli service.

After recovering in Malta and England, he went to France but only after he handed back his sergeant's stripes and reverted to a sapper (private) so that he could go back into action.

In November 1917, in France, he won his bravery award, the Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM), for "conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty", but only once in the scores of letters he wrote to his family in New Zealand did he mention it.

Few details are known of the action that won him the medal.

"I have been very lucky and the DCM was an unexpected bonus," he wrote to his mother.

After the war, Anzac Jack bottled up his emotions and could not or would not discuss them with anyone.

"As a result he suffered a temporary mental collapse, during which time he took his own life."

Mr Moore wrote of his own wishes for those struggling to deal with the stress of life.

"The message I would pass on to anyone experiencing a stressful and emotional situation similar to that of our father in June 1929 would be: 'Please swallow your pride and talk about your problem with someone, be it your spouse, your partner, your doctor, a friend ... or anyone at all'.

"You will be surprised how many people really care about you and are willing to listen and to help. Usually, there are some brighter clouds just over the horizon anyway."

Nearly 76 years after his father died, Mr Moore can barely conceal his deep emotional feelings when he talks about the stress of writing his father's story, and one of the most telling and poignant scraps of paper his father left.

Anzac Jack's last written message, on the day he died, was just four words long: "My brain is going."

Mr Moore still has some anger that his father left the family in such dire financial straits, but also said his pride in the man is immense.

 

He believes the nickname Anzac Jack was fitting for a Kiwi serving under the Australian flag.

The name was given to him by a South African family when he stopped at Cape Town on his way back to Australia for leave.

Commemorations

* To mark the 90th anniversary of the Anzac landings at Gallipoli, a 170-strong contingent departs from Wellington next Wednesday.

* The contingent includes 35 veterans, two representatives of the RSA, 10 high school students - winners of the Prime Minister's essay competition - three military cadets, 60 Defence Force personnel, a Maori cultural group and a media contingent.

* Many Defence Force personnel are themselves veterans of recent peacekeeping operations.

- NZPA

* Anzac Jack
Published by J.H. Moore
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RRP: $20