South West Life

Allan was no one in particular, the way that most of the people who shed blood all over the landscape at places like Courtney's Post, Bloody Angle, and the Nek were no one in particular.

With Anzac Day coming up, we looked for someone who showed something of what the South West gave for that conflict.

Allan was a sleeper cutter who enlisted from Balingup, and from then on was trooper 790, 10th light horse. Allan was the son of Joseph and Emily Cummings. Some years later when Allan's name was collected for the roll of honour, Joseph had already died, and Emily was Emily Stanley, of Three Springs.

With promises of an exciting time, Allan enlisted and was soon prepared to get off to Europe and fight the Germans. By this time 88 years ago, he was 23 and in the middle east, preparing to fight the Turks. Allan got to see the pyramids. If he was anything like most of his comrades he was eager to get to the fighting, and eager to mop up the hopelessly unprepared wogs before he had the chance to get off to Europe and fight a worthy opponent in the Hun, who at least was a white fella. Allan was sure that those waiting for him in the Middle East were no match for the might of the greatest military, political and economic power of the day. It would all be over in weeks.

Allan and thousands of his comrades had sailed from Albany months earlier, and as is pointed out at the Albany memorial, for him and many of his mates, his last sight of Australia was to be Mt Clarence disappearing below the horizon.

Allan had been born in South Australia, and schooled at Katanning, and was making his living cutting timber from the forest. He hadn't served before and so we might assume that Allan wasn't a career soldier. There is no next of kin noted, so we can probably assume that he was single. Did he go for the excitement, or did he think the Empire was worth his life? We can't tell.

On April 25th, 1915, the first Anzacs hit the beach at Gallipoli, facing a foe who were dug in, and who were not willing that the thousands of attacking soldiers would reach their homes, wives and children. 51 days later Allan Cummings, trooper 790 was dead.

What we do know is that the conflict cost thousands of lives, Australian, New Zealanders, Indians, British, and others. The numbers of Turks who shed blood for a reason that was all too clear to them is lost in the mists of time. We know that the Anzac legend endures, and it is one of the distinctions of this nation that our most famous battle and the one that we most often refer to as a defining moment in our history and mythology is one where nobodies like Allan Cummings struggled bravely, and laid down their lives, but did not conquer.

There remains to this day a bond between the nations of Turkey and Australia. The soldiers of both countries can see themselves as victims in the aspirations of great empires centred in Germany and England. On 24th May 1915, an armistice was called as there were literally thousands of dead littering the fields, and it was seen as useful to stop firing to collect them for burial. At this time the Anzacs and the Turks exchanged gifts, cigarettes, and in some cases words. There formed a new understanding at that point. The Anzacs had understood from the wounds being inflicted on their own that the Turks were using hollow point bullets, illegal acording to the rules of conflict. That day they saw that the injuries inflicted on the enemy were the same.... this is what you do when you get into a war. The Turks who had been vilified by the leadership of the nation were seen as humans again, and from that time the enemy was commonly known as Johnny Turk, or Abdul.

Allan went to the middle east for a fight the government said was essential. He fought bravely we can be sure. He forged a bond with the men of another culture. He earned a small inscription on a memorial at Lone Pine.

We might think that Joseph and Emily had given enough. Not so. On April 9th, 1917, Mark Hugh Cummings, of Katanning, 486th Battalion AIF, died in France aged 20 years.

Lest We Forget.

Notes: Thanks to those from the Australian War memorial who have compiled the lists of information from which this was drawn and to Bryn Dolan, whose study of the Gallipoli campaign can be found at www.anzacs.org.

UPDATE:

It’s very sad to find that we’ve printed something that doesn’t match up to the memories of readers’ families.  We had contact from relatives of Trooper Allan Cummings, and they took us to task for suggesting that the diggers, and Allan in particular expected to find hopeless soldiers in the Turks and looked forward to fighting a white, technologically equal army.  We didn’t believe we were suggesting that Allan himself held racist views toward the middle east, but on re-reading it, that’s a conclusion you might reach.

We’re sorry for any suggestion that Trooper Allan Cummings was a racist, or that he disrespected his enemy.  Our reading suggests that it was a line that was propagated among the troops and it might have been held by many of those who went to fight, but the point of the story was that Allan isn’t well remembered by many of us, and we didn’t have that kind of detail.  So it’s worth remembering that all of these soldiers (and sailors, and nurses, and later fliers), had families, and were individuals.  The families left behind know things we don’t, and they grieve in ways we can only imagine, even ninety years later there are people who feel the losses of Gallipoli personally.

The family also remind us that the men who left the country from King George Sound didn’t always agree with everything their leaders were telling them, but they loved the rest of us enough to go and take the risk.  These were generally people with a great sense of fairness and according to at least some of our correspondents would be offended to think that they were remembered as blokes who disdained the enemy for the colour of his skin or his beliefs.  Above all, one size doesn’t seem to fit all.