Lest we, the lucky ones, ever forget
FOR one minute tomorrow, I will remember my greatgrandfather Private Percy Carne, who, as a blue-eyed 21-year-old, shipped off to the First World War. Who, with his three brothers – all stockmen on cattle properties in North Queensland’s remote Gulf Country – was enticed by exciting tales of Gallipoli.
Together the four brothers, who had been schooled only to grade 4, left the bush to enlist and were swept off to battlefronts in the bitter winter of Europe.
Jack Carne, the eldest, was
It killed in the first battle of the Somme in France. The secondeldest, Bert, was badly wounded at Passchendaele and lay in a shell-hole in “no man’s land” for three days before he was found. Edward, the youngest, was shot in Pozieres, but survived. Percy, a farrier and decent horseman, joined the
Light Horse Regiment – first in the 5th, and then the 4th.
For one minute tomorrow, I will remember my greatgrandfather.
Who rode in the last great cavalry charge of modern warfare – the Battle of Beersheba. Who was ordered to charge or die trying as the Light Horse galloped on Turkish trenches.
Who, laughing with fear, thundered on storming hooves in clouds of dust into the furnace of shelling and machine gun fire.
“They were an awe-inspiring sight, galloping through the red haze – knee to knee and horse to horse – the dying sun glinting on bayonets,” Ion Idriess, a fellow trooper in the 5th, wrote in his diary The Desert Column.
For one minute tomorrow, I will remember my greatgrandfather.
Who when the brutal and bloody horror of war seemed finally over, was told that the