Private Albert Jacka and the 14th Battalion sailed from Port Melbourne aboard the troopship Ulysses along with Colonel John Monash, arriving at Lemnos as part of the 4th Brigade prior to taking part in the landings on 25 April. Like the other diggers who came to Lemnos at this time, Albert would have gazed out on Mudros Bay, at the villages surrounding the shoreline and maybe purchased some fresh fruit or eggs from the local Lemnian traders who came out to the huge Allied ships anchored in the harbor.
During his service at Gallipoli Private Albert Jacka would be awarded his Victoria Cross, the first of any Australian soldier in the First World War. Later in the war, he would return to Lemnos and be admitted to one of the army field hospitals established there by Australian, British and Canadian military authorities. He would receive further decorations for bravery and end the war with the rank of Captain.
The awarding of the Victoria Cross made Albert a celebrity on Lemnos when he came there with the rest of his unit for rest and recuperation in September 1915. There was a great show as the whole 4th Brigade was paraded and Albert was embraced by the French Naval Commander in Chief, Rear-Admiral Guepratte. After returning to the front on Gallipoli, Albert finally returned to Lemnos with the evacuation of the peninsula in December.
When Albert returned to Lemnos in September, 130 Australian nurses were already serving alongside medical officers and hundreds of orderlies at the Australian hospitals that had been erected around Mudros Bay. One of those was Staff Nurse Clarice Daley. Born in Box Hill, Clarice was living in Elwood when she enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service. In May 1915 Clarice sailed with the 3rd Australian General Hospital (3rd AGH) for overseas service from Princes Pier in Port Melbourne – the same pier that would welcome so many of Victoria’s Hellenic and other migrant communities in the 1950’s and beyond.
Clarice’s service on Lemnos was that of the other nurses and staff who served alongside her, led by Matron Grace Wilson. They provided essential medical care to thousands of sick and wounded soldiers, exposed in their tents on the Turks Head Peninsula, suffering sweltering summer heat and flies as well as winter gales and cold. Despite all this Clarice and the others achieved an astounding 98 per cent recovery rate for their patients. Albert Jacka himself would be treated for illness at Lemnos’ medical facilities during his service at Gallipoli.
Along with her colleagues Clarice no doubt enjoyed her free time while on Lemnos, visiting the local villages, inter-acting with the villagers, enjoying a local meal and beverage and admiring the ornate Greek Orthodox Churches of the Island. Clarice may even have partaken of the rejuvenating hot mineral springs baths at Therma – as hundreds of other soldiers and nurses did, including Colonel John Monash.
But Clarice is unique in another way. For her and her husband to be are the only service personnel to have been married on Lemnos during the Gallipoli campaign. In October 1915, Clarice married her sweetheart from Melbourne – now Sergeant Ernest Lawrence of the Australian Light Horse – at the Church Camp on the Turks Head Peninsula. The service was attended by many of their comrades, with three of her nursing colleagues – Matron Grace Wilson, Staff Nurse Mary McIlroy and Staff Nurse Beulah McMinn – signing the wedding certificate and soldiers held their bayonets aloft to make an “avenue of honour” for the new couple. The whole occasion was photographed and Clarice’s fellow 3rd AGH nurses presented her with a bronze pot, specially engraved as a wedding present.
Clarice continued her service at the 3rd AGH until its evacuation and transfer to Egypt. As a married nurse Clarice returned to Australia and was discharged. Ernest survived the war, returning to Australia in 1918, and the couple settled back in Elwood, raising a family together. A few hundred metres from Albert’s grave, Clarice and Ernest are buried together in St Kilda Cemetery.
And so following the completion of the commemorative service at the grave of Albert Jacka, members of the Lemnos Gallipoli Commemorative Committee, led by myself as Secretary, laid a wreath on the grave of Clarice and Ernest – in honour of these two other Anzacs, who have such a special and unique connection to the Island of Lemnos. As with our previous annual pilgrimage to their grave site, it was my pleasure to make the floral wreath from olive, lemon and rosemary branches.
*Jim Claven is the secretary of the Lemnos – Gallipoli Commemorative Committee Inc.
