Introduction

Summary

On 25 April 1915, when John Simpson Kirkpatrick set foot on the Gallipoli peninsula as part of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), it is unlikely that he had an inkling of the frequency with which his story would be told, retold and mistold to generations of Australians. Nor is it likely he had any idea of the extent to which that story would grow, distort and become part of Australia’s national creation myth. The idea that the Australian nation was ‘born on the shores of Gallipoli’ through the sacrifice, endurance, initiative, resourcefulness, mateship and larrikinism of the Anzacs codified the First World War as a moment of national significance in the formation of an Australian identity. Kirkpatrick’s story is entirely enmeshed in this myth-making; as ‘Australia’s most famous stretcher-bearer’, he has come to embody both the ‘Anzac spirit’ and the work of the Australian Army Medical Corps (AAMC) in the First World War.¹