- You know, these days, you have to shake your head and wonder
why hundreds of thousands of young Australian men, like these blokes,
went off to fight in World War I.
It was the Great War, the big adventure.
You had to be 18 years of age to enlist.
But somehow James Martin, they called him Jim,
got in there when he was only 14. He went off to Gallipoli.
And he died a few weeks later. Just 14. How did that happen?
Jim was born James Charles Martin,
in Tocumwal, News South Wales, in 1901.
He was the only boy in a family of five girls.
He was interested in the Army and in Cadets at school.
Even today, Glenferrie Primary is proud of their boy soldier.
Jim left school to work as a labourer.
He'd been doing that for around 12 months when the war began.
He was physically fit, he was tall, and very determined to go to war.
The problem, however, was his age.
So how did he manage to get to war?
- Men needed to be 21 years old
cos they wanted the biggest and the strongest Australians to go.
You could apply with parental permission from the age of 18.
They were mostly turned down, though.
A 14-year-old has to lie a lot to get to war.
That young man told some big fibs, I'm afraid.
He was able to fool the recruitment officer
to the degree where the recruitment officer was happy to let him through.
- (Ray Martin) Jim's mother, Amelia, wrote him a letter of permission,
but only because Jim had threatened to sign up under a false name.
John Harris's grandmother was Jim's sister.
He says the family had no choice but to let young Jim go off to war.
- His words were, as I understand it,
"Let me go, certify that I'm 18 years of age, and I'll stay in touch, I'll write.
If you won't, I'll run away
and you'll never hear from me again." - Really?
After some basic training outside of Melbourne,
at Broadmeadows Army Camp,
Jim joined the 21st Battalion
and sailed off to Egypt in late June, 1915.
That was only two months after the Anzac landings.
But already the news from the battlefield was terrible.
- (HEAVY GUNFIRE)
- (Dr Meleah Hampton) He's under no illusions. He's not going into it blind.
They know that the Turk is a formidable foe.
That's how they talk about them in the newspapers.
And he knows that there is a lot of rifle fire and snipers,
a lot of wounded and a lot of sickness and gangrene.
- (Ray Martin) In September, Jim's luck started to turn bad.
His troopship, heading from Egypt to Turkey,
was torpedoed by an enemy submarine.
Jim spent four hours in the cold Aegean Sea before being rescued.
Only a few days later, he jumped ashore at Anzac Cove,
expecting dust, flies and hot weather.
- (Dr Meleah Hampton) When James Martin arrives, they are experiencing
cold nights, the weather's closing in.
It's exhausting because they are on watch through the night regularly,
and then they get to sleep in a hole in the ground
to recover from spending all night on watch.
- (Ray Martin) Jim kept his word to his mum and he wrote home regularly.
- It was the letters that really get to me,
because they seem to me to be like...
..letters by a boy writing back from a boy scout camp,
and he was trying to say to mum and dad,
"Everything's all right here." You know?
"I'm doing splendid over here." Or words to that effect.
- But he also said the Turks are 70m away.
- It's just so very hard to imagine.
- (Ray Martin) Jim quickly found that on the battlefield,
you couldn't depend on getting letters from home.
- (Dr Meleah Hampton) "I have not received any mail since I left Melbourne
on June 28th. They must be going astray somewhere.
I hope you're getting some of mine as I am writing pretty often."
One of the things that struck me is his first letters say,
"I remain your fond son, Jim."
And the further he gets from home, and the harder it gets,
the more loving he gets. So, "I remain your loving son, Jim."
And then five kisses at the end.
And you can see the progress of him missing his family
and it being a little bit harder than he thought.
- (Ray Martin) Jim's battalion arrived at Gallipoli
near the end of a period of intense fighting.
He was positioned in one of the worst spots of all, at Courtney's Post.
- (Dr Meleah Hampton) Courtney's Post is one of those iconic places
that so many people are in and out of,
and it's so close to the Turks, and you can't rest.
You've got to be careful about lighting your cigarette.
You hear them talking. He's in a dangerous position.
He will be coming under shell fire occasionally.
- (Ray Martin) After six weeks of constant fighting,
it was a deadly disease that took Jim out of the war.
He contracted what was called rheumatic fever or paratyphoid.
He was evacuated to a hospital ship
on 25th October 1915.
Now, the hospital ship's matron was a Mrs Frances Reddock.
And she wrote this tender letter to Jim's grieving mother back in Melbourne.
She wrote, "He was brought on board from the shore at 5pm
in a very collapsed state.
We got him to bed and did everything possible for him.
He said he was feeling much more comfortable
and he thanked me so nicely.
He thanked me so nicely for what had been done to him.
He then settled down to get a sleep.
But he died suddenly and quietly of heart failure at 6:40pm."
Less than two hours after he came on board the hospital ship.
Jim Martin was buried at sea.
His name is listed on the Lone Pine Memorial.
Only a few sad mementos survived Jim's war,
like his Army identification tag.
But probably the most moving of all is this cushion cover.
Wow! I mean, it says it all, doesn't it?
Jim had it made in Egypt for his mother before sailing for Gallipoli.
- For a long time, there was a degree of shame, perhaps.
Certainly early on, when his mother was still alive,
she regretted very much giving in to Jim.
Her hair went white almost overnight.
She never really forgave herself.
- James "Jim" Martin
was 14 years, nine months and 22 days young when he died.
He was just a boy soldier.