Franklin

The Franklins

I had an American great grandfather, who was a sea captain from Buffalo NY. It seems he met my great grandmother when his ship visited Port Adelaide. He thus stayed in Adelaide, becoming a railway stationmaster at several stations around South Australia, and in fact Darwin, which was at the time part of South Australia.

Great Grandfather Franklin is shown here as the silver-bearded gentleman as station master of the now-defunct railway station of Terowie some hundreds of kilometres north of Adelaide, around 1915, with his staff. It is amazing that this station needed so many staff, although I have another photo in very low resolution from a similar year in which the staff is possibly double this. Basically Terowie was the end of the broad gauge line. One had to change here to another train on standard gauge to travel on to Perth, Alice Springs or Broken Hill, and later for Sydney. In World War 2 this station saw many troop movements north and it was on the platform of this station that General Douglas Macarthur made his famous "I shall return" speech. The station later lost importance when broad gauge was extended to Peterborough, but later the route to these destinations, including the Ghan to Darwin, was shifted west and this station was completely closed.

One of their sons, Uncle Vernon (my grandmother's young brother), joined the 10th Battalion, a South Australian Battalion which was to earn three Victoria Crosses, very early with Australian Army number 414, and participated in the Gallipoli landing. The first to land were the 3rd Brigade, which consisted of the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th Battalions, from Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania respectively. Each of these Battalions consisted of 4 Companies, and two of the four companies from each of the 9th, 10th and 11th were the first of these, including Uncle Vernon.

So, Rodney Vernon Franklin served in the landing at Gallipoli as an ANZAC. In his letters to his parents he wrote of the landing (while in hospital afterward).

On the 24th we made a move and landed successfully on Gallipoli Peninsula at daybreak on Sunday 25th. The 3rd Brigade were the covering party, so we had the honour of landing first and by jove, didn't the Turks hop into us. Of course we had to get into little rowing boats to get ashore, and the bullets were splashing about our boats like fun, but none of us got hit. When we got ashore, the beach was only about 10 yards wide, and then up the cliffs, with the Turks lined along the top. When we got ¾ way up, they must have got a bit frightened of our bayonets, because they made a hurried departure. When we reached the top there were no Turks in sight (except a few wounded ones).

Then we went on to the next ridge and got the word that the Turks were preparing to make a counter attack, so we started digging ourselves in, but couldn't get deep enough before they started to attack. Jack Waller (the boy in the photo with me) got shot through the right shoulder about ½ hour after. He was beside me at the time and went down without a groan.

After that we had a pretty hot time all day and at night it rained and of course we had to lay and get wet through. In the morning (26th) they started stronger than ever, but our boys managed to keep them back. On Monday p.m. I got ½ hours sleep and on Tuesday a.m. some of us were sent to reinforce the left flank. It was hotter than ever. We had been in before, and I don't know how we managed to stick there and come out of it alive.

Well on Tuesday p.m. the officer in charge sent us fellows (reinforcements of morning) down to the beach for a sleep (about 10 of us). When we got down there one of the boys got too far out to the water's edge and got shot with shrapnel.

All of this time my throat was absolutely closed up and had nothing to eat from Sat p.m. On Wed a.m. the boys told me to see the doctor and he ordered me back to the boat, so here we are back in crook old Egypt.

In a later account (both letters are now with the Australian War Memorial) he wrote

By Jove, if I was ever proud to be an Australian, it was on that Sunday morning when we landed against that absolutely galling gun and rifle fire. You can have no conception of what it was like!!! When the Queen Elizabeth started firing her big guns, it made the earth tremble, and the scream of her shells going over our heads was as sweet music in our ears.

While we were landing, the enemy had a gun in such a position as to bring a raking fire along the beach. The old Queen Lizzie got to work and put it out of action second shot. I saw that shot strike and you ought to have seen the flare and explosion!!!

While we were being towed ashore in little boats, we had to sit huddled together and couldn't move and, of course, they had us at their mercy. I could tell you that until we got out of that bally boat, I was in a Devil of a funk, but as soon as we got a foot ashore it all seemed to be different, as then we had a chance of doing something ourselves, and we didn't half forget to do it either.

"We took up our position in the enemy's line of trenches and gradually advanced down the hill during the first day. The enemy took up their position in their third line. It was a terrible job getting the wounded back to the beach."

He was wounded and evacuated to a hospital in Egypt, and then went to London, where he was meant to rejoin the Australian Army. His Battalion later played a major role on the Western Front in World War I, and was Australia's most decorated, winning three Victoria Crosses. But he was not to rejoin it. After returning to do so he walked through the wrong door, found himself among man-starved British recruiters who persuaded him to take a commission in the Royal Lancaster Regiment, which was to become the Royal Flying Corps. As a result he was discharged as a corporal in the Australian Army on 26 November 1915. He is seen below in a Farnham plane.

He was involved in aerial incidents over the Western Front in 16 Squadron, where he earned the French Creux de Guerre and was recommended for the Military Cross by his commanding General. (The MC was never presented, possibly because it could not be posthumously. The first posthumous MC was not able to be awarded until 1980.) He was injured again and became a test pilot afterwards with 58 Squadron and was killed over Egypt in 1917 test-flying a plane. He is buried in the Suez War Cemetery. I was able to find his grave in Suez in January 2006 and took the photograph below.