14 Winn RC Men May Rise p47
15 Winn Murray personal communication 2008
16 Harold Winn’s daughter, Janet Winn, should not be confused with her grandmother, Janet (Jessie) Winn
17 Winn Janet personal communication 2008
18 Address is now Upper Pitt St, Kirribilli
19 Winn Murray personal communication 2008
20 Ferguson Betty Recollections of Sydney Harbour before the Bridge undated
21 Winn RW Memoirs of Richard (Dick) Winn 2003 p13
22 Ferguson Betty Recollections of Sydney Harbour before the Bridge undated
23 Winn Janet personal communication 2008
24 Winn RW Memoirs of Richard (Dick) Winn 2003 p5
25 Winn Janet personal communication 2008
26 Winn RC Men May Rise p48
27 Sydney Grammar School Issue 213 Sydneian September 1912
28 Passport issued by UK Foreign Office 8 April 1918
2
Off to War – Gallipoli and Egypt
In July 1915, before he had finished his hospital residency, Roy signed up for what came to be called the First World War. He volunteered out of a sense of duty – he felt he simply had to go. He sympathised with conscientious objectors and doubted whether, if he had not been a doctor, he would have enlisted, as he could not have taken on the killing.29 Not only did he have to overcome his own reluctance to enlist, there were other matters to consider before deciding. The Medical Superintendent of Royal Prince Alfred Hospital told Roy that he did not want him to go and if he did, he would make it hard for Roy to get a job after the war.30 At this time, the Sydney medical fraternity was small and interconnected, so any threats to his future medical career had to be taken seriously.
Roy volunteered anyway and was commissioned captain in the Australian Medical Corps. He was assigned to the No. 1 Australian General Hospital, in the enormous former Heliopolis Palace Hotel, Cairo. He had sailed with 20 other doctors and 100 nurses on the mail steamer Orontes and arrived in Egypt on 3 September 1915. When he undertook his first ward rounds, he was pleased to find that the men under his care were all suffering from medical complaints; he did not yet regard himself as competent to handle wounded surgical patients.31
When on leave he explored Cairo. He went to the antiquities museum and was ‘overwhelmed by the magnificence and gorgeous colouring of the furniture and the jewellery used so many thousands of years ago. He was impressed by the forceful representation of a court official known as Sheik-el-Beled because it was not too conventional.’32 Although Roy had a strict religious upbringing and seemed to be very conformist, this suggests he was not blind to the attractions of the unconventional.
He also sampled the Cairo nightlife with fellow medical officers, including one trip to a ‘can-can’ cabaret. He viewed the cabaret as a debased form of folk dance, which might have been appropriate when performed by village maidens as a prelude to courtship.33 This comment of Roy’s is in keeping with the strain of prudishness and naiveté that runs through his novel.
He went to the Casino de Paris for a more conventional cabaret. The dancers sat at tables with the patrons and one girl challenged him ‘vous êtes vierge, Monsigneur le Capitain, n’est pas?’ He felt embarrassed and tried not to show it but the wound to his vanity persisted for some time.34 One can speculate whether Roy acted to prevent a repeat of this humiliating experience or whether his religious beliefs forbade it.
In the face of lack of progress against Germany in 1914, the British War Council had decided to attack Germany’s weaker allies and a plan was devised to capture the Turkish forts commanding the narrow Dardanelles and force open a way to Istanbul. After naval attempts proved unsuccessful, a land attack was approved and, in April 1915, British and Anzac formations landed at Cape Helles and Anzac Cove, both part of the Turkish peninsula that the Turks called Gelibolu. The terrain was precipitous and heavily defended and although both sides fought bravely, after some early gains the troops remained deadlocked in static trench warfare. On the first day, more than 620 Australians died, a shock to Australians who had come together in a Commonwealth just 14 years before.
Rather than stay in Egypt, Roy decided to volunteer for service on Gallipoli and on 27 September 1915 he left Cairo on a hospital ship bound for Mudros Harbour on the island of Lemnos. En route, the party had their hair cropped and he was amazed by the transformation from respectable individuals into undoubted criminals.35
At Mudros he was transferred at dusk to an ex-Channel steamer for the last leg to Gallipoli. The sound of distant shelling could be heard, with sudden flashes and bright arcs of searchlights. He describes it as like a monster fireworks display. The brilliant beams lit up circles of hillside as if it were day and exposed perfect targets, and bursting shells caused fantastic columns of dust-laden smoke to swirl upward like volcanic eruptions.36
The crack of rifle fire and the sputter of machineguns was almost continuous at times, while the loud boom of artillery and the roar of bursting shells acted as a bass accompaniment to the staccato treble. At other periods, only occasional shots would be heard, so the effect was of swelling storms of sound alternating with quietness. It resembled nothing so much as the movements of a soul-stirring symphony played by a mighty orchestra. Roy felt as though his heart would break.37 Although this description of the approach to Gallipoli is taken from his novel, it illustrates that Roy was a man with imagination and a poetic bent.
The party was put into ship’s boats, which were towed by pinnaces towards the Gallipoli shore in the dark. As they approached Anzac Cove, Roy could hear the frightening zip of bullets striking the water around him. He hoped that all would find such a harmless target. He felt proud he was about to step onto that heroic shore, but thought how differently he was faring from those who had scaled the cliffs in the light of dawn only a few months before.
The boats drew alongside a small pier and he clambered out, careful not to blunder into ammunition boxes, shells, cases of bully beef, jam tins and rolls of barbed wire. The party of medicos was eventually conducted to the dugout of the director of medical services, who