MURPHY AND HIS DONKEY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18275, 16 December 1922, Page 1 (Supplement)

MURPHY AND HIS DONKEY.

A PICTURE'S MESSAGE. BT NIXORA. " Murphy and His Donkey" may be purchased by the Auckland City Council and hung in tho art gallery or in the war memorial museum. It is a simple bit of water colour but it has a meaning and a message for the soul of the people.

It was one of the sketches done on Gallipoli by tho late Sapper Moore-Jones, a name that is a monument to sacrifice and heroism just as was " Murphy," the simple Australian soldier who, by the greatness of his soul and the splendour of his courage, climbed the heights of fame and became the shining example of all that was strong and brave and noble in the men of Gallipoli—the men of tho Royal Navy, who laughed and " carried on " about those shining waters of endless toil and danger; the men of tho 29th Division who fought, endured and died below the slopes of Achi Baba; the stalwarts of the Australian Imperial Force who stormed the cliffs of Anzac and held on; and our own men of the Expeditionary Force who shared the price and the honour.

Artist and Hero. The story of the late Sapper MooroJones is familiar to the peoplo of his own city. In England when tlie war broke out, ho joined the New Zealand British Section and found himself a sapper in the Engineers. Safely through the Landing, he swung a pick on the ridges in the stern struggle to make secure against the coming challenge, the small span of tumbled earth that had been won. When his health broke down he did not go away. As an artist he found a new job and an opportunity to paint pictures far more eloquent of the spirit of Anzac than the written word.

From balloons anchored to vessels in the roadstead, ho viewed the land. He saw the lines of trenches—the. single lines which had to bo held because there were no second positions. He saw the " biwies," on the safer slopes which men called home, where they oould have their little cooking fires, sleep almost in safety and dream of anything but the throbbing boiling machine guns that spoke of death through day and night on the cliff tops. He saw the tracks that had been cut round the slopes and the snake-like lines which toiled upwards with water and rations and food for the guns. He saw the stretchers coming downward with their burdens of pain and broken youth and, maybe, in sheltered hollows he saw groups of men laying comrades to sleep in shallow graves, their blankets used for shrouds.

Hung in midair he saw it all and felt it all and ho painted it with his heart's blood.

And the artist came home to dio in the Anzac way. He rushed back into a burning building to try to save women and there received his death wounds.

The Man " Murphy." " Murphy " tho subject of the sketch was an individualist. Ho was on Callipoli as great an individualist as was Dick Travers V.C. in the Now Zealand Division in Franco. He became a separate unit of one, —one and a donkey. The peculiar conditions of the campaign and the elasticity of the colonial system of discipline made this possible. His real name was Kirkpatrick—Private John Simpson Kirkpatrick, No. 202, 3rd Field Ambulance, A.I.F. He was by occupation a ship's fireman, he was 23 years of age and he was a native of South Shields, England. Captain C. E. W. Bean, the Australian war correspondent and historian, has told the story of " Murphy " sometimes known as " Scottio " and of his donkev which bore the name of " Duffy." Greek donkey drivers had been landed on Gallipoli but were deported the same day, and their donkeys were left behind to stray about the gullies. " Murphy " took possession of ono of them and used it for carrying wounded men who could endure such a ride. From the night of the Landing until May 19, he worked each dav and half of every night between the head of Monash Valley and the beach, his donkey carrying a brassard on its forehead and a man on its back. Ho escaped dc:ith so often, says the historian, that, lie was completely fatalistic; the deadly sniping down the valley and the furious shrapnel fire never stopped him. Tho colonel of his ambulance, recognising the value of his work, allowed him to carry on as a separate unit. He camped with his donkey at the Indian mulecamp, and had to report at the field ambulance only once a day. Presently he secured a second donkey. On May 19, he went up the valley past the waterguard where ho generally had his breakfast, but it was not ready. " Never mind " he called, " get me a good dinner when I come back." He never came back. With two patients he was coming down the creekbed when he was shot through the heart, both the wounded men being wounded again. Ho had carried many scores tf men down the valley and had saved many livea. Import of the Picture. Mr. Moore-Jones did not believe that this picture had much artistic merit, but in this case tho subject is what courts most. And the subject is not only the character depicted. From those haunting eyes there shines the courage and endurance and spirit of sacrifice by which the war was Won. Will the people of tomorrow see this in the picture ? Will the children be taught not merely the history of the war but the spiritual signficanco of the high courage and tho ready sacrifice 1 Will their eyes bo directed' to the lofty heights from which, please God tho mists of material consideration will one day lift ? Will there be a truer sense of values when the aftermath of the storm is r.ast ? Fifty years hence old men, fome of them broken in body, will stand before the picture and dream of the days of their youth. They will see the yellow ridges and hear the crash of shell and the deepthroated voice of the carnage. They will see in vivid detail the places where they lived in the clay. Forgotten faces will smile their old cheery devil-may-care greeting and dead men will live again. They will recall the rollicking laughter of men who had learned tho secret of living from moment to moment without fearful thought. They will remember the unwritten law which bade the individual not to over-assess his importance; that insisted upon a cheerful demeanour and unselfishness; that proclaimed to a world of materialism that in the trenches, at least, a new and higher standard had been set. They will not mourn the friends of their youth who died so soon because they believe that a heavenlv sentinel said, "Pass friend! All's well.'' Memories of thirst and torment and fatigue that dazed Hip brain will not come back for these things are so soon forgotten, but how vividly will they remember the old comr.nU-.slnp and the" uplifting sense of service that possessed them! Proud memories and no regrets. However hard their journey through life may have been there will always have remained within them a sense of spiritual well-being, not because of what they themselves achieved, But because they had had the high privilege of being numbered among that great company of youth which went laughing to a righteous and inevitable war and through the conflict, lived up to the highest and best that was in it.