As part of our WWI project, we are starting to write up some of the Ku-ring-gai Anzacs for our book and for our newsletter. Here is a 'short' version of one from this month's newsletter.
A soldier who gave his life on what has now become Anzac Day, 98 years ago.
Private Cecil
Thomas BARRACK, 1103 was killed in action at the Gallipoli landing on 25 April
1915.
He is
memorialised on the Roll of Honour at Gordon Railway Station and on the Lone
Pine Memorial at Gallipoli.
An excerpt from in
his Red Cross file:
“Saw him killed on 1st day of landing
25th April. Killed outright. He was well out in front and we had to leave him.”
At the time, it
wasn’t so straightforward for his family, brothers William (Wal) and John
(Jack) and mother and stepfather, Sarah and Fritz Hakanson.
A letter to his
brother John in February 1916 gives a little more information:
Barrack was with a party
that was sent from our trenches to make a demonstration while a big attack was
being delivered on the left. This party got caught in the ‘Valley of Despair’
and could not regain our trenches. There is a good chance, however, that
Barrack may be a prisoner, as the names of other of the party, who, like him
had to be posted as missing – have been received that they are prisoners.
The tardiness of the
receipt of the names of prisoners is due to the fact that many have been sent
to places in Asia Minor.
It wasn’t until
after a Court of Inquiry Proceedings held in France on 5 June 1916 (over a year
later), that Pte Cecil Barrack was recorded as Killed in Action at Gallipoli
Peninsula.
Cecil Thomas
Barrack was born in 1884 in Murrurundi, NSW, the youngest of three sons to
James Alexander Hale Barrack and Sarah Ellen Davies. James Barrack died in
Woolloomooloo when Cecil was just 8 years old and his mother remarried (to
Fritz Hakanson) in 1894.
Cecil was an
engineer and not married, so had listed his brother John as next of kin. His
address at the time of his enlistment in September 1914 was in Chatswood with
his brother John.
By December
1915, brother John was living in Bonnyrigg,
Moree Street, Gordon.
By May 1920,
John Barrack had moved to 19 Northcliff Street, Milsons Point, and was living
with his mother and stepfather.
At the time of
her death in 1922, his mother, Sarah Hakanson (also known as Hawkinson) was
living in Cecilthel, Pymble Avenue,
Pymble.
So, it appears
that Pte Cecil Barrack never lived in Ku-ring-gai, but at the time the war
memorials were erected, his mother and brother were living in Gordon and
probably catching the train from the station where his name appears on the Roll
of Honour.
(From the Sydney Morning
Herald on Wed 25 April 1917 page 10)
BARRACK. -Killed in action the
landing, Gallipoli, April 25, 1915, Cecil
T. (Jerry) Barrack 9th Battalion
of Gordon beloved youngest son of Mr and Mrs Hawkinson, and brother of Wal and
Jack Barrack.
Lest We Forget
The
afternoon meeting starts at 2pm in the meeting room (between Gordon Library and
our Research Rooms) in the Old Gordon Public School on Pacific Highway Gordon.
