Helpful - Simpson and His Donkey
| Category: | Scout Law |
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| Notes: | A true story from Gallipoli, 1915. Good for Veterans Day, Memorial Day, ANZAC Day (April 25) or any meeting about service. John Simpson Kirkpatrick was a stretcher-bearer with the Australian Army Medical Corps. |
In April of 1915, during World War One, soldiers from Australia and New Zealand landed on a narrow beach called Anzac Cove, at Gallipoli, in Turkey. Above the beach were steep, rocky hills, and the fighting up in those hills was terrible.
One of those soldiers was a young man named John Simpson Kirkpatrick. He was twenty-two. Most people just called him Simpson. His job was stretcher-bearer: when a soldier was wounded, Simpson and a partner carried him on a stretcher down to the beach, where the doctors were.
But the path down was a long, steep gully, and the enemy could see it. Snipers shot at anyone who moved. Stretcher-bearers were getting hurt and killed, and there weren't enough of them to carry all the wounded.
On his first or second day there, Simpson found a donkey wandering loose. And he had an idea. He put a wounded soldier on the donkey's back, and walked beside it, down the gully to the beach. Then he walked back up, and did it again. A man with a donkey could do the work of two stretcher-bearers, and the soldiers with leg wounds could ride.
So that's what Simpson did. Every day, and often through the night, he went up the gully and down the gully, with his donkey. He whistled and sang as he walked, to keep the wounded men's spirits up. The other soldiers would tell him to take cover, to wait until the shooting stopped. He'd just nod, and keep going.
Simpson carried wounded men down that gully for twenty-four days. On the morning of May 19th, 1915, on one more trip up, he was killed. The donkey walked on down the gully to the beach, still carrying its wounded soldier, and delivered him to the doctors.
Nobody knows exactly how many men Simpson saved. Some say a hundred, some say three hundred. In Australia today, "Simpson and his donkey" is one of the best-known stories of that war. There are statues of them in Melbourne and Canberra.
Now, Simpson wasn't a general. He didn't win any famous battle. He didn't even have an important job. But he saw that there was more work than people to do it, he found a way to do more of it, and he didn't stop.
A Scout is helpful. Most of the time, being helpful doesn't take that kind of courage. It's carrying the extra pack, staying late to clean up, walking back to help the Scout who's last on the trail. But it's the same idea. See the need. Find a way. Keep going.