It's a long way from Carp Street in Bega to the hauntingly beautiful Lone Pine cemetery in Gallipoli.
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But the two locations are intimately linked.
The names of eight Gallipoli ANZACs are honoured in both places: inscribed in gold paint on the Bega Soldiers' Memorial Arch in Carp Street, and carved into the sombre limestone panels at Lone Pine where most of them were killed in the summer of 1915.
On Anzac Day, I had the privilege of paying my respects to these eight men. Visiting Gallipoli for the dawn service at Anzac Cove, I located their memorials at Lone Pine, and reconnected them with the Bega Valley they left behind more than 100 years ago.
![Gallipoli's Lone Pine memorial service on Anzac Day 2024 with the Australian flag at half mast. Picture by Stephen Mills Gallipoli's Lone Pine memorial service on Anzac Day 2024 with the Australian flag at half mast. Picture by Stephen Mills](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/38KKizhZLpuTDCkJAjRb34b/926193fa-60f6-4797-8261-79596b4e98c5.jpeg/r0_600_4032_2867_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
One of the eight was a blacksmith; another was a cheesemaker with a Swiss heritage; another was a timber cutter from Gippsland. Several of them went to Bega district school; one to Sydney Grammar. They all volunteered for service at the outbreak of war, and not one of them was over 30 years old.
But perhaps their most poignant story concerns Sergeant Ferdinand Beck.
Beck's grandfather, also called Ferdinand, had an adventurous life that took him from his native Prussia (Germany) to Russia, central America and Brazil, and then the Victorian goldfields, before settling in Bega in 1856 - one of the first residents in the then remote township.
![Bermagui resident Stephen Mills points out Pvt Power's name on the Lone Pine Memorial at Gallipoli. Picture supplied Bermagui resident Stephen Mills points out Pvt Power's name on the Lone Pine Memorial at Gallipoli. Picture supplied](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/38KKizhZLpuTDCkJAjRb34b/0ba3b889-beee-4a0b-8f7f-7ad43fea95a9.jpeg/r0_0_2246_2030_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
He was survived by nine children. They in turn produced a crop of at least eight grandsons, with connections all up and down the Far South Coast, from Bega to Numbugga to Bermagui.
Those eight grandsons all enlisted in the Australian armed forces in World War I and, incredible as it seems, no fewer than six of them gave their lives in the service of Australia. The Bega Memorial Arch names all six.
Ferdinand Beck, named for his grandfather, was one of them.
He attended Bega Public School, moved to Kogarah in Sydney and spent three years in the volunteer militia. His parents remained in Valley Street in Bega. He enlisted at the outbreak of war and at the age of 23 was appointed a sergeant in the First Battalion AIF.
In the desperate August offensive when the Australians tried, unsuccessfully, to break out of their tiny toehold on the Gallipoli peninsula, Sergeant Beck was killed at Lone Pine above Anzac Cove. Four of his cousins - Harold, Samuel, James and another James - were killed later in the war, in France. Another cousin, Frank, enlisted but died in camp in Liverpool.
Like so many who were killed in the brutal fighting at Lone Pine, Ferdinand Beck has no known grave.
![Ferdinand Beck's name at Lone Pine in the first battalion - alongside Shout VC. Picture by Stephen Mills Ferdinand Beck's name at Lone Pine in the first battalion - alongside Shout VC. Picture by Stephen Mills](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/38KKizhZLpuTDCkJAjRb34b/a8309cf3-a91b-4b85-b828-1581593633e0.jpeg/r116_0_3266_1770_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Lone Pine serves as the general memorial site for the 4000-plus Australians like Beck without a grave - their bodies were lost, or they were buried at sea.
Their names are listed there by unit, rank and surname. Sergeant Beck's name appears among his First Battalion comrades - by happy coincidence next to that of renowned ANZAC Captain Alfred Shout, winner of the Victoria Cross and Military Cross.
In preparation for the celebration, the memorial has been refurbished and the names of the fallen soldiers retouched with gold paint - thanks to the hard work of the local RSL led by Gary Berman.
The memorial lists 64 local men killed in the service of Australia during WWI. Of these, eight were killed in "Lone Pine" or "Gallipoli" (it's not clear why the designers of the arch distinguished between those two locations).
I was able to locate memorials at Gallipoli for seven of those eight men, all of them at Lone Pine.
As well as Beck, there is the Bega blacksmith Viv Dawson, and the Gippsland timber cutter William Jeffrey Power. There is the Swiss cheesemaker Edouard Gaille, who was a serjeant (sic) in the First Light Horse; he had enlisted under a more English sounding name Guy Ellis, which is how he is listed on the Memorial Arch. There are Privates Kenneth Scott of the 2nd Battalion and Walter Seccombe of the 15th Battalion, and a bloke called Bob Smith whom I just could not track down.
![Grave of Kenneth Scott. Picture by Stephen Mills Grave of Kenneth Scott. Picture by Stephen Mills](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/38KKizhZLpuTDCkJAjRb34b/bcf63484-61ba-4732-b398-e07ae578f467.jpeg/r0_131_3683_2202_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
There is also Sergeant Frank Lane Ritchie, the Sydney Grammar boy who went on to graduate from Sydney University. He gave his occupation as station manager: he had managed his father's property, Avoca, near Bega.
Sergeant Ritchie's parents arranged for his gravestone at Lone Pine to include the statement: "He died in a far country fighting for his native land".
All of them, except for Dawson and Seccombe, were killed in the same bloody few days in August. Only Scott and Ritchie have graves.
To see their names inscribed on the Memorial Arch is to be reminded of the pride and gratitude felt in the community in the aftermath of war, when the impact was still being felt.
And to see their graves and memorials at Lone Pine is to be reminded of the extraordinary impact these deaths must have had on a small rural community like Bega 109 years ago.
I felt heartened to convey to them my thanks for serving our community so well.