WA brothers made it home
The World War I stories of Edward James Woodward and his brother William fall into an unusual category.
Not only were they original members of the WA-raised 11th Battalion, somehow they both survived more than four years of action at Gallipoli and on the Western Front and then came home again.
Peter Woodward, of Fremantle, said his grandfather Edward James and his great-uncle William arrived in WA from Britain in 1912 and "were introduced to the crosscut saw", felling trees near Bunbury.
Edward also did some boxing, and the brothers later moved to the Goldfields.
They then walked from Kalgoorlie to Southern Cross to catch the train to Northam, where they lived at the Federal Dining Rooms.
Edward was a mill hand and sold firewood locally and William was a printer, and after war broke out the men "walked from Northam down to Blackboy Hill to enlist", Mr Woodward said.
Edward was aged 19 and William was 22. They left Fremantle on the Ascanius on October 31, 1914, and disembarked at Egypt for further training.
They were with the members of the 11th Battalion who gathered on January 10, 1915, to be photographed on the Cheops Pyramid.
_The West Australian _is supporting a WA Genealogical Society project to name the 703 men in the famous image. WAGS has divided a digital copy of the photo into grids, so each man is numbered.
Edward has been identified as number 643 on the pyramid and William as number 646.
The men were among the first ashore at the landing at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.
Edward's son Ron, of Stoneville, said that his father recalled being given half a mug of rum before boarding the Gallipoli landing craft.
Unable to swim, when Edward jumped out of the boat at Gallipoli, weighed down by his pack, he had to "walk under water" for a while to reach the beach.
Peter Woodward said Edward told him he got far enough inland to have seen the water on the other side of the peninsula.
Like many, Edward fell victim to the terrible conditions, got ill in July and was evacuated to hospital in Malta and then Egypt.
William was wounded by a bomb at Gallipoli and was also evacuated to hospital. In early 1916 the men joined the action on the Western Front and stayed with the battalion as it took part in bloody trench warfare.
They finally got respite in September 1918 and embarked for home less than two months before the end of the war.
Peter Woodward said that after the war Edward lived in Mt Hawthorn and worked as a gasfitter for the Electric and Gas Department for 42 years, where William also worked. Edward married Ella Fox from a farming family near Northam and they had five sons and a daughter.
Ron Woodward said his father had spoken of the incessant screech of the shelling, found it upsetting to hear the horses in distress, remembered trenches being half-full of water and also the terrible flies.
"He could never stand a fly in the house," Ron Woodward said.
