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Gallipoli flag flies back to WA

Wendy Lugg and and Doug Buhler with the flag in Canada. Picture: Edmonton Journal

The flag is showing its age but faded writing in one corner is a crucial clue that it is a rare piece of WA military history.

The wording reads "Flag of C Section 3rd Fld Amb April 1915", with a signature by "AD Kemp".

And now, almost a century after it flew over the World War I battlefield of Gallipoli to mark the position of the WA-raised section of the 3rd Field Ambulance, it is to go on display in WA.

At the weekend, Royal WA Historical Society curator Wendy Lugg flew to Canada to collect the flag on loan from its owner, Edmonton military historian and collector Doug Buhler, with the possibility it may end up in WA permanently.

The inspiration for Mrs Lugg's mission was her grandfather Henry Lyall Sinclair, who enlisted in August 1914, just days after Australia joined the war.

Assigned to the 11th Battalion, he was with the men when they gathered to be photographed on the Cheops Pyramid while training in Egypt and when they were among the first ashore at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.

Mrs Lugg said that in June 1915 her grandfather was buried by an exploding Turkish shell. He was dug out unconscious and bleeding with a fractured skull and shrapnel fragments in his head.

It was possible he was carried to safety by stretcher-bearers of the 3rd Field Ambulance before being evacuated for treatment in England and returned to Perth. He never fully recovered from his wounds and died from tuberculosis in 1930, aged 34.

Mrs Lugg's mother Marjorie Easton said she was just six when her father died and her chief memories of him were of his final bedridden years.

But when he was recovering from wounds in England he learnt how to embroider and pieces of his work remained with the family.

Mrs Lugg said her grandfather's widow Florrie lived with the family after Sinclair died, so she grew up hearing stories about him and was surrounded by his embroidery, which sparked her interest in old family stories.

As artist-in-residence at the RWAHS, she became interested in medals donated to the society that belonged to Capt. Douglas McWhae, who was in charge of C Section of the 3rd Field Ambulance.

Another member of the unit who embarked from WA was John Simpson Kirkpatrick, "the man with the donkey".

Local author Wes Olson's book Gallipoli, the Western Australian Story records that the Red Cross flag had been seen flying over C Section's collection post on the day of the landing.

The book The Body Snatchers, the history of the 3rd Field Ambulance, by Sue and Ron Austin, said the Red Cross flag that had been flying over C Section's dressing station had been kept after the campaign by A.D. Kemp, who gave it to McWhae after the war.

McWhae brought the flag back to WA and its history from that point was unknown until a Canadian researcher revealed it was recovered from waste being removed from the roof of the Beatty Park Aquatic Centre in 1983.

It was later taken to Canada and sold to Mr Buhler.

Mrs Lugg said he had agreed to lend it, through Museums Australia WA, to the RWAHS and it would be a central part of the society exhibition Beyond the Battlefields, which opens on April 20.

Museums Australia WA executive officer Robert Mitchell said he was confident of the flag's authenticity and was delighted it was being brought back to WA.

Mrs Lugg, who spent $3000 of her own money to collect the flag, said the project was her way of honouring her grandfather's memory.

She hoped a fundraising campaign through Museums Australia WA could bring in the $35,000 needed to buy the flag, tour it around the State and then add it to a WA public collection.

Mrs Lugg is due back in WA with the flag tomorrow.

It is the anniversary of her grandfather's death.