Brothers' loss resonates through the ages
As the sun rose this morning, the Harper boys will have gathered in the shadow of their great-great-grandfather's house and remembered the two sons he lost to the Great War.
Three generations of their family were expected to watch on as Lawson Harper, 14, rounded the corner in one of eight boats on the still morning river, splashing to shore and up the bank in a dramatic recreation of the Gallipoli landing.
The event on the Swan River, part of Guildford Grammar's dawn service in which more than 1600 people were expected to attend, was also to feature cadets marching past a sea of 128 white crosses with plaques, each commemorating a former student or staff member lost to war.
Lawson and his brother Quinn, 11, are the latest generation of Harper boys to attend the school, which was established by their forebear Charles Harper.
Charles' son and their great- grandfather Prescott Harper and his two brothers Wilfred and Gresley joined the 10th Light Horse Regiment in World War I. While Prescott, a Rhodes Scholar, came home, two of the white crosses planted in the earth outside the former family home, Woodbridge House, are dedicated to Wilfred and Gresley - killed in Gallipoli almost 100 years ago.
Wilfred and Gresley Harper.
"We have known about the story since we were kids and now we get to give people a bit of remembrance," Lawson said.
Vicki Bellinge, the school's nurse manager and organiser of the service, said students would read out all 128 names, including some personal snippets about each soldier.
"We want them to be able to relate," she said.
When Lawson and the other boys run up the slope and are felled by imagined bullets, it will be an echo in time of the Gallipoli landing and the terrible charge that claimed his great-uncles.
They died in the battle at the Nek, where hundreds of troops, including many West Australians, were ordered towards the Turkish trenches and almost certain death.
While Prescott was sent to Palestine, Wilfred and Gresley went to Turkey. They had been fighting in the trenches for about two months when in August 1915, their brigade was ordered to launch a 4.30am attack on trenches held by the enemy on a narrow ridge, while other Allied forces attacked from the north.
The charge was a bloodbath. Shelling from an offshore destroyer, designed to provide a diversion, finished seven minutes early, leaving the Turkish soldiers time to regroup.
Anzac Day commemorated from Gallipoli to Kings Park
By the time the Australians started coming out of the trenches in waves, the Turks were ready.
The first line of soldiers, from the 8th Light Horse, was virtually annihilated. The second wave climbed over the dead and wounded but was also felled.
When the turn came for the WA-raised 10th Light Horse, including the two Harper brothers, their cousins and friends, they would have known it was hopeless.
Some accounts say Wilfred was the only one to reach the trenches before he was cut down. Another soldier said he thought he saw both brothers lying together, believed killed instantly.
Official WWI historian Charles Bean described Wilfred being "last seen running forward like a schoolboy in a footrace, with all the speed he could compass".
The account was part of the inspiration for the final scene in Peter Weir's film Gallipoli, where the character Archy Hamilton charges to his death.
Neither Wilfred nor Gresley has a known grave, like most killed that day, but are commemorated with plaques on the Lone Pine Memorial.
Prescott, who ended up rising to the rank of lieutenant, returned to WA and died in 1957.
