From a Gallipoli acorn grew an Anzac oak...

Press, 24 April 1979, Page 13

From a Gallipoli acorn grew an Anzac oak...

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VICKI FUREY

Thousands of New Zealanders tomorrow will cori- ■> gregate in churches, at , memorials, in reunions, remembering on Anzac Day those who died in the service of their country. A few might stand beneath an oak tree alongside the Avon, nearbv the Bridge of Remembrance. It ; would be an appropriate place to gather. For the trees has its “roots” in Gallipoli. where the ANZACS were born. It was from acorns found on the field of battle by one of three Christchurch brothers who served in the Gallipoli campaign that the ; tree sprang. The three brothers were Douglas. William. and Colin Deans. The Australian and New Zealand Army Corps was part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary force, commanded bv General Sir lan Hamilton." Its task was to ‘ seize the southern heights of the Gallipoli peninsula > and to enable the British and French navies to sail through the Dardanelles to the Turkish capital of * Istanbul. If the troops had succeeded it might have meant the end of a war which had reached a stalemate on the Western front. It would, at least, have relieved the hard-pressed Russian troops. > It was a difficult task as the Turks knew that they were coming. Previous attempts to take the Dardanelles by naval forces alone had failed. Douglas Deans, then a sergeant in the Canterbury Mounted Rifles, sailed to

Europe with the main body of the New Zealand troops. Now, the 86-year-old Mr Deans says: “I wasn’t a keen fighter at all; I just went out of patriotism.”

As horses were considered unsuitable for the landing at Anzac Cove on April 25. 1915, Mr Deans stayed in Egypt until later in May when the Canterbury Mounted Rifles arrived to reinforce the New Zealanders already on Gallipoli. The events following the landing at Anzac Cove are well-known. The cost of the campaign to New Zealand by the time the troops left from Helles on January 9. 1916, was 2721 dead and 4752 wounded. Douglas Deans left Gallipoli in early August, invalided to England with jaundice. Later, in August, the Canterbury Mounted Rifles fought against the Turks at Hill 60. He had been on Gallipoli three months in 1915 — three months which he says was “long enough.” By the time he returned by ship to the island of Lemnos, off the Gallipoli peninsula, there was four inches of snow on the deck. “This was the time of the big snow in Gallipoli when a lot of soldiers were frozen to death.” However, he did not return to the peninsula as the evacuation of the Anzac troops had begun. Instead. Mr Deans rejoined his regiment in Egypt and began training for the Palestine campaign.

By the Turkish armistice on October 31. 1918, William Deans had re-

turned home, the side of his foot “smashed off” by machine gun fire. Colin Deans had joined the Mounted Rifles in 1916, and was among the 25 officers and 464 other ranks of the Rifles, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel John Findlay, wffio were stationed at Kilid Bahr, for six weeks, to help police the armistice. In the meantime. Douglas Deans had returned to New Zealand to receive a commission. Lieutenant Douglas Deans was then posted to Kilid Bahr, on the south coast of the penin-

sula, at the western end of the Narrows, opposite Chanak. While policing the armistice the men rode around the southern part of the peninusula looking for Turkish arms and ammunition dumps. In their off-duty hours they rode over old battle fields searching for graves and for unburied comrades. On Hill 60, Colin Deans picked up four of the “biggest acorns that I have ever seen.” He also picked up some smaller “miserable looking” scrub acorns. He took the acoms back to the camp and showed them to his brother. Douglas. “I thought they were too good to throw away, so I put them into a tobacco tin, with some of the smaller acoms, and sent them back to my brother, James, at Home-

bush,” Douglas Deans recalls. James planted the acorns at Homebush. The larger acoms took root but the smaller scrub acorns died. On the tenth anniversary of the outbreak of war, August 4, 1924, a young oak, raised by James, from an acorn sent from Gallipoli by Douglas, was planted on the banks of the Avon River — “In memory of the men who fought and fell in the ill-starred Gallipoli operation.”

As the bronze plague at the foot of the tree records, the planting ceremony, of the six-year-old tree, was conducted by the then Mayor of Christchurch, Mr J, A. Flesher. The oak tree was a “symbol of endurance,” planted in memory of those who went from Christchurch and the Dominion, Mr Flesher said at the ceremony, which was reported by “The Press” on August 5, 1924. It was fitting that the planting should take place on the anniversary of the outbreak of war. Mr Flesher added. “It was more fitting still, that the acorn from which the tree was grown, should have come from the Gallipoli peninsula. Of the New Zealanders who served on Gallipoli, seven out of eight were either killed, wounded, or missing.

“There was no place more fitting for the memorial tree than the one selected on the banks of the peaceful Avon near to the Bridge of Remembrance, with all the associations reminding one of those who had gone.”

James sent a second young oak to Sir Andrew Hamilton Russell, the commander of the anzac force during the evacuation from Gallipoli. As far as Mr Deans knows the oak still stands at Sir Andrew’s old home in Hastings, Tunanui. A third oak James kept at Homebush. The fourth is an “enormous” oak, although not as big as the one on the Avon. Douglas Deans says, at Rowallan, in Darfield. Rowallan is. Mr Dean s former home and farm, where his son now lives. Mr Deans estimates the oak at Rowallan to be about 20m tall. “But the Avon oak is the biggest of them, as far as I know.” At the planting ceremony in 1924, Mr Flesher said that it would be a “sad day for the Dominion and the Empire should people ever stop paying respect to the memory of those to whom they owed so much.”

The significance of Anzac Day is fading for many as the years pass. There were only 25 men at Douglas Dean’s regiment’s annual dinner in Christchurch last year. However, the tall straight-boled oak from Gallipoli stands in "grateful remembrance.”