By LACHLAN MOORHEAD
BEFORE he was shot dead on the front lines, Corporal Alexander ‘Yank’ McClure wrote to his parents back home about his seeming invulnerability.
The details surrounding Cpl McClure’s death were published in the Pakenham Gazette on 17 May 1917, including quotes from a letter he sent to his parents just before he was shot.
“The Turks cannot hit me now, I reckon,” he wrote.
“They have cut the hair off my temple with a bullet and I received a blister on my neck with another.
“I had my shaving mug smashed to pieces with a piece of shrapnel shell whilst I was shaving and I was hit on the shin with another piece which just grazed me”.
It’s believed the day Cpl McClure was shot he’d only hours earlier been recommended for a promotion to sergeant.
Word of his death soon reached his father, a prominent member of the Narre Warren Cricket Club and a foreman on the Victorian Railways at Yackandandah.
Cpl McClure, known as ‘Yank’ to his mates after travelling to America, was sharing a dugout with his good friend Lance Corporal Stringer, who he met in Egypt, when he was shot with the bullet that would end his life.
L-Cpl Stringer’s account of Yank’s death, included in the Gazette piece, is heart-breaking in its vividness.
The bullet, L-Cpl Stringer said, went “straight through” his mate.
“He and I were in charge of adjoining posts, so I know how poor old Yank – we never called him anything else – went out,” he said.
“It was a bright moonlight night, about 7.30. He and I stood on the floor of the trench and discussed the usual evening repairs to the parapet – torn sandbags had to be replaced and loopholes cleared.
“Yank jumped up and climbed out over the parapet to effect his repairs. He and I usually worked together and I asked him if he needed any assistance.
“He said, ‘No, I can fix it on my own’. As I had some work to do on my own post I left him and walked back to attend to it.”
A minute later L-Cpl Stringer heard a cry and knew someone had been hit.
“There lying on a blanket was poor old Yank,” L-Cpl Stringer said.
“ ‘Hit hard, old chap?’ I asked. ‘Don’t know, got it through the groin,’ he replied. ‘What did it feel like?’ – a silly question, but natural.
“ ‘Like the kick of a bushel of steam-hammers,’ replied Yank, as he disappeared, being carried around the corner of the trench.
“That was the last we saw of our friend. It was not until I returned to Egypt that I knew he had died on the beach next day at Anzac.”
His friend said he died as he had lived – “game and cheerful to the last.”
“Yank McClure was one of my best friends at Anzac,” L-Cpl Stringer said.
“We shared the same dugout and lived and fought together.
“He was, I think, the most popular man in our company. His unfailing good humour and pluck made everyone like him.”
