Few Australians will know the story of the Cumberland brothers.
Perhaps this is because it is mostly a story about loss: for a tight-knit family, for an older sister and for a community near Scone, New South Wales, left reeling.
But there is this great quote from Joseph Cumberland, the 20-year-old from Satur, in the Upper Hunter Valley.
“Joe said ‘If one boy were to go to war from every family they’d have a big army, and if two of us go, our family will be doing more than our share’,” the curator of private records at the Australian War Memorial, Dr Bryce Abraham, says.
The Cumberland brothers would go on to do more than their fair share.
A remarkable story
On 31 August 1914, a month after the first world war broke out, Joe – the younger Cumberland brother – enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force and was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, leaving his railway job behind.
Within a fortnight of the declaration of war, young troops were recruited from NSW and underwent months of training before they were sent off – travelling through Albany in Western Australia, to Colombo in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and across to Egypt by December 1914.
Oliver Cumberland, the older of the pair, was a local labourer and stockman. He could not let his younger brother go to war alone.
The day before the 2nd Battalion left, he just got in, writing about it to his eldest sister, Una.
Just a line to let you know that I am going away with Joe, he met me at the station and took me out to the camp and I got in by the skin of my teeth.
Una, I cannot tell you how sorry I am to go away without having a few days with you but we sail tomorrow so there is no hope of seeing you again before I go. But I know Una that in your heart you won’t blame me. I could not see Joe go alone and remain behind myself and I think it will be better now we are together. I promise you I will never leave Joe wounded on the field whilst I have the strength to carry him off and I know he will do the same for me.
The brothers were the youngest boys of 10 children. “They had two elder brothers, two older sisters, one sister in between them and two younger sisters as well,” Abraham says.
“Their mother died in the 1900s, so Una had quite a role in raising them. You can see in [the letters] them referring to her as mum sometimes, which is quite sweet.”
Separately, historian Meghan Adams, explains that the boys’ father died just before the outbreak of the war. “So by the time the two brothers enlisted and went to war, they just had their siblings,” Adams says.
“It’s a really sad story and a lot of loss for the Cumberland family in a short period of time.”
Pyramids to the frontline
Oliver and I are in the best of health … we are camped under the pyramids … they are marvellous!
It was a photograph of the two brothers sitting on camels in front of the pyramids that led Adams to discover their letters. “I was just incredibly moved by this story,” she says.
The Australian War Memorial’s collection stores nearly a dozen letters of Joe and Oliver Cumberland, mostly addressed to their sister Una, which Adams and Abrahams have both studied extensively.
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Even as the chaos and carnage of the war revealed itself, Joe and Oliver tried to be optimistic in their writing to not worry loved ones at home, Abraham explains, especially at the beginning, when their sense of adventure was ripe.
In one letter, Abrahams recalls Joe asking Una if she can use their pay to fix their younger sister’s teeth, but as training in Cairo wrapped up, Joe’s tone shifted:
80,000 Turks are advancing on the Suez Canal and next week we are about to leave here to meet them … you never know what is going to happen to Oliver or I so don’t let it upset any of you too much … you must remember that thousands of sisters are losing their brothers daily and if the boys are prepared to die fighting for their country I reckon their sisters ought to be prepared to give them up if need be, when they know they are dying for a noble cause.
Why we remember
Just before dawn, the Cumberland brothers went ashore at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915.
“Well before the first allied soldiers waded ashore … the Turkish defences had been heavily fortified and their troops – disciplined and well dug in, high up on the peninsula’s precipitous ridges –reinforced six times over.”
Charging enemy lines, Oliver was wounded by a bullet to the thigh and evacuated to a hospital in Cairo. It is during his recovery that he finds out his younger brother has died from wounds, also sustained at Gallipoli.
[Una] If you have not already heard it- poor Joe is gone- he died of wounds in Alexandria hospital on the 5th of May. I did not know until just yesterday, I went to headquarters offices in Cairo and saw the list of killed and wounded. I had been very anxious wondering where he was and when I saw the list I did not know what to do. I wandered about the streets nearly mad, I felt so lonely …
In June 1915, Oliver returned to the Gallipoli peninsula. He fought in an offensive designed as a diversion for Anzac units fighting at Chunuk Bair and Hill 917.
The last letter from Oliver to Una was on 26 July 1915, two weeks before he was probably killed, Abraham says.
A court of inquiry in 1916 ruled Oliver Cumberland died while fighting at the battle of Lone Pine on 8 August 1915. His identity disk and remains were found buried in an old trench.
Of the 4,600 Australians who fought there, 2,277 were killed or wounded.
“So often we get caught up in the numbers and the stats … these are all people with lives, with ambition, and you can see that in these letters,” Abraham says.
Joe’s final resting place is at Chatby Military and War Memorial Cemetery in Alexandria. Oliver is buried at Lone Pine Cemetery at Gallipoli.
“When we’re coming towards Anzac Day and we’re thinking about the meaning of that day … I think these kinds of stories are so important,” Adams says.
“It’s the individual stories [but also] these families and these communities that are so impacted by the first world war. That’s why we have Anzac Day and that’s why we remember.”