Simpson and his donkey.
John Simpson Kirkpatrick was born in South Shields, England, in 1892. He came to Australia around 1910 and knocked about as a miner, cane-cutter and odd-jobs man. When war broke out in 1914 he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force — under the name John Simpson — and was posted as a stretcher-bearer with the 3rd Field Ambulance.
He landed at ANZAC Cove on 25 April 1915. In the steep, exposed gullies above the beach — Shrapnel Gully and Monash Valley — he took up with a donkey and began carrying wounded men down to the beach for evacuation, working alone, day after day, often under fire. He became known simply as “the man with the donkey.”
He kept it up for about three and a half weeks. On 19 May 1915 he was killed by machine-gun fire while bringing wounded down Monash Valley, and was buried on the beach where he’d worked. He was 22.
In the century since, Simpson and his donkey have become one of the most enduring images of the ANZAC story — plain, stubborn courage and looking after your mates. A lot of the detail has hardened into legend, but the core holds: an ordinary man who spent his last weeks carrying the wounded to safety, until it cost him his life.
Because that’s what we’re asking of people. Not to be heroes in a film — to be the ordinary bloke who gets up, takes the weight, and walks the lost ones home. That’s the whole movement. Read it in full on The Movement.