To James, Alec Campbell was a hero. He was right. The old man, the last living ANZAC, and all of the Australian and New Zealand soldiers who fought at Gallipoli, were heroes everyones heroes. Alec, who died in May 2002 at the age of 103, enlisted in 1915 when he was just 16. He had put his age up to 18 in order to be accepted by the army and agreed to fight at the front, wherever he was needed. Heroic indeed! James was very fortunate to meet Alec Campbell and find out about his experiences. He gives us a special view of this humble and remarkable man, the year before he died. Based on the true story of a small boys visit to meet Alec Campbell in the year 2001.

On May 16, 2002, the last of the Anzacs - Alec Campbell - died at age 103. To mark his passing Tony Stephens and Steven Siewert have updated their book The Last Anzacs: Lest We Forget to include an interview with Alec Campbell. Together with the interviews and photographs of seventeen other Anzacs, this book, in recording the individual life stories of those men, stands as a historic tribute to those who survived the horrors of Gallipoli, a military campaign that has come to symbolize an important moment in Australian history and a potent reminder of what it means to be Australian.

Sgt Edward David (Ted) Smout OAM was Queensland’s Last Anzac who died on 22 June 2004. A man, who typically at the time lied about his age to enlist, survived the ravages of war after spending some time fighting at the Somme in 1918. He was an eyewitness to the final moments of the infamous “Red Baron”, Manfred von Richtofen. He was discharged on 8 September 1919 10 months following the Armistice on 11 November 1918. Smout was awarded France’s highest honour, a Chevalier of the Legion d’Honneur in 1998 and an OAM for service to the community. The Ted Smout Memorial Bridge which crosses Bramble Bay linking Clontarf and Brighton was named in his honour in 2009.

More than 75,000 Australians and New Zealanders went to war on the Gallipoli Peninsula in 1915. They shared a horror, but their courage on a battlefield of tragic errors and unimaginable suffering helped build a legend of the Anzacs. The Anzacs lost more men on the Western Front than they did against the Turks at Gallipoli. Yet, rightly or wrongly, Gallipoli is etched deepest into the Australian and New Zealand psyches. Now, all the original Anzacs, the men of Gallipoli, are gone. This book records the lives of the last of them. The legend will live on.

In early August with the failure of the August Offensive at Gallipoli the senior commanders still believed that victory was possible. To help prepare for a new offensive sometime in the first half on 1916 the allied forces attempted to straighten out the line connecting Suvla and Anzac at a small hillock called Hill 60.