Australian Army Museum of Western Australia > Records

World War 1, Europe, Turkey, Gallipoli, 1915

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1915

Subcollections

Overview

Unidentified officer sitting outside ANZAC Head Quarters on Gallipoli. Now identified as taken by Colonel Charles Ryan and described as "Surgeon General Sir Charles S. Ryan sitting outside his dugout (marked M.O. for Medical Officer). Surgeon General Ryan was the Medical Officer on Lieutenant General Sir William Riddell Birdwood's staff.." Australian War Memorial Catalogue # P02648.011

Historical information

Thanks to the research efforts of Dr Michael Sturmfels, of the “Friends of Gallipoli” a number of photographs in the collection of the Australian Army Museum of Western Australia have now been identified as the work of Sir Charles Ryan.
In 1915, soldier and surgeon Sir Charles Ryan captured the Australians’ experience on Gallipoli via a series of candid photographs. Ryan’s sensitivity, his empathy with those on both sides, and his eye for the remarkable – and the remarkable in the everyday – are apparent in his photographic work. His images take us behind the stirring accounts of battle being reported at home to reveal the dry, forbidding landscape, tired troops in the trenches, squalid dug-outs, and the horrendous task of burying the dead. Charles Ryan had a remarkable life, including service as a doctor with the Turkish army in 1877–78 and a close encounter with Ned Kelly, whom he treated at Glenrowan. During his career as a leading Melbourne surgeon and his long service as a senior military officer, he received high civil and military recognition.

Details

Registration number

cwa-org-32-P1900.832

Item type

Photographs

Themes

War and Conflict
War and Conflict > World War 1

Contextual Information

https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/ART03264

Year

1915

Geotag