Active Service and Death
Ted Larkin's promising career was cut short with the outbreak of World War I on 4 August 1914. Demonstrating a patriotic fervor Larkin enlisted within ten days of war's declaration joining C Company of the 1st Battalion, 1st Brigade (New South Wales) of the First Australian Imperial Force's 1st Division. Gray quotes a brief poem published in the Sydney Sun in 1918 acclaiming Larkin for his virtue in enlisting.
The battalion left Australia in October 1914, arriving in Egypt on 2 December. Larkin's brother Martin also embarked on the Transport A19 Afric for Egypt where Ted, a sergeant was active in promoting games of rugby league amongst the troops.
The battalion landed at Anzac Cove at dawn on 25 April 1915 as part of the second and third waves. It took part in the desperate struggle for the dominating hill known as Baby 700. The Turks wrested control of the hill and counter-attacked to drive the Australians from the high ground. That afternoon Ted Larkin died in a hail of machine gun fire. Heads and Middleton quote from the war memoir Imperishable Anzacs' by Harold Cavill "Wounded and dying he lay, yet when the stretcher-bearers came to carry him in, he waved them on, saying 'There's plenty worse than me out there'. Later they found him dead". His brother Martin aged 37 also lost his life that day on the heights above Anzac Cove. Neither body was recovered until the burial Armistice of 24 May but there is no known grave for either of the Larkin brothers and their names are recorded on the Lone Pine Memorial commemorating 4,934 Australian and New Zealand troops killed in the sector who have no known grave.
Read more about this topic: Edward Larkin
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