SUTHERLAND, Charles Tytler (1890-1915).JPG)
C T Sutherland (War Service).
Charles Tytler Sutherland was born on 27 July 1890, the son of John Downes Sutherland and Margaret Stodart nee Laidlaw.
He was educated as a boarder at Geelong College from February 1904 until Midwinter 1907. His address then was 'The Grange', Tatyoon. He then followed pastoral pursuits until his enlistment in the AIF as a trooper (No. 296) on 14 September 1914. He embarked on
HMAT A16 Star of Victoria for Egypt and then Gallipoli, where he fell in the fateful charge on 7 August 1915 at The Nek, when the 8th Light Horse suffered withering casualties.
Graeme Massey in his book,
Gallipoli Heroes wrote of this ill-considered charge:
‘In Hamilton’s plan this assault should have been a formality for the troopers of the 3rd Light Horse Brigade entrenched at Russell’s Top. A naval artillery barrage would precede their charge across the forty to sixty yards that separated the respective trenches and the New Zealanders were expected to charge down from the heights after taking Chunuk Bair and attack Baby 700 from the rear. However things did not go according to plan. The ridge at The Nek is only about thirty yards wide with steep sides dropping to the gullies on both flanks. Only 150 men could charge in a line, the first two lines were provided by the 8th Light Horse Regiment, many of them from the rural districts of Western Victoria. The first line was mown down by a cross fire of Turkish machine guns and rifles before they covered ten yards. Two minutes later the second line met the same fate.
Three hundred troopers had climbed over the parapet, one hundred and fifty were killed and eighty-four were wounded. The 10th Light Horse from Western Australia provided the remaining two lines, they suffered 138 casualties, including eighty deaths. The charge was over in twenty minutes, most of the dead had to be left where they fell, in an area not much larger than two tennis courts. When the War Graves Commission came back to Gallipoli in 1919 the bodies were still there. Many consider the charge at The Nek should have been cancelled as command was aware that the assaults on Hill 971 and Chunuk Bair had not gone well. Peter Weir based the end of his 1981 film Gallipoli
on this battle.’ Charles Sutherland has no known grave, his name is commemorated on the Lone Pine Memorial, Gallipoli.
His brother, Robert Laidlaw Sutherland (1899-1967), was also a boarder at Geelong College and enlisted in World War II.
Sources: Based on an edited extract from Geelong Collegians at the Great War compiled by James Affleck. p116 (citing Graeme Massey, Gallipoli Heroes: a tribute to the men from Western Victoria who gave their lives for their country; Photo Pegasus December, 1915.)