The chap at the back with the pipe and the inscrutable expression is Andrew Yeates, a 55 year old auctioneer from South Australia who had fibbed about his age (claiming to be 44) in order to enlist into the AIF on 11th September 1914.
Three days later, his 21 year old son James, in the foreground with the rolled up sleeves, signed up to stick with his Dad, though they served in different units, Dad a Trooper in the 9th Light Horse and Son a Private with the 4th Field Ambulance.
This Australian War Memorial photo was taken in May 1915, father and son crammed into a trench on Walker’s Ridge at Suvla, Gallipoli.
At the end of August, Dad would be grievously wounded in the fighting near Lone Pine. He hung on for three days, dying on a hospital ship near the Greek island of Lemnos, close to which he was buried at sea.
James somehow carried on and made it through the next three years of War to make it home in December 1918.
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