AUSTRALIAN ICON ATTACKED

John Simpson (Kirkpatrick) is a revered figure from Australia's past. Simpson – with the help of a donkey – evacuated a number of wounded Diggers from the Gallipoli battlefield before himself being machine-gunned to death while transporting casualties. Federal Education Minister Brendon Nelson recently cited Simpson as having values worth teaching:

Dr Nelson said if the country lost sight of what Simpson and his donkey represented, "then we will lose the direction of the country. He represents everything at the heart of what it means to be Australian."

The ABC's Edmond Roy – with a bit of academic help – aims to debunk what he obviously sees as the Simpson myth:

EDMOND ROY: The Australian Dictionary of Biography records John Simpson Kirkpatrick as "a typical digger, independent, witty, warm-hearted, happy to be indolent at times and careless of dress".

His friend Andy Davidson described him as "a big man... He was too human to be a parade ground solider and strongly disliked discipline... Though not lazy, he shirked the drudgery of forming fours and other irksome military tasks."

This is the man that the Federal Education Minister wants students in Islamic schools to embrace for his Australian values.

It gets better. Les Carlyon is a historian, journalist and author.

LES CARLYON: Now it gets very messy. It gets very messy, and the complications are twofold.

One is, Simpson wasn't an Australian. He was born at South Shields up on the Tyne near Newcastle in England, and by today's standards he would be an illegal immigrant, because he jumped ship in Sydney.

I mean, what worries me is the phrase "what it means to be an Australian." He wasn't an Australian, he was from the Tyne and he enlisted as John Simpson. His real name was John Simpson – middle name. Kirkpatrick, was his surname. So he was enlisted as Simpson and, you know, the myth grew out of it and it got quite out of hand, and there was references right through the war and well into the 20s of this man as a six-foot Australian. Of course he wasn't an Australian and actually he was five-foot-nine.

The "illegal immigrant" according to "today's standards" comment seems inappropriate from a historian – it's been a while since I was in university but I seem to remember the whole point of history is to view situations within their historical context; not according to the standards of today.

The observations about Simspon's height and real name are downright petty and mean-spirited. He was afterall, a volunteer soldier. Anyway, it's not as if any of what Carylon has to say is a revelation:

Twenty-two years old, English-born and a trade union activist, John Simpson Kirkpatrick was an unlikely figure to become a national hero. Having deserted from the merchant navy in 1910, he tramped around Australia and worked in a variety of jobs. He enlisted in the AIF, expecting this would give him the chance to get back to England; instead, Private Simpson found himself at ANZAC Cove on 25 April 1915, and was killed less than four weeks later.

Simpson would not have made a good peacetime soldier, and he was recklessly independent in war. Instructed to recover and help the wounded he undertook this work enthusiastically. Famously, he used a small donkey to carry men down from the front line, often exposing himself to fire. The bravery of this "man with the donkey" soon became the most prominent symbol of Australian courage and tenacity on Gallipoli.

Although Simpson carried no arms and remains an enigmatic figure, the nature of his sacrifice made a vital contribution to the story of ANZAC.

For me, Simpson is the quintessential Australian: a larrikin how didn't do any more work than he absolutely had to, he rose to the occasion to help his fellows and did so expecting nothing in return. He may not have been everything claimed but what the man now represents is to be admired.
Oh yeah, Edmond Roy and Les Carlyon are fuckwits for trying to score cheap political points by attacking Simpson's memory, myth or not.

Update: Mark Bahnisch complete misses the Simpson symbolism:

You know, the funny thing is that I don’t recall being taught about Simpson and his donkey at school, and somehow I still support things like democracy and the rule of law. Puzzling.

Yep, Bahnisch and his lefty commenters are completely stumped. I'll bet they'd get the symbolism if the donkey was of the exploding kind.