Since its founding in 1902, more than a thousand players have taken the field wearing the colours of the Hawthorn Football Club. We know much about our players from our VFA and VFL eras. 

We don’t always have great knowledge about those who played during our earliest days as a local amateur club in the Metropolitan Junior Football Association (1902-1913).

Information on these early players sometimes arrives from unusual sources. One such player, H. Gordon Craig came to light last year thanks to articles in a back issue of Great Scot, the magazine from Scotch College, Melbourne, and the 1916 edition of the Scotch Collegian.

Before reading these articles, we knew only that a player named Craig had played 18 games for Hawthorn in 1904-06. His final season with the club, 1906, was Hawthorn’s first year playing at the Glenferrie Sports Ground – now known as Glenferrie Oval. 

His statistics came via match reports in newspapers where only his surname was listed. Hawthorn held few player records for this early era. We cannot be certain that he even appears in any team photo, as we haven’t always been able to put names to the faces in our earliest photos.

Harold Gordon Craig was the youngest child of James and Mary Craig. Known as Gordon, he was born in the family home in Weinberg Road (now Wattle Road), Hawthorn. His father had come from Dunolly in country Victoria and, by the time his youngest arrived in 1884, he was a grain merchant in Queen St, Melbourne.

Gordon Craig attended Scotch College for the final two years of his schooling in 1898-99. Articles from his old school revealed that he also served and fell during the Gallipoli campaign.

Craig was working as a clerk for a produce merchant when war was declared in August 1914. He joined up during the first few days of enlistments. Assigned to Company ‘C’, 6^th Infantry Battalion, he trained at Broadmeadows before embarking for Egypt in October 1914. 

Following further training in the desert near Cairo, Craig’s unit was sent to the island of Lemnos to prepare for the Gallipoli landings of April 25, 1915. A letter he sent to a friend a month later was reprinted in the Scotch Collegian in 1916. Written from his hospital bed, it tells of Craig’s experiences coming ashore as part of the second wave to land at ANZAC Cove.

‘A tug took us within 100 yards of the beach, and we had to row the rest of the way. The shrapnel was bursting all around.   We lost a lot of men before we landed, but our boat made it safely ashore …

‘... Well, we landed, marched about 100 yards and took a rest. The word came to go up to the firing line at once. We threw our packs away and got on with the game. The country was so rough and scrubby you couldn’t see where you were going, and the shrapnel was bursting all around us. The bullets were so thick we thought they were bees buzzing about us.’

Craig was hit twice in the arm on that first day and was evacuated to the No 1 Australian General Hospital that occupied the Heliopolis Hotel in Cairo. His sister, Essie, was with the Australian Army Nursing Service at that hospital. His arm on the mend, Gordon would rejoin his unit in June. 

The Dardanelles campaign at a stalemate, an ill-fated August offensive was planned to break out of the beach heads and ANZAC perimeter.

For Craig and his battalion, August would see them involved in the attack at Lone Pine. This was meant to be a diversion from the breakout attempt and the impending landings by British troops at Suvla Bay. Initial attacks on pine-covered Turkish trenches were successful. But they were only a prelude to four days of fierce hand-to-hand fighting. 

During the early hours of August 7, 1915, Craig’s company used a tunnel to move from Steele’s Post on the precarious lip of Monash Valley. This tunnel opened near German Officer’s Trench in Wire Gully. Craig was attacking this trench with his unit when a bullet struck him. 

Initially reported as missing in action, Craig’s casualty reports from the Red Cross vary. They range from Craig being slightly wounded but later seen in Cairo, to receiving a gunshot wound and being evacuated. The truth was that he was indeed shot in the mouth, his jaw fractured in three places. He was taken to the hospital ship, Dunluce Castle, anchored in ANZAC Cove, where he died from his wounds on August 8. 

H. Gordon Craig was buried at sea and is remembered on the Lone Pine Memorial, Gallipoli. A Hawthorn player has been found far from home.

Lest We Forget

Harold Gordon Craig
Private
6^th Battalion, AIF

Hawthorn Football Club – Played 1904-1906
18 games, 1 goal