The Art of George Hore at Gallipoli

All 25 records George Hore made of the Gallipoli campaign.

While he was at Gallipoli, Captain later Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Fraser Standish (George) Hore sketched the men, the animals, the trenches and the terrain, documenting life at Anzac between June and December. Not surprisingly, a native of India, a number of his sketches feature Indian soldiers.

George Hore had been born on 5 August 1870 in Murree in India. He was educated in England at Wellington College and Corpus Christi College, Oxford University. He worked as a solicitor and barrister in London and Hobart before joining the AIF (Australian Imperial Force) in 1914. His wife, Emily Josephine, remained in Hobart. On 25 February 1915, He left Australia as a captain with the 4th reinforcements for the 8th Australian Light Horse Regiment. He joined the regiment at Gallipoli on 26 May 1915.

Writing to his mother from the hospital ship he described the destruction of the 8th Light Horse at the Nek on 7 August 1915:

"Truly we have been through the valley of the shadow of death as our Regiment has been cut to pieces and all our officers killed or wounded except two, out of eighteen officers present twelve were killed and four wounded... Our Colonel was killed, one Major killed the other wounded, the only Captain (myself) wounded and ten subalterns killed and three wounded leaving two officers not hit, killed or wounded, and about five percent of the men. And so perished the 8th Light Horse." [LSF Hore, letter, in Cameron Simpson, Maygar's Boys: A biographical history of the 8th Light Horse Regiment AIF 1914-19, p.281]

At the Nek, Captain Hore received a bullet wound through the bone of his right foot and another through his right shoulder: "the latter only an inconvenience and the former a clean hole which ought to heal in about six weeks". He rejoined his unit on 28 September.

Captain Hore went on to fight in France transferring from the Light Horse to the new Machine Gun Corps. On 18 June 1916, he was awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry at Pozieres. He was subsequently promoted Major, then Lieutenant Colonel.

After the war he took up farming in New Guinea where he passed away in 1935.

Source: Carolyn Newman, DVA Wabsite

John Howells 2009, images from the collection of the New South Wales Lancers Memorial Museum, originals in the State Library of NSW.