Recessional Today is Anzac Day. Here’s the last living survivor.

Alec landed on Gallipoli in late November 1915. Everyone was talking evacuation and it was heads down time. No-one wanted to be the last Anzac to die on Gallipoli. The hardened fighting men called the 16-year-old “The Kid” and did their best to protect him.

The savage winter and influenza was the enemy that brought him down. He was discharged from a field hospital on December 19 to join the general evacuation but later contracted mumps and then palsy and was shipped home medically unfit.

In later life, Alec Campbell became a spectacular late developer. He married twice, both times to women named Kathleen, who together gave him nine children, the last born when Alec was 69. He gained an economics degree at 50, built boats and sailed in six Sydney-Hobart races.

Alec Campbell is 103 and doesn’t remember much any more. Future remembering is up to us. (Via Natalie Solent.) [08:55 AM]