John 'Jack' Simpson Kirkpatrick

I deliberately set up a new post for this comment as I would like people to find it! My glass is always optimistically half full and never half empty!

The Ladies have walked from ferry and Metro stations in South Shields towards Ocean Road, the park, the Leas and Souter Lighthouse so many times... and each time in the pedestrian precinct I have stopped to read the citation on the statue of the Man with the Donkey; John Simpson has always intrigued me so when I saw a play entitled by the same name at the Custom House I booked.

He is a son of South Shields but one of Australia's national heroes; a bit of a lad who as a kid worked with donkeys on the sands at Shields.... he joined the merchant navy to get a job & send money home; Jack Kirkpatrick jumped ship in Australia where he worked for some years then , thinking he might get back to Blighty via the ANZAC forces, he joined a medical corps under the name of John Simpson (his mother's maiden name) and ended up in the hell that was Gallipoli. He and a donkey he found (Duffy) plied the cliffs bringing wounded Empire (including British, Australian, Indian, and New Zealand) soldiers down to the safety of the beach via places like Shrapnel Alley; he and Duffy carried the wounded for several weeks, night and day and with disregard for his own safety. Eventually he was machine gunned down. He is buried in Turkey.

There have been several attempts to get him a British V.C and/or an Australian V.C. but these have been thwarted.

I wonder is he taught about in Oz schools as they say? Apparently there are statues to 'The Man with the Donkey' in several Australian cities?

This is a great story and a brilliant production. I commend it and recommend it to you. The food in the Green Room was very good too.