"I'm 21 to-day and I've never been 21 before."
How did you celebrate your 21st birthday? Although turning 18 might be the more meaningful legal milestone these days, for many, reaching the age of 21 is still an important rite of passage: a symbolic entrance into true adulthood. As a result, 21st birthdays are usually a big event, celebrated with friends and family, laughter, drinks, and speeches.
One hundred years ago today, camped in the desert outside Cairo – half a world away from his home and family in Sydney – Private Vivian Noble turned 21. There was no party, no speeches, no champagne. In his diary that day, he simply wrote:
Ladies and gentlemen – The Day. I’m 21 to-day and I’ve never been 21 before. No different to-day. I wrote to the Mater and Druce and Em. It was terribly dusty, a young sirocco, I don’t know whether it was because it’s my birthday. Had a trip into Cairo. Everything right.
This pragmatism was typical of Vivian. He kept a diary from the time he enlisted in August 1914 until his return to Australia in October 1918, recording not just his actions as a soldier, but also his many thoughts, feelings, and reflections on the war, and on life in general.
Vivian was living in Epping, Sydney, and working as a clerk at the time the First World War broke out. Aged 20, he enlisted in the AIF (although he stated his age to be 21, likely to avoid the need for parental permission to enlist), and was assigned to D Company, 3rd Battalion. The battalion sailed from Sydney aboard HMAT Euripides on 20 October 1914, arriving in Egypt on 1 December:
When we got to Cairo, we got a cup of cocoa and a roll and cheese, about [half] past 3. Then we boarded trams and after some more fooling round we got off. We arrived at our destination, Mena, about six o’clock, and wonder of wonders we found that we had landed at the foot of the Pyramids. We saw daybreak there – a magnificent sight.
The battalion stayed and trained in Mena Camp for the next four months. Vivian spent Christmas 1914 there, then, in March, his 21st birthday. On Easter Saturday 1915, the battalion left camp to march ten miles to Cairo, before catching a train to Alexandria. Here they boarded the SMS Derfflinger, a captured German steamer, and at 8 o’clock in the morning on Easter Monday, they departed Egypt, “bound for somewhere in the Dardanelles”.
On board the Derfflinger two days later, Vivian wrote the following in his diary:
They told us yesterday that we would be landing under shell fire in small boats. Excuse me just one moment – yes, my feet sure are cold.
As predicted, on 25 April 1915, at about 7.30am, the battalion landed at Gallipoli, "under shrapnel and shell fire". After hours of intense fighting, at about 5pm that day, Vivian was shot in the back. He was evacuated back to hospital in Egypt.
He found the pace of life in hospital quite agreeable…
“We just lie on our backs all day and if we get tired of doing that we turn on to our sides – the only trouble is that we have to get up for meals.”
…and also enjoyed other aspects of Alexandria...
“I was most particularly struck by the fact that almost every woman here is really beautiful – but they’re not Australian, so I don’t think I’ll be tempted to deviate from my bachelor principles.”
…but soon returned to the fighting at Gallipoli. Aside from bouts of leave and hospitalisation, he would serve there until the evacuation in December.
When his next birthday rolled around on 21 March 1916, Vivian found himself on the Western Front:
“Well, here I am, still going strong and 22 today. Everything is right and we are on the wing once again, en route for France after 3 of the most desolate weeks I have ever lived through… Still, in spite of such drawbacks, I didn’t have a bad time at all as I have very little to do (which is the height of my ambition). I had a couple of swims in the Canal and I can claim the distinction of having swum across the Suez Canal and back again, and it was good, too.”
He would spend two more birthdays at war before returning home. On 21 March 1918, he wrote:
“Once again I’ve got to wish myself ‘Many happy returns of the day.’ Just carried on as usual – I’ll have to celebrate all these birthdays one of these days.”
The Memorial has digitised Vivian Noble’s diaries, along with hundreds of other letters, diaries and papers of others who served in the First World War, as part of its Anzac Connections project. Reading these collections not only reminds us of the human side of the historical events we know so well, but also allows us a privileged insight into the intimate thoughts and feelings of ordinary people living through the most extraordinary circumstances; as Vivian wrote in his diary on 20 June 1917, “if I don’t stick to the truth in my own private diary, when would I tell the truth?”