He should have been home in Tocumwal in New South Wales playing football or cricket with his mates but fourteen years old James Charles Martin found himself in the deadly trenches of Gallipoli in 1915.

What and why was a fourteen year old country boy doing in a man’s war?

The extreme level of patriotism that swept Australia at the outbreak of World War I had a dramatic impact on the people of the newly created nation.

When Jim’s father was rejected from joining the army, Jim Martin felt it was his family duty to enlist.

Anyone under the age of 21 required written parental permission to enlist, and although Martin looked old for his age and his voice had broken he could not pass for a 21-year-old.

Jim told his parents he would enlist under another name if they did not give permission for him to join.

After transport by ship to Egypt, Jim Martin and the other reinforcements of the 21st Battalion were deployed to Gallipoli.

However, his transport ship was torpedoed by a German submarine en route through the Dardanelles and Martin and several others spent hours in the freezing water before being rescued.

After eventually landing at Gallipoli on 7th September 1915 he was posted to a trench in a position known as Wire Gully.

Due to the primitive and unhygienic conditions in the trenches Jim contracted typhoid fever and was evacuated to the hospital ship Glenart Castle on 25 October 1915.

By this time he had lost half his weight and was in a bad state and tragically Jim died of heart failure just under two hours later.

He was three months short of his 15th birthday and had spent just over one month in the trenches of Gallipoli.

Jim Martin was buried at sea and is commemorated on the Lone Pine Memorial on Gallipoli.

There were thousands of tragic stories from the fighting at Gallipoli but the agonisingly young age of Jim Martin makes his loss even more painful as he was our youngest Anzac.

Lest we forget

This article appeared in On Our Selection News, 23 April 2026.