2281 Private Maurice Lewis Aarons, 16th Battalion, AIF
Australian War MemorialMaurice “Morrie” Aarons was born in 1886 to Lewis and Letitia Aarons of Melbourne. His family were involved in the Jewish community.
He attended the Model School in Melbourne, and later went to Broome and formed a pearling company, Aarons & Co, which ran a fleet of pearling ships from Broome.
He partnered with another Jewish pearler, Abraham Davis, and the two bought a pastoral station. However in 1912 Abraham Davis died in the shipwreck of the RMS Koombana, and Aarons continued the endeavour on his own.
Two years later war broke out in Europe, and Aarons enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in May 1915. He embarked from Fremantle with reinforcements to the 16th Battalion.
He trained for a few weeks in Egypt but was quickly sent to the Gallipoli peninsula, where the Anzac forces were preparing for the August Offensive.
Two days later, on the 6 August, his battalion left its position in Reserve Gully and made its way along the beach to the north. They dug into a new position while taking casualties under Turkish artillery fire.
In the early hours of 8 August, three Australian battalions, including the 16th, attacked Turkish positions near Hill 971.
One soldier later wrote, “The men fell under furious fire. It was terrible; the men were falling like rabbits. Many were calling for mothers and sisters.”
Aarons was originally with a man called William Otley but Otley left to go with General Monash. Otley later said, “Afterwards I ascertained from our two other chums that ‘Morrey’ was not to be found anywhere and the stretcher bearers could not answer to his description – so we counted him as killed.”
While his mates assumed Morrie Aarons had been killed, he was posted as missing and an investigation began. A rogue report that he was seen alive at Christmas 1915 delayed an official decision to post him as “killed in action”.
Meanwhile, it was reported that “Aaron’s death is so persistently reported by men at the front that anxiety is felt by his Broom friends, who, on inquiry from his sisters ascertained that there is no official report of his death, but his sisters had not heard from him since 28th July.”
Finally, in mid-1916, nearly a year after he went missing, Private Morrie Aarons was officially declared as killed in action on the 8th of August 1915.
Aarons’ friends and family members placed memoriam notices in the newspapers to him for many years. Friends in Broome wrote in 1918:
“He fought his fight,
He stood the test.
We all remember him
As one of the best.”
Morrie Aaron’s body was never identified, and today he is commemorated on the Lone Pine Memorial on the heights above Anzac Cove. He was 34 years old.
Meleah Hampton, Historian, Military History Section
Image: The summit of Hill 971 from Chunuk Bair looking north. Photograph taken on the Gallipoli Peninsula under the direction of Captain C. E. W. Bean of the Australian Historical Mission, 1919.
