On 10 January 1915, the 11th AIF Battalion participated in an extraordinary event.

On 10 January 1915, the 11th AIF Battalion participated in an extraordinary event. 

The West Australians posed for a photograph at the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The officers positioned themselves in the front rows and the ranks higher up upon the stone ledges. 

The desert’s dry atmosphere helped the photographer capture an image of remarkable sharpness.

Yet despite its sharpness, it’s impossible to discern any single individual.  

That’s why in ‘The Nameless Names’ I have purposely drawn out one person’s story. 

Kneeling on one knee, shirtsleeves rolled up and wearing a weathered slouch hat, Lieutenant Mordaunt Reid gazes intently toward the camera (eighth from the left; second row). 

His pale-blue eyes offset a face tanned by the desert sun. Unlike the stern-faced officers surrounding him, Mordaunt flashed a grin. 

And why was Mordaunt smiling? 

Perhaps he revelled in the unique setting — 704 soldiers from a land 7,000 miles away, assembled on a towering pyramid built before the birth of Christ. 

As one soldier reflected, ‘We have come from the New World for the conquest of the Old.’

Within months, Mordaunt would be listed as missing in action at the Gallipoli landing. 

Mordaunt’s story is also tightly intertwined with his wife Pauline’s story – She spent the next four years searching for him, travelling to Egypt and then London in her quest for answers. 

Finally in 1923, Base Records updated Pauline on their efforts to recover Mordaunt’s remains, stating that an exhaustive search had been made over the battle areas; however, ‘in the circumstances, it must be reluctantly concluded that the Graves Service have not succeeded in locating his last resting place’.

Mordaunt’s story is just one among 703 others.