Port Adelaide this week pays tribute to all those who served and serve. The club remembers those from within its ranks who paid the ultimate sacrifice among the first ANZACS.
We are doing plenty of hard training,” continued Chaplin, “and expect to be sent forward at any moment now. Every man will welcome the order to move on, as we hear plenty of reports that prove we are wanted in the front ranks to do a bit of shooting
Chaplin had just turned 23 when he penned his letters home that afternoon in September 1915. He was among the 47 Port Adelaide players and three officials who signed up for “King and county” during World War I.
Chaplin enlisted on May 11, 1915 after kicking two goals against the eager novices from Sturt at Unley Oval. He was now Corporal Albert Reginald Victor Chaplin, service number 2584, assigned to the Mitcham camp with the AIF.
He did not see out the 1915 football season, as did many of the Sturt footballers who were playing the challenge final against Port Adelaide one day and on a ship to war the next.
On August 26 at Outer Harbour, with Port Adelaide – as confirmed minor premiers – playing West Torrens in the last round of the home-and-away campaign, Chaplin boarded the HMS Morea, a well-travelled P&O ship reassigned as a convoy escort during the war. His absence from the Port Adelaide attack would be noted a week later in the surprise five-point loss to West Adelaide in a semi-final.
He found onboard the refitted ship a parcel from a devoted Port Adelaide supporter, Sammy Lunn. The magazines and papers enclosed were “I must tell you,” wrote Chaplin, “appreciated … we had plenty of time to read them”.
His second – and most demanding – call to action came on June 5, 1916, a month after his promotion to lance sargeant. He was among the troops sent from Alexandria, Egypt on the Ivernia to Marseille, France as five divisions of the 52nd Battalion. He earned further promotion to Sergeant Chaplin on July 4, almost a year after 60 well-wishers had gathered at Jackman’s Cafe at Hindley Street for his farewell party.
Chaplin certainly was one of the more popular sportsmen, in both football and cricket, at Port Adelaide. He had come to the Port Adelaide Football Club by destiny.
Born as the first child of three to James and Elizabeth Chaplin in Wangaratta on July 29, 1892, Chaplin grew up at Avenel in Victoria before his father died in 1898. The family moved to Naracoorte, then Menindie and finally to the south of Adelaide where he was educated at Goolwa. His apprenticeship with shipwright MacFarlane’s at Birkenhead brought him to the heart of Port Adelaide with his taking residence at Prince Street, Alberton. He later turned to accountancy, working as a clerk at the Walkerville Brewing Company.
Chaplin made his league football debut in 1913, knowing little of defeat in his 25 senior matches with the Port Adelaide crew that wrote the club’s longest successful run of 33 games without loss across 1913-1915.
Chaplin’s first call to action was just weeks after he wrote home from the olive groves of Cairo of his journey to Egypt. He was sent to the Greek isle of Lemnos in October 1915. But he fell ill and was hospitalised, stopping his move to Gallipoli. By November, Chaplin was back in training in Egypt preparing for a different theatre of war.
Chaplin was in the trenches near Petillion, France by the end of May, 1916. He had seen the worst of war by August when his brother George joined him on the front line near Mouquet Farm at Pozieres.
As the sun rose on September 3, Chaplin was jumping out of the trenches to answer the command to take the farm from German troops. The next day the 52nd Battalion was hit hard, losing two companies as fighting units.
His comrades saw Chaplin fall to ground, grievously wounded during the advance that took the farm before it was soon lost again.
From a hospital bed in Birmingham, England, Sergeant John Marren told his superiors: “I knew Sergeant Chaplin very well … he went out at about 5 o’clock in the morning, it was light. Our losses were serious. We took and held the farm until relieved next day. When the roll was called Sergeant Chaplin was missing. He never got across to the German line, that is quite certain. I also know several men in the 51st who were in the same attack, who were afterwards reported missing; but whilst they have been cleared up, no-one knows anything about Chaplin.”
He was not among the prisoners taken by the Germans during the Battle of Somme during the second half of 1916. His body was never found. His name is among the 10,982 remembered on the Villers-Bretonnuex Memorial in the Somme – and those held with admiration and pride at the Port Adelaide Football Club.
ALBERT Chaplin took to the shade under one of the olive trees that marked the Zeitoun district of north Cairo, Egypt. It had been another demanding day at the British military camp.
At home, his Port Adelaide team-mates were preparing for their challenge final against Sturt, the battle for a changing of the guard in South Australian football during the 1915 league season – the reigning “Invincibles” empire at Alberton opposed to the new, young challengers from Unley.
“We are right into business here,” wrote Chaplin, a goalscoring hero in the 1914 grand final that completed Port Adelaide’s undefeated run in defending the 1913 South Australian football crown.
Now, Chaplin had swapped his football jumper in Port Adelaide’s all-conquering army for the military uniform with the 12th Battalion, 8th Reinforcement. He was anticipating his call to action while many empires and crowns were reshaped and fell during World War I.
