Fred ‘Curly’ Doodson was a wharf labourer from Pyrmont. He played football for the Pyrmont Swimmers team in the Metropolitan competition and was known as an all-round sportsman. He was a good swimmer and more than handy in the boxing ring. While in Egypt he complained that he didn’t have enough opponents willing to fight him in the ring.
Doodson enlisted early in the war and was at the landings in Gallipoli as part of the 1st battalion. He was wounded on 25 April 1914 and evacuated by hospital ship to Egypt but died enroute, one of the first Australian sportsmen to be killed.
The following letter was penned a month before he died and published shortly after his dormition:
Mena Camp, Cairo, Egypt, 21/3/’15
‘Dear Mum. — Just a line to let you know we are all well at present, hoping all at home are the same. Things here are still the same — plenty of work and very little leave, and very crook grub. There are lots of rumours about that we are leaving for England at any minute, but if we do go away it will not be for the Old Country.
I think that the next place we go to will be the Dardanelles, as the allied fleets are bombarding the forts there and Turkey has moved its capital farther inland. This tent I am in is a regular hospital because there is always somebody sick in it. There are four in hospital, three sick in the tent, and three have gone back to Australia.
I was to fight one of my mates at the Empire Pic ture Palace to-day, but he is in hospital, and it is ‘off.’ By the way things are going I will not get a fight at all. We had a pretty stiff day and night on Monday. We were out from 8 o’clock in the morning till 4 o’clock on Tuesday. I was out scouting for about 5 hours looking for some alarm wires and the enemy’s trenches. I had on a pair of short trous ers, and when I was crawling along the ground the stones cut my knees about a good deal.
It is crook weather here; it is very hot in the day and terribly cold at about midnight. Miracles have happened since we have been here. They have had more rain since we arrived than they had in three years before. It rains about every two years as a rule. It seems funny that when we left Sydney it rained at every port we called at as well. The day we disembarked it was raining, and when we got to our camp it was wet that night too.
When news of his death reached home, players from the Pyrmont club turned out for their weekend match wearing black armbands, setting a trend many other sporting clubs would follow.