IT would have been difficult to be sure who was first to reach the beach at Anzac Cove on April 25, 1915. The troops were towed ashore in boats under heavy fire from shrapnel shells and rifle and machine-gun bullets. Some were killed in the boats, some stepped into water that was deeper than they realised and were drowned by the weight of their equipment.

Some, presumably, were killed while wading to the beach and others would have fallen within their first few steps on land.

Despite all those difficulties, Australia’s respected official World War I historian Charles Bean nominated Queenslander Duncan Chapman of the 9th Battalion as the first Australian to land, and a statue of Chapman has been erected in his home town of Maryborough.

But some have insisted that the honour might belong to Maitland-born Joseph Stratford. Stratford was a resident of Lismore when he enlisted in the AIF on October 5, 1914, aged 34 years.

According to papers on his official record, some comrades credited him with charging a Turkish machine gun, bayoneting two Turks before falling dead. There was no named witness to this deed, however. Another document says he may have last been seen making his way to a dressing station, but this was also speculation.

One item on the record says Stratford was one of the first ashore, a claim apparently based on what somebody may have read in an Australian newspaper. Another document on the record states that a close friend had read in a Sydney newspaper that Stratford had been the first man ashore.

What is certain is that Stratford was listed as missing in action on the day of the landing and remained so for more than a year before he was finally confirmed dead. His body was never found.

Historians say Stratford’s case for being first on the beach at Anzac Cove is better than many.

A church in Lismore has a plaque that reads: “In memory of Sgt Joseph Stratford … Eyewitnesses state that he was the first Australian to land at Gallipoli.”

The Lismore Northern Star newspaper reported in November 1916 “the evidence of a returned Victorian soldier, that Sgt Stratford was the first man to land. The assertion was made by Private Studley Gahan, son of Councillor J. Gahan, of Wellingwood, that ‘Joe Stratford was the first of Australia's troops ashore at Gallipoli, Lieut. Jones was second, and I was third’.”

The favourite for the title, however, remains Queenslander Lieutenant Duncan Chapman, who wrote a letter home in June 1915 saying he was the first ashore and his account is supported by official war historian Bean.

Chapman, later promoted to major, was killed in France in 1916.

Over the years numerous men have also claimed to have been “last off the beach” at the time of the evacuation from the Dardanelles.

It is widely accepted that the very last soldier off Gallipoli was British Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Stanley Maude who got lost on his way to the evacuation beach. But there were various components to the evacuation, and other men’s claims may relate to some of those.

Former Newcastle harbour master Donald MacRae was born in Scotland and went to sea in his teens. He did a lot of his training in sail in Australian waters. During the war he was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy Reserve and by his own account he served as a landing officer at Gallipoli.

He always insisted he was the last to leave the beach at Gallipoli, and accounts by various former Diggers have been found in old journals that seem to corroborate the story.

In various newspaper articles over the years it has been reported he guided the last demolition crew to the beach as the evacuation of Gallipoli drew to a close.

He was said to have barked his shin on a machine gun, which he souvenired. The gun was taken by a New Zealand officer and letters recording his efforts to have it returned are still among his papers.

During the war he met his future wife, Mary, who was nursing wounded soldiers at Lemnos and in Egypt.

The pair settled in Australia after the war and moved to Newcastle where Captain MacRae served 19 years with the Newcastle pilot service before taking the job of harbour master at Sydney.