Richard Fidler

You say that the troops called him after he got the DSO, they called him Dirty Stopout.

Yes.

So, again, typical Aussie humour and he loved that kind of humour.

When the troops called him out, he comes back to Gallipoli after a short period of leave and they jump out and call him, oh, the dissolute old padre, you know, and he just loved being called that.

I have calculated that he spent more time than any other chaplain and probably more time than the average soldier.

So the average soldier, as I mentioned, about a third of their time would be at the front.

I've counted the days Dexter spent at the front and it's more than half of his time in France.

He's actually at the front in the trenches, mixing with the soldiers.

Whenever there's a battle, he goes straight there and he organises the work of the chaplains.

He's working in the first aid posts.

He's collecting the dead from no man's land, burying them, bringing up supplies, organising canteens under fire.

It's an extraordinary achievement.

When you're short of pots for coffee and a redneck Johnny Toffee doesn't seem as if his kindness would evoke your warmest thanks.

Would you stand and look perplexed or would you send for Padre Dexter?

Would you get the pinching Padre to purloin some little tanks?

Sweetest little pincher that an army ever saw.

Like many soldiers, there was a sort of a quiet, stunned sensation.

The crowds in Paris were celebrating wildly and he couldn't cope.

He needed more of the soldierly British reserve.

So he rushed back to his unit where he was able to quietly reflect with his men on the fact that this terrible carnage had come to an end.