After the landing at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915, Simpson used donkeys to provide first aid and carry wounded soldiers to the beach, from where they could be evacuated.

In the three or so years leading up to the outbreak of the First World War, he worked as a steward, stoker and greaser on Australian coastal ships.

[10] Simpson enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force after the outbreak of war, apparently as a means of returning to England.

[2] In the early hours of the following day, as he was bearing a wounded comrade on his shoulders, he spotted a donkey and quickly began making use of it to carry his fellow soldiers.

[13] Colonel (later General) John Monash wrote: "Private Simpson and his little beast earned the admiration of everyone at the upper end of the valley.

Simpson knew no fear and moved unconcernedly amid shrapnel and rifle fire, steadily carrying out his self-imposed task day by day, and he frequently earned the applause of the personnel for his many fearless rescues of wounded men from areas subject to rifle and shrapnel fire.

"[2] Other contemporary accounts of Simpson at Gallipoli speak of his bravery and invaluable service in bringing wounded down from the heights above Anzac Cove through Shrapnel and Monash gullies.

[16] However, his donkey service spared him the even more dangerous and arduous work of hauling seriously wounded men back from the front lines on a stretcher.

Soon after his death, Simpson was being conflated with at least one other stretcher bearer using a donkey around Anzac Cove, Richard Alexander Henderson, of the New Zealand Medical Corps (NZMC).

[27]The legend surrounding Simpson, sometimes under the misnomer "Murphy" grew largely from an account of his actions published in a 1916 book, Glorious Deeds of Australasians in the Great War.

This was a wartime propaganda effort, and many of its stories of Simpson, supposedly rescuing 300 men and making dashes into no man's land to carry wounded out on his back, are demonstrably untrue.

[32] In 1977, a donkey "joined" the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, under the name "Jeremy Jeremiah Simpson", with the rank of Private and the regimental number MA 0090.

[37] The Australian RSPCA, in May 1997 posthumously awarded its Purple Cross to the donkey Murphy for performing outstanding acts of bravery towards humans.

[40] On 19 May 2015, the Australian High Commissioner, Alexander Downer, visited South Shields as part of special celebrations marking 100 years to the day that John Simpson Kirkpatrick was killed in action.

[44] In April 2011, the Australian Government announced that Simpson would be one of thirteen servicemen examined in an inquiry into "Unresolved Recognition for Past Acts of Naval and Military Gallantry and Valour".