Commissioned by Melbourne Recital Centre As Part of Local Heroes 2015
The stories of our
World War I Heroes.
Written by Garrie Hutchinson.
Edited by Gordon Kerry.
Commissioned by Melbourne Recital Centre as part of Local Heroes 2015.
Contents
Captain Robert Bage……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 1
Lieutenant Fred Birks VC MM…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2
Lieutenant Albert Borella VC MM……………………………………………………………………………………………… 3
Lance Corporal Walter Boxer DCM MM & Bar………………………………………………………………………. 4
Lance Corporal David Boyle……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 5
Dr. Elsie Dalyell, Dr. Mary de Garis and Dr. Vera Scantlebury Brown……………………………… 6
Sergeant Maurice Buckley VC DCM………………………………………………………………………………………….. 7
Brigadier Walter Cass…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 8
Sergeant George Challis……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 9
Frank Tate & Charlotte Crivelli………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 10
Lieutenant Robin Cuttle………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 11
Vera Deakin…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 12
C.J. Dennis……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…. 13
Corporal William Dunstan VC……………………………………………………………………………………………………. 14
Will Dyson……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 15
Brigadier Harold ‘Pompey’ Elliott……………………………………………………………………………………………… 16
Lieutenant Colonel Walter Percy Farr……………………………………………………………………………………… 17
Trooper Sid Ferrier……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 18
Skipper Francis………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 19
Simon Fraser…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 20
Private Abdul Ganivahoff…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 21
The Gillespie Brothers of Carlton………………………………………………………………………………………………. 22
Lieutenant Robert Grieve VC………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 23
Geoffrey Haggard…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 24
Lieutenant Edward Ellis Henty…………………………………………………………………………………………………… 25
Captain Mervyn Higgins……………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 26
The Horwood Brothers of Preston…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 27
Captain Cedric ‘Spike’ Howell……………………………………………………………………………………………………… 28
George Mawby Ingram VC……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 29
Captain Albert Jacka VC MC & Bar……………………………………………………………………………………………… 30
John William Alexander Jackson VC………………………………………………………………………………………….. 31
Carl and Ernek Janssen………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 32
Major Doctor Frederick Miller Johnson…………………………………………………………………………………….. 33
Brigadier General George Johnston……………………………………………………………………………………………. 34
Lieutenant William Donovan Joynt VC……………………………………………………………………………………... 35
Private Walter Henry Chibnall…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 36
Nurse Alice Ross-King…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 37
Captain Joseph Peter Lalor……………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 38
Major James Francis Lean……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 39
Frank Lesnie……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 40
Captain Aubrey Liddelow…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 41
Private Percy Mansfield………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 42
Colonel Leslie Cecil Maygar…………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 43
Sergeant Albert Lowerson VC…………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 44
Lieutenant Lawrence Dominic McCarthy VC…………………………………………………………………………. 45
Major General James McCay……………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 46
Private William Michael McDonald…………………………………………………………………………………………… 47
Ronald McDonald…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 48
Ted McMahon………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 49
Frank McNamara VC………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 50
Dame Nellie Melba……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…… 51
Mauritz Michaelis…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 52
Private William ‘Billy’ Miles…………………………………………………………………………………………………………... 53
General Sir John Monash…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..….. 54
Rupert Moon VC………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 55
The Muxworthys of Daylesford…………………………………………………………………………………………………... 56
Captain James Newland VC………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 57
Private Thomas O’Dwyer………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 58
Joe Pearce………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 59
Private Walter Peeler VC………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…….. 60
Army Nurse Rachel Pratt…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….… 61
Private Adolf Thompson Knable………………………………………………………………………………………………… 62
Nurse Louise Riggall………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……. 63
Sergeant Nicholas Rodakis MM………………………………………………………………………………..…………………. 64
Fred and Arthur Rogasch……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 65
Nurse Elizabeth Rothery……………………………………………………………………………………………………..………… 66
Major William Ruthven VC…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 67
Private Edward John Francis Ryan VC………………………………………………………………………………………. 68
Sir Stanley Savige…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 69
Phillip Schuler………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 70
Major William Scurry……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 71
Sir Nevill Maskelyn Smyth VC Sudan…………………………………………………………………………………………. 72
General Cyril Brudenell Bingham White…………………………………………………………………………………… 73
Private Ansselmi Talava…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 74
The Stuart Mill Nine……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..…. 75
Lance Corporal John Firebrace, Private Harry Thorpe, Private Reg Rawlings……………….. 76
Major General Edwin Tivey…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 77
Private Albert Parkinson & Private Andrei Tolstoi……………………………………..………………………….. 78
Nurse Jessie Traill & painter Violet Teague………………………………………………………………………………. 79
Private Martin Troy………………………………………………………………..………………………………………………………. 80
Fred Tubb VC……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 81
Annie Whitelaw……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….. 82
Four brothers of Dunkeld……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 83
Private Harry Willis…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 84
Able Seaman William Williams………………………………………………………………………..………………………….. 85
Story 1
Captain Robert Bage
A very gallant gentleman: Robert Bage was born in St Kilda in 1888, went to Melbourne Grammar, and studied engineering at the University of Melbourne, graduating in 1908 and joining the Army in 1911.
In 1911, Bage obtained 18 months’ leave without pay to join Douglas Mawson’s Antarctic expedition and was appointed astronomer, assistant magnetician and recorder of tides, reaching Antarctica on 9 January 1912. After building Mawson’s Hut, the various sledging expeditions set out. Bage and two others, including photographer Frank Hurley, left on 10 November 1912 and man-hauled sledges south from Commonwealth Bay, into the unexplored Antarctic interior.
They hauled heavy and unstable sledges for 1000 kilometres making observations all the way, through atrocious conditions – gale force winds, blizzards creating white-out conditions – and suffered snow blindness, hunger and frost bite.
Mawson had set 15 January as the deadline, when the ship Aurora would return to pick each of the sledging parties, including Mawson’s. Bage made it back with his team after a herculean effort on 11 January, but Mawson hadn’t returned and missed the boat. Mawson’s party had to stay another winter.
Bage (and Mawson) eventually returned to Australia on 26 February 1914. He returned to his unit and joined the AIF as second in command of the engineering 3rd Field Company after war broke out.
On 7 May Australian commander General Bridges spotted Bage and said ‘here’s the man!’ for a daylight suicide mission marking a position for an advance that night. Bage, after suggesting it would be better achieved at night, accepted that an order was an order. He told his batman that he would probably not come back, and made the appropriate arrangements.
He was wounded as he was hammering in a peg to mark the spot, again as he tried to get back, and a third time, fatally, as a comrade tried to get him to safety.
Bridges, notoriously reckless in exposing himself to danger, and not sensible to the danger he had exposed Bage to in an unwise and impetuous decision, was himself killed ten days later. Bage was buried at Beach Cemetery; Bridges was the only casualty whose body was returned for burial in Australia.
Historian Ross McMullin noted:
“A sapper in Bage’s company, aware of his exploits with Mawson connected the manner of his death to the most celebrated example of bravery in Antarctica. ‘Captain Bage went out knowing he was going to his end’, wrote Jim Campbell. ‘He went out like Captain Oates of the Scott Expedition – ‘a very gallant gentleman’”.
Lieutenant Fred Birks VC MM
Anzac from Wales: Frederick Birks was born at Buckley, North Wales (near Chester), on 31 August 1894. Educated at the local St Matthews Anglican School, he was a conscientious pupil with an interest in sports, particularly boxing and football. Birks migrated to Australia with friends in August 1913. Working in South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria, he was a waiter in Melbourne when enlisted in the AIF as a private, service number 47, on 18 August 1914 at Broadmeadows.
Posted to the 2nd Australian Field Ambulance, Birks embarked with his unit and the 4th Light Horse Regiment on HMAT Wiltshire from Melbourne on 19 October, arriving in Egypt on 10 December. Landing at Gallipoli around dawn of the 25th April, Birks demonstrated the courage that would mark his military career. Under heavy fire he carried the wounded from areas that could not be accessed using stretchers. He repeated the actions again at the awful battle at Krithia on 8 May.
Now Corporal Birks, he embarked for France in March 1916, and was awarded a Military Medal for his actions during fierce fighting near Pozieres on 26 July 1916. Disregarding his own safety, Birks once again braved heavy fire to rescue his comrades.
In February 1917, Birks attended officer training and was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant to the 6th Battalion on 26 April. On 20 September, while his battalion was advancing on Glencorse Wood near Polygon Wood, east of Ypres, Birks and a corporal rushed a pillbox that was holding up the advance. The corporal was wounded but Birks went on by himself, killed those manning the pillbox and captured a machine-gun. Shortly afterwards he raised a small party and attacked another strong point, capturing sixteen men and killing or wounding nine others. Next day, during an artillery bombardment, he was killed while trying to rescue some of his men who had been buried by a shell. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
Birks is buried in Perth Cemetery (China Wall) near Ypres, Belgium. The Victoria Cross was presented to his older brother, Captain Samuel Birks of the Royal Field Artillery, by King George V at Buckingham Palace on 19 December 1917. We do not know whether his mother Mary, or sisters Polly, Beatrice, Emily or Martha, or brother John were there.
Lieutenant Albert Borella VC MM
Determined to serve: Albert Chalmers Borella was born at Borung, Victoria, in 1881 and educated at Borung and Wychitella state schools. He later farmed in the Borung and Echuca districts; he also served for eighteen months with the Victorian Rangers.
In 1910 he was a fireman in Melbourne, resigning in January 1913 to take up a pastoral lease, drawn by ballot, on the Daly River. By 1915 he was a cook for a survey party in Tennant Creek. At the outbreak of the war he set out for Queensland to volunteer for active service, as volunteers from the Northern Territory were not being accepted.
With Charlie, an Aboriginal man, he walked 88 miles (140 km) and swam across flooded rivers. After borrowing a horse at Powell Creek, just north of Renner Springs, Northern Territory, he rode to Katherine where he caught the mail coach to the railhead at Pine Creek. He sailed from Darwin to Townsville on 8 March 1915 with four other men who were among the first 15 volunteers for active service from the Northern Territory.
He enlisted in the 26th Battalion in March 1915 and served at Gallipoli before proceeding to the Western Front, was promoted, received the Military Medal for conspicuous bravery in the attack on Malt Trench, north of the Butte de Warlencourt, on the night of 1 March, 1917.
He was awarded the Victoria Cross, ‘for most conspicuous bravery in attack’, on 17 and 18 July at Villers-Bretonneux. The citation read, in part:
‘Whilst leading his platoon with the first wave, Lieutenant Borella ran out ahead of his men into the barrage, shot two German machine gunners with his revolver, and captured the gun. He then led his party, now reduced to ten men and two Lewis guns, against a very strongly held trench, using his revolver, and later a rifle, with great effect, causing many enemy casualties. His leading and splendid example resulted in the garrison being quickly shot or captured. The enemy twice counter attacked but his cool determination inspired his men to resist heroically, and the enemy were repulsed, with very heavy losses.’
At the end of the war Lieutenant Borella was invalided back to Australia. From 1920, he farmed a soldier settlement block near Hamilton in Victoria. In 1924 he stood for the seat of Dundas in the Victorian Legislative Assembly as the National Party candidate, but was narrowly defeated.
Borella also served In the Second World War, including working with the Prisoner of War Group at Rushworth. He died in 1968 in Albury.
Lance Corporal Walter Boxer DCM MM & Bar
By Diggers defended, by Victorians mended: Walter Henry Boxer was born at Violet Creek near Hamilton and went to Wannon State School and the Ballarat School of Mines. He worked as a rabbiter before enlisting on 14 February 1916, and was a stretcher-bearer, joining the 58th Battalion after the Battle of Fromelles. Boxer was severely wounded in the left arm near Warlencourt on 25 February 1917 and was evacuated to England. He resumed duty in June and in September served in the battle of Polygon Wood. He was wounded again at Passchendaele on 16 October when the Germans bombarded the valleys behind the lines with shells and mustard gas; he remained on duty.
In the spring of 1918 the 58th Battalion returned to the Somme, where the Germans had launched their final offensive. The 15th Brigade, under ‘Pompey’ Elliott, played a vital part of forcing the Germans out of the village of Villers-Bretonneux, near Amiens, where the Australian National Memorial now stands and an Anzac Day dawn service is held every year.
On Anzac Day 1918, at Villers-Bretonneux, Lance Corporal Boxer was watching a party of the 59th Battalion stretcher-bearers carry a wounded man back from the front line during a heavy hostile bombardment. A shell dropped close to the party, killing two of the stretcher-bearers and the wounded man, and severely wounding the other two bearers. Boxer, without hesitation, jumped out of the trench and attended to the wounded men. His men, fired by his example, dashed out with stretchers and brought in the wounded. ‘Pompey’ Elliott recommended him for a Military Medal. Boxer was also awarded a Bar (a second Military Medal) for actions at Dernancourt, south-west of Albert, on 19 and 20 June.
In the next major engagement, the battle of Peronne on 2 September 1918, he won the Distinguished Conduct Medal for conspicuous gallantry. Under a heavy barrage of high explosive and gas he brought two men to the dressing-station, then went back through the barrage four times and carried more men from the outpost line before being severely wounded by shrapnel. This was his sixth wound, and most serious. He was evacuated to England and on 13 December was invalided to Australia, where he spent a further eight months in hospital.
After discharge, Boxer worked in Melbourne as a clerk and began an accountancy course. He died of tuberculosis on 16 June 1927 and was buried in Kew Boroondara Cemetery.
Lance Corporal David Boyle
Deeds of love: Lance Corporal David Boyle was wounded and captured during the attack on Hill 971 at Gallipoli – during the final, desperate, but unsuccessful offensive for control of the commanding ridgeline at Gallipoli. David Boyle had enlisted in the 14th Battalion on 10 August 1914, as private No. 296. He was nearly 23, and worked with his father as a carpenter in Warrnambool. The 14th landed at Gallipoli on the afternoon of 25 April.
It appears that Boyle, wounded, was one of those left behind, and taken prisoner by the Turks on 8 or 9 August. He was a prisoner at Arion Kara Hissar in 1917, acknowledging receipt of a Red Cross parcel and some money.
In April 1918 David’s mother Christina wrote an extraordinary letter to the Red Cross Australian Wounded & Missing Bureau, which was run by Vera Deakin, daughter of Alfred Deakin, former Prime Minister of Australia. The Bureau’s task was to find out details of wounded and missing from their comrades, and provide information to their families. The provided this service to at least 31,885 families.
The letter from Christina Boyle read:
Dear Miss Deakin,
I have just received a letter from my son who is in AIF in France he tells me he as had the pleasure of meeting you & that you went to a great of trouble to give him all the information you possibly could about his brother I need not go into details about my poor boy for I am sure he as told you all about him Mr Boyle myself & family cannot express in words our gratitude for your kindness we people in Australia cannot ever forget what the ladies in London are doing for the dear Prisoners may God bless them for their good work we mothers in Aust are far from our dear ones now you will quite understand how dear to us are those who are doing all they can for them Ive just received a letter from my dear boy he say if he much longer at Ada Pagar he will be quite insane his cards always cheerful till this one 24.12.17… would it be asking too much to write him a note he does not receive many of my letters it may cheer him up oh how dreadful to think he may become insane it will be 3 years next Aug my son says you love your work and give all your time doing deeds of love…
I remain yours sincerely
C Boyle
David Boyle did not go mad, and returned to Australia on 15 November 1918. He died in 1969.
Dr. Elsie Dalyell, Dr. Mary de Garis
and Dr. Vera Scantlebury Brown
Women’s service: Fourteen Australian women doctors paid their own way to Europe to volunteer for service in hospitals on the front line. At that time neither the Australian nor the British armed services would employ women doctors.
They included Dr. Vera Scantlebury who was attached to the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First World War and later was an assistant surgeon at London’s Endell Street Military Hospital, which was staffed by women. She was educated at Toorak College before entering medical school at the University of Melbourne. She graduated Bachelor of Medicine (MB) in 1914 and became resident medical officer at the Melbourne Hospital. Dr Scantlebury then moved to the Children’s Hospital in 1915, where she was appointed senior medical officer before leaving for England in 1917.
In 1926 she was appointed director of infant welfare, a new section within Victoria’s Health Department, and created the structure of infant and child health services and the pre-schools that Victoria has to this day. Married in 1926, Vera Scantlebury Brown died on 14 July 1946, after a long battle with cancer. She is buried in the Cheltenham cemetery.
Mary Clementina de Garis, born 1881, was the second woman in Victoria to take the degree of MD. On the death of her fiancé Sergeant Colin Gordon Thomson, 27th Battalion, who was killed in action near Pozières on 4 August 1916, she served for fifteen months as head of the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service attached to the Serbian Army and was decorated by the Serbian government. After post-graduate study overseas, she practised with distinction as an obstetrician in Geelong and was a pioneer in the feeding of high protein diets to pregnant women. Her publications include Clinical Notes and Deductions of a Peripatetic (London, 1926). She died at Geelong on 18 November 1963.
Elsie Jean Dalyell was born in 1881 Sydney, and graduated from the University of Sydney as MB in 1909 and Ch.M (Master of Surgery) in 1910. In 1911-12 Elsie Dalyell was the first woman on the full-time medical-school staff, employed as a demonstrator in pathology, and in December 1912 took up a fellowship at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, London. She joined Lady Wimborne’s Serbian Relief Fund unit, which went to Skopje to help with the typhus epidemic in 1915. In 1916 she joined the Scottish Women’s Hospitals for Foreign Service unit at Royaumont, France, and afterwards enlisted with the Royal Army Medical Corps, serving in Malta and Salonika, Greece. Early in 1919 she went to Constantinople to deal with cholera, and in June was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE); she had been twice mentioned in dispatches. She died in 1948.