Monographs: 'Sustaining the Glorious Empire'

‘Sustaining the Glorious Empire’ Camberwell Grammar and the Great War 1914–18 Dr David S. Bird – School Historian

By the same author: J.A. Lyons, the ‘Tame Tasmanian’. Appeasement and Rearmament in Australia, 1932-39. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2008.

Nazi Dreamtime. Australian Enthusiasts for Hitler’s Germany.

Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2012.

Make War Breed Peace: the first half-century of the Camberwell Grammar Cadets, 1888-1939. Melbourne: Camberwell Grammar School, 2013.

A Richness Like No Other. Helping Members Serve Their Communities for 70 Years: Bus Association Victoria Inc., 1944-2014. Melbourne: Bus Association of Victoria, 2014.

The Adventure of Military Life: A Century of the Camberwell Grammar Cadets, 1888-1988. Melbourne: Camberwell Grammar School, 2015.

The Realisation of Dreams: A Century of Performing Arts at the Camberwell Grammar School, 1886-1986. Melbourne: Camberwell Grammar School Monographs, 2018 (unpublished).

‘Sustaining the Glorious Empire’ Camberwell Grammar and the Great War 1914–18 Dr David S. Bird – School Historian “The war was necessary to preserve our Empire, but it retarded our peaceful development.”

Major-General Francis Derham, ANZAC Day address, St Mark’s, April 1938.

“If only I could see your grave, I would die happy.”

COVER IMAGE Private Douglas Wood, 1916. Wood was the youngest CGS recruit in the Great War, enlisting in July 1915 aged only 14. He was killed a year later on his first day in the field as a stretcher-bearer at Fromelles, the second youngest Digger killed on the Western Front. Once an apprentice baker, Douglas was remembered by his mother as ‘my darling only son’. His body, last seen lying in a ditch, was never recovered.

A Melbourne mother recalls her fallen son, buried at Gallipoli. Argus, 25 April 1923.

PREFACE

Each year, on Anzac Day, our School holds a service to remember our Old Boys who died during the First World War. We read out the forty names listed on the Honour Boards, and as we do so current students in Cadet Uniforms stand with their backs to the auditorium, head bowed. Each year the reality strikes us again of what such a loss in a school population of less than three hundred students at that time must have meant for the community. Our assembly sits in silence as statistics are given form.

Until now, however, those names have just been names. Seeing the sheer physicality of the number of Old Boys who died in the War has been poignant enough, but we have never known anything about these men. Dr David Bird has done an amazing piece of detective work, tracking down these men and their fellow Old Boys who fought with them. He has uncovered war records, letters and diaries which has enabled the names to become people again, each with their own story, filled with dreams, hopes, fears and humanity. We had known that Douglas Wood was killed in France, but we now realise that this apprentice baker lied about his age when he enlisted as a fourteen year old, and that he died on his first day of combat, aged fifteen and a half. For the first time in recent memory, we can now discover something about the lives and experiences of these men.

The First World War changed the way we think and challenged our belief systems in shocking in permanent ways. The wounds inflicted during that war were physical but also struck at our psyche. The enthusiasm and excitement shared by so many at the beginning of the war gradually gave way to a shocked resignation as the reality and impact of the seemingly never ending death and casualty notices sank in.

Our School was but a tiny part of the Empire which went to war in 1914, but our experiences serve as a microcosm of the broader experience. Dr Bird’s history reveals the courage, heroism and tragedy of the war in one school community. With meticulous historical research he has been able to shine a torch into the darkness of the past to show us another world. It is a tragic story, but it is also a story of hope and recovery. Our experiences cannot have been unique. They reflect much of what was occurring through the country, and Dr Bird’s impressive work serves an example of grass roots history which contains lessons for us all.

Paul Hicks, Headmaster

CONTENTS PROLOGUE The “Great Game”

9

CHAPTER ONE The Beginning of the Great War, 1914–15

16

CHAPTER TWO Camberwell Grammar and Gallipoli, 1915

29

CHAPTER THREE “Australia’s Answer”: Camberwell Grammar Faces Trench Warfare, 1916

46

CHAPTER FOUR The Year of Faded Hopes, 1917

65

CHAPTER FIVE “Fighting Chances” and the Endgame, 1918

92

EPILOGUE A Thousand Years of Peace

128

ENDNOTES

150

PROLOGUE The “Great Game”.

“War’s amongst us. Must we take it? Are we forced our share to bear?”

From “Our War”, the Prize Poem by Ronald Small, Dux of School, 1915.

‘We must fight until the war is over. We must work till it is done” From “Our Duty”, poem by Henry Laurie (aged 9), 1918.

At 4pm on Thursday, 25 November 1920, the School’s Honour Board of polished blackwood was unveiled by the former high-ranking military officer (and Camberwell Grammar parent), Brigadier-General H.E. ‘Pompey’ Elliott, one of Australia’s leading military commanders in the Great War, having served in the field from Gallipoli in 1915 to the Armistice of 1918 and beyond.

Designed by Old Boy architect John Wright, (1914; OCGA President, 1934), the Board featured the names of 245 Old Boys who had served in the Great War, 1914-18 (often referred to as 1914-19), and, on its central memorial slab, the names of the forty who had given their lives in this struggle – the numbers were never 9

PROLOGUE

THE “GREAT GAME”

exact and some would later warrant removal, others addition, the general practice being to exclude the names of any who died from war injuries after August 1921 (and often earlier); many would bear their wartime disabilities for life without much official recognition of their enduring sacrifice. Despite any omissions, the Board immediately served as an object to be revered within the school community, the Camberwell boys of 1921 (school population: 299) being urged by the editorial of the official magazine, the recently renamed Camberwell Grammarian, to venerate and imitate those ‘to whom the call came clearly, who risked all and went to play the Great Game’. The journal’s point was clear: ‘Hold them as your ideal’. The Board was moved to a ‘permanent’ position in the Assembly Hall at Burke Road on Thursday, 9 August 1923, a carefully chosen date, according to Headmaster Alfred Hall in his address, since ‘the Australians had made that day famous in history by their exploits in France in 1918’. It had cost £100 and was equally funded by the School and the fledgling OCGA.1 One hundred years later, on a new site, the Board retains its position of honour in the Performing Arts Centre of Camberwell Grammar School, alongside plaques observing subsequent conflicts.

served in this conflict; who were the ones who paid the ultimate price; why did they enlist and how were they supported by the school community back home? The ‘better and cleaner world’ for which they fought did not eventuate, nor did the Empire which they sought to protect endure for many generations, but the clear motivation of Grammarians in this period was to meet the personal and national challenges required for the goal of ‘sustaining the glorious Empire’, as the Headmaster and a school poet phrased it. On their enlistment, these men swore ‘to truly serve our Sovereign Lord the King…until the end of the war’, when ‘His Majesty’s peace’ would be kept and maintained, or so it was hoped.

The passing of a century is a suitable occasion to review this notable period in the development of our school and of our wider world, for the shadow of the First World War (the ‘Great War’ as it was commonly known) remains, as dark as ever. Even though a second global conflict seemed more monumental and led some to overlook its predecessor, we should not allow the Great War to be diminished in our memory; just as the charisma of Hannibal and the scale of the Second Punic War led some ancients to downplay the First Punic War without justifiable cause, we must not allow Hitler and the Second World War to dull our recall of that earlier great struggle of 1914-18. Any worthwhile assessment of the Great War must address questions such as who were the young (and middle-aged) Grammarians who

This history will show that Camberwell Grammar School certainly met the challenge of this ‘Great Game’, living up to its motto of Spectemur Agendo in full measure and the 1904 official school portrait taken at St John’s (to which the financially straitened School had returned in 1897) convincingly illustrates this point. This portrait featured 79 students (of the 86 enrolled), twenty-one of whom would serve in the armed forces a decade or so later. Two of this cohort would be killed in action, both in 1917; Thomas Hall (last right of the seated 2nd row) and Harry Thomas (6th from the left, front row, holding a pennant) – the records of these two (and the other nineteen) are examined below.

In the course of the conflict, the youngest Grammarian enlisted at the age of fourteen years, the oldest was aged over forty. The youngest casualty was only fifteen; the longest living veteran died just short of his hundredth birthday in 1998. A quarter of the 245 or so Grammarian recruits would leave the ranks as officers or NCOs, a high proportion that indicates qualities of leadership. They served on land and in the air, in Egypt, Gallipoli the Middle East and on the Western Front as infantrymen, drivers, gunners, buglers, mechanics, depot workers, pilots, horsemen, bombardiers, sappers, pioneers, medical officers, machine-gunners and stretcher-bearers. They had been recruited

10

11

PROLOGUE

THE “GREAT GAME”

when immediate school leavers (including the whole of the 1913 football team), tertiary students (of the law, medicine, arts and commerce et al.), accountants, architects, engineers, farmers, orchardists, electricians, fitters, lawyers, bank and other clerks (the most common occupation), medical practitioners, drivers, warehousemen, commercial travellers, storekeepers, salesmen, dentists, labourers, wool-buyers and businessmen. There was a single chemist, one telegraphist, one shop assistant, one gardener, one jeweller, one boundary rider, one bookseller, one manufacturer, one printer, one journalist, one optician, one secretary, one sign-writer, one railway worker, one veterinarian, a single coachbuilder and a lonely geologist – as would be expected, the bulk of Old Boys had been employed at skilled work or were in the professions. Some returned to their occupations post-war; others took new paths. Two, at least, were already serving in the regular Army at the outbreak of war in August 1914, many others in the citizen Militia and many of them were former school cadets, the Camberwell unit having been formed in 1888, operating through to 1914 with some interruption. It remains uncertain precisely how many of the volunteers of the Great War had gained their first military experience in the School’s cadet detachment – the 1936 Jubilee Camberwell Grammarian thought it ‘a great number’, and such service was clearly an advantage, even to the ‘boy conscripts’ who had undergone service since the formal revival of the unit from 1911 in accordance with the new Commonwealth’s ambitious Defence Act. This Act had called for compulsory military training for boys from the age of twelve within the Commonwealth Military Cadet Corps (CMCC).2 If the occupations of the Camberwell recruits were varied, so too were their religious denominations, places of origin and physiques. Catholics, Anglicans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists and Baptists, they enlisted in every region of Victoria, in every Australian State, also signing up from other parts of the Empire, including South Africa, and, of course, at

‘home’ in Britain, in periods covering the entire conflict, some within days of the declaration of war in August 1914 and others within weeks of the Armistice of 11 November 1918. Taking the “King’s shilling” could mean wearing khaki or navy blue in any one of the Empire’s services throughout the disparate domains of George V. Some Grammarians were amongst the 30,000 troops who sailed from Albany, Western Australia, on 1 November 1914 in the armada escorted by British, Australian and Japanese naval vessels; at least one other left from Port Melbourne only days before the 1918 Armistice in a ship that was soon recalled before it had even left the territorial waters of the Commonwealth, no doubt to the disappointment of those on board. In their home state, these Grammarians had signed up in Melbourne (at the Town Hall), or at municipal halls at Camberwell, Hawthorn, Albert Park, Brunswick, Broadmeadows, Prahran, Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Mildura, Maffra and many other country towns. Most were of average height for this period, that is around 5’7” (170cms), which satisfied the Army’s requirements in 1914, but as the war progressed and the height requirements were dropped to a mere 5’ (152cms), shorter men were able to enlist – at least ten per cent of the Camberwell recruits were 5’5” or under, often euphemistically described in their records as ‘stocky’ or ‘nuggety’. The shortest was former school cadet and engineer Corporal Alfred James (1915; ‘Complexion: Sallow’), who served in the infantry and then in the Australian Flying Corps, wounded in action in July 1916 – he was a diminutive 5’2” (157cms) and weighed only 108 lbs (49kgs), something of an advantage in those days of light aircraft. At the other extreme were several Grammarians over 6’ (183cms) in height, a significant marking point in this period, when the ‘six-footer’ was regarded as manly and athletic. At least fifteen Old Boys in the forces during the Great War were of this height or taller – the tallest, former horticulturalist Private Basil Gaggin (1911), was nearly 6’3” (190cms), just one-eighth of an inch above Captain Graeme Stobie (1910; 1904 portrait, 2nd row, 8th from

12

13

PROLOGUE

THE “GREAT GAME”

right). Gaggin was an ‘agriculturalist’ in Mildura who became a machine-gunner, suffering serious wounds in his right foot in 1917, requiring rehabilitation in England for eight months. Aged thirty, he married Daisy in 1922. Stobie, another former cadet and accountant, had proceeded from Melbourne Grammar to the school at Camberwell, the reverse of a common practice at that time. He served in France, 1916-18, and was awarded the Military Cross for ‘conspicuous gallantry and fine leadership’.

Like Gaggin, he too married in 1922 at the age of thirty, starting family life late for that era. So, the Grammarian recruits of these years were amongst “the Long and the Short and the Tall”, to paraphrase the well-known war song from 1917, “Bless ‘Em All”.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge others associated with the research of Camberwell Grammar School and the Great War. This body includes former staff member Chris Rhodes, archivist Glen Turnbull, Old Boy James Carfax-Foster and researcher Bill Pritchard. The staff of the Australian War Memorial Archives, Canberra, have been invariably helpful, making any visit to this national institution a worthwhile exercise.

The forty Grammarian fallen constituted a death-rate of some sixteen per cent of those who served, above the Australian national average of fourteen per cent, both disturbingly high figures that were not reproduced in any later conflict involving Australians.3 It is worth noting additionally that the 245 or so Camberwell Old Boy veterans of the war constituted over 18 per cent of the just over 1,300 boys who passed through Camberwell Grammar School’s various portals, 1886-1918. 4 This was an astonishingly high figure of participation in armed services that had been made up entirely of volunteers. The forty fallen of the wartime cohorts would be recorded in the Magazine of the Camberwell Grammar School (forerunner of the Grammarian and hereafter referred to as the Magazine) of December 1918 as having ‘died on service’ – the numbers were never exact, as some of the missing would eventually be accounted for one way or another; others would die subsequent to their return and discharge from the injuries received in wartime service. Death came as a result of outright ‘Killed-in-Action’, from wounds, from shell-fire (sometimes ’friendly fire’), from accidents and from disease. Whatever the cause of these deaths or the extent of wartime service, Camberwell Grammar had certainly ‘done its bit’, to use a colloquial wartime expression.

14

The whole school at St John’s, 1904, with few absences. Many of these boys were of an age ripe for recruitment in the Great War: of the seventy-nine boys pictured, twentyone served and two of them would be killed in action. Several also served in the Second World War, 1939-45.

15

THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT WAR

CHAPTER ONE The Beginning of the Great War, 1914-15.

“But it may be accepted as certain that in future Great Britain will consult her colonies before the war begins, as well as welcome them to her side when the guns begin to speak.”

Review of Reviews, Melbourne, January 1900.

“Among the casualties of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.”

where the increasingly confident Camberwell Grammar School with its school population of 251 (there were 63 new boys alone in this year) had removed itself in 1908 – over a thousand boys had passed through its portals at St John’s, Prospect Hill and Burke Road since 1886. One early observer described the school as still ‘smouldering’ from the ashes of its modest ‘Shire hall’ beginnings, but now ready to glow at a new location further up Burke Road.5 A staggering quarter of that 1914 number of Old Boys would serve in the armed forces of the Empire over the next four years, Of course, no-one could contemplate such statistics of service, or the coming statistics of grief, in that glorious, picnic-perfect European summer of 1914, even those enduring an unusually dry Antipodean winter – the Victorian winter of 1914 set new records for low rainfall, aside from heavy downpours in Gippsland, and the drought that had begun in 1911 continued on, unperturbed by European assassinations, the agendas of mobilisation or complex diplomatic machinations.

Worry over levels of precipitation, however, would soon be subsumed by more urgent concerns.

I

Some around the turn of the century had expected, even hoped for, war. The influential Melbourne journal Review of Reviews, edited by the ultra-imperialist Rev Dr W.H. Fitchett (‘President’ of the Methodist Ladies’ College), had featured many articles in the new century suggesting that the new Australian federation would not be a concrete, manly nation until it had been tested in war, although he remained confident that no such conflict would occur without prior, imperial consultation. However, when war came, in July-August 1914, it came suddenly and without consultation of any kind. None of this mattered at Burke Road

‘The Boss’ (later the ‘Old Boss’), Alfred Hall, had been Headmaster/Principal since 1891 and had long cultivated an interest in military affairs since 1887, through the old colonial Militia (where he had attained the rank of Captain) and later vicariously through the school’s periodic cadet unit. Hall was too old (at 51) in 1914 for active service in the ranks, but he soon became a military censor, casting a magisterial eye over public correspondence in the style that he had long exercised at ‘his’ school, where he was now the sole proprietor and the unquestioned leader. ‘Captain’ Hall had long since accepted the challenge to be vigilant for purposes of defence and had welcomed the concept of military compulsion instituted under the federal Defence Act of 1909 (enforced from 1911), with its new system

16

17

Dr Samuel Johnson, 1758.

CHAPTER ONE

THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT WAR

of compulsory military training for boys aged between 12-14 (Junior Cadets) and those 14-18 (Senior Cadets). However, ‘The Boss’ had no more reason than anybody else in his school community to expect an outbreak of war in the northern summer of 1914. Life at Camberwell continued at its sedate pace in that era – the chief concern of most local citizens at this time was the proposed extensions to the suburban tramways system. There was little evidence of social turmoil now that the Depression of the 1890s had faded into memory, although the Camberwell and Hawthorn Advertiser noted with wry amusement on the penultimate weekend of peace, Saturday 25 July 1914, that two ladies had been apprehended at Camberwell chalking Suffragette slogans on a footpath. If the recent archducal assassination in Sarajevo seemed even to observers in central Europe to be too distant from Vienna (let alone London) to provoke any immediate conflict, as many erroneously assumed, how much more so must that sentiment must have been evident in the distant Australian federal capital of Melbourne. However, the British Empire was at war within ten days, even if it remained unlikely in the perception, or hopes, of most to be a conflict that would last more than a few months. Nevertheless, there was immediate local stirring and the Auburn mounted riflemen, amongst other local detachments, were readied for active service ‘should the occasion arise’. The propaganda war also commenced before any Australian recruit had fired a shot in anger, as the Canterbury theatre immediately presented the picture show “When Dreams Come True” – a ‘patriotic demonstration was made during the interval, the playing of the National Anthem evoking much enthusiasm’.6 Victorian civilians were now too at war and the associated fervour included a modest school-based community in Burke Road, the Camberwell Grammar School.

The CGS senior football team at St John’s, 1904. Charles Barber is standing on the extreme right. Seated on the right is Headmaster Alfred Hall (“The Boss”), a military censor in the Great War.

18

19

The first weeks and months of the war witnessed the frenzied formation and initiation in the Camberwell region of Empire League branches, ‘patriotic’ leagues and miscellaneous fund-raising activities. The Camberwell section of the cadet 48th Battalion, which included Camberwell Grammar boys, was reported in mid-September (“Enthusiastic Cadets”) as facing ‘the possibilities of the future with élan and spirit’.7 The cadets had been long prepared for war and now was their opportunity.

War, of course, is expensive and on Saturday 3 October 1914, the School held what would be the first of its own ‘patriotic fetes’, an event reported in detail in the local press: A most successful fete was held at the Camberwell Grammar School on Saturday afternoon, October 3, in aid of the patriotic fund. The idea came out of a proposal made by the boys to the Principal, Mr A.S. Hall, that they might assist the fund by surrendering their prizes for the year.

The pupils not only enthusiastically adopted the idea, but also gave practical assistance in decorating and laying out the school grounds and helping on the stalls. A second-hand book stall, a suggestion of one

CHAPTER ONE

of the scholars, was the means of bringing in the sum of £6 15/-. The fete took the form of an “American gift afternoon”, the idea being that everyone attending should bring as well as buy an article. The stalls were erected in three of the classrooms, and a large marquee in the grounds [of Lister House opposite the school residence]. A number of prominent citizens attended including the mayor and mayoress of Camberwell (Cr and Mrs W.H. Renwick) but there was no formal opening ceremony, everyone entering into the business in hand directly they reached the ground. As a result of the afternoon’s work, the sum of £120 was added to the fund to purchase a motor ambulance for the city of Camberwell.8

Other local schools such as Fintona and Trinity had held their own patriotic events, but none had raised the stupendous one-day amount of £120 (nearly $13,000 by today’s measure) – the average weekly wage for a male factory worker at the time was a meagre £2.9.6d.9 The Red Cross not surprisingly later sent a gracious letter of thanks to Headmaster Hall. Further war funds were also raised on 22 October at the Camberwell Grammar School sports held at the Hawthorn Oval, where ‘the Kew brass band played a series of selections throughout the afternoon’.10 Any who expected that the war would be over by Christmas were to be disappointed, but there were signs of pride rather than remorse at the Camberwell Town Hall on Monday, 14 December, when the Headmaster reported that the school had completed a ‘very successful year’.11 It was the school’s Prize Night (not Speech Night) and given the atmosphere of war, Hall paid particular compliment to former and present staff members Lieutenant R. Opie (1911-12) and Mr K. Davidson (1911-15) for their part in the school’s own, revived cadet corps, the purpose of which was now clear to all. The Headmaster thought that seventeen Old Boys had gone to the front in the Australian Imperial Force and other imperial services, the Albany flotilla having sailed a fortnight earlier, but the figure was already higher. Some had been closer to the conflict from the beginning; Oscar Walker (matriculant 1898), for one, was a Cambridge-educated, Middle Temple lawyer in Birmingham who had immediately joined the British Army’s Worcestershire Regiment in 1914. He was 20

THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT WAR

one of the first victims of the war recorded in the Magazine issues of 1915 as having been killed ‘on the Continent’ in the British Expeditionary Force. This was an inaccurate report, as his death had occurred at Gallipoli, not on ‘the Continent’, on 4 June 1915 at the end of his first week on the peninsula, an accurate report appearing in the Argus ten days later. He has no known grave.12 Another expatriate was former University footballer and cricketer Dr Frank Robison Kerr (1906; Rhodes Scholar 1913; Gallery of Achievement; 1904 portrait, top row, 7th from left with arms crossed), already serving in the British Army Medical Corps in France – he would later receive the DSO for treating the wounded whilst under fire.

Eleven of these former students referred to by Hall on Prize Night were officers or non-commissioned officers, something that particularly pleased the Headmaster, this attitude reflecting a matter of particular pride about rank in the private school sector both then (and now). There was already concern about post-war reputation: ‘The old Grammarians intended to have a merit board placed in the school containing the names of all old boys who volunteered for the war’, but there was, as yet, little concept of the need for a board to honour the fallen. The Headmaster was particularly proud that seventeen-year old William Crellin (1913-15) had been awarded a scholarship to the new Royal Military College at Duntroon in the ‘Territory for the Seat of Government’, still a glorified sheep-run as the federal capital would not move from Melbourne until 1927.

Crellin (nicknamed “Hope”) was a school sporting champion as captain of both cricket and football, designated as ‘the best player in both’ by the new Magazine of the Camberwell Grammar School in May 1915. “Hope” had also been a champion tennis player, high-jumper, prefect, cadet and ‘Rhodes Ideal Scholar’, the coveted prize awarded by the tempestuous, but generally respected, sometime Sportsmaster Frank McMenamin (“Mac”, staff 1908-38), who would spend ‘most of his life at the School’.13 21

CHAPTER ONE

THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT WAR

This prize combined recognition of both academic and sporting merit in the manner prescribed by the recently deceased Anglo-South African magnate after whom it was named, but it would not survive the retirement of “Mac” over two decades later. This 1914 Prize Night, the occasion of the school’s annual “break-up”, appropriately closed with a spirited rendition of ‘God Save the King’ (an anthem also used in Imperial Germany, although with different lyrics). Will Crellin proved to be a very worthy recipient of the Rhodes award and would attend the federal Military College at Duntroon from the beginning of 1915 until the end of 1917, becoming captain of the College’s cricket XI, and he would send prize money back to the school for other budding sports champions. He reported in detail in the Magazine of August 1915 on his “Life at Duntroon” as a Staff Cadet, where he described a typical day from the ‘Phee-e-e-ep’ of Reveille at 6.15am to the sounds of ‘Tattoo’ at 10pm. Parades and drills were interspersed with sport and meals, but ‘the serious drawback to easy life up here is discipline’. Nevertheless, military life was worthwhile in his estimation: ‘It is extremely varied and interesting, and once here one does not feel inclined to leave it.’ But leave it he did; commissioned in January 1918, Lieutenant Crellin then served in France and Belgium as a staff officer, joining the Australian Flying Corps and continuing his military career in the inter-war years as an adjutant in Melbourne, later at Duntroon and elsewhere as an instructor. In the second global war, he served both in the Middle East and New Guinea, retiring in 1946 as a Colonel - it was, of course, unimaginable in December 1914 that the British Empire would be engaged in another global conflict three decades later. Crellin had the company of another Grammarian whilst at Duntroon, that of Major David Mackey (1915), who would serve in France from November 1916 with great success, although wounded in May 1917, but later receiving the Military Cross (whilst a member of the 9th Machine Gun Company) for his actions on the Somme, where he displayed ‘brilliant leadership, personal courage, and splendid example

under the most trying circumstances’.14 Machine gunners and their company members were in a riskier position than most, as neither side were inclined to take the men of such units as prisoners. Mackey continued to serve at Headquarters Staff, Victoria Barracks, post-war; he died in April 1934, aged only 36, receiving full military honours at his St Kilda funeral. Present at that funeral was his younger brother Clive (1915; ‘Complexion: Fair’), who had joined the AIF in August 1918, embarking from Melbourne four days before the Armistice of 11 November 1918, his ship subsequently being ‘recalled’. His only service had been at the Broadmeadows military camp, only miles from his home at Kew.

22

23

Francis Derham (later a Major-General) was amongst the twenty-eight Camberwell Gallipoli veterans, three of whom died in that campaign. Another eight were killed later in the war and one during World War Two.

CHAPTER ONE

II Kaiser Wilhelm II had promised his German troops that they would be home before the leaves had fallen in the northern autumn, but as they entered the new year of 1915, German soldiers were strung along incipient trench lines from the Channel to Switzerland, opposed by equally entrenched Allied armies that did not, as yet, include Australian forces. The AIF was training in Egypt, readying itself for conflict outside Europe and, back home, the boys of Camberwell Grammar were also readying themselves for the struggle of empires – even the bike racks at Burke Road were reorganised in a ‘military’ fashion, so that the bicycles now stood to attention (a practice that was unpopular with the boys at the time and later in the early-1950s, when Headmaster Searle, himself a former soldier, attempted to duplicate this older practice). No single boy was readier than seventeen-year old Ronald Small (1910-1915), prefect, athlete, cricketer, 1914 proxime accessit (soon to be Dux of the School), cadet 2nd Lieutenant (soon to be the unit commander in 1915) and champion shot. The multi-talented Small was also a poet and the May Magazine published his latest verse “Our War” as a “Prize Poem” – it was also lauded and published in the local press, the Camberwell and Hawthorn Advertiser. What it might have lacked in literary quality was compensated for by its level of passion – the poem captured the spirit of the age to perfection, the patriotic sentiment that permeated the school community even before the home front had received any but the scantiest of news of the ANZAC landings in Gallipoli. The first (inaccurately) reported Camberwell casualty had, after all, been Captain Oscar Walker of the British Army ‘on the Continent’. Small’s poem has been reproduced in whole elsewhere (in the school’s cadet history), but its first verse set the questioning tone of the whole:15 War is with us. Must we take it, Are we forced our share to bear?

24

THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT WAR

This, a cry from many a mother This, a trembling sister’s prayer!

The poem continued: War’s amongst us. We must take it, Mothers, put your trust in Him Who alone can comfort widows Widow’d by one nation’s sin.

It’s a noble thing to battle, For a dearly-lovéd land; And, if need be, give life gladly Pressing thus the Golden Strand.

Well we know the noble story Of our gallant Light Brigade: Deeds as noble, yet unheard of, Darken sunlight into shade.

Fighting German naval forces.

In a hail of bursting shells.

British tars yet save their foemen Ah! what sacrifice this tells.

Britain’s unity is doubted, Sneers are cast at British pride; Britons, wake! Our Honour’s flouted!

Fight, and die, as those men died.

As we love our land, Australia, As we cherish hearth and home; Wake, Australians! Join your brothers.

Far on Egypt’s plains to roam.

25

CHAPTER ONE

Out West cowboys, Eastern town men, Canada has gladly given; Oh, let us arise united And prevent these bonds being riven.

The poet’s conclusion was that his readers must indeed ‘take it’, ending in a call for imperial unity.

“God of Battles”, hear the prayer, Breathed by every patriot soul; Lord, sustain our glorious Empire, Keep it integral and whole.

Ronald Small’s poem distilled the spirit of the age – the call for imperial unity amidst all of the widespread British diaspora; the early, sole attachment of war culpability onto Germany; the glory of battle; the call of masculine duty amidst feminine tears of regret and the recognition that the job remained unfinished, even pending. Small later became a medical practitioner in St Kilda, having remained a university student through the final years of the conflict – he did not serve despite his poetic sentiments. Much Australian opinion would drift away from the particular outlook of his poetry over the coming three years, but the Camberwell school community would not, engaging in in its own ongoing struggle to sustain the Empire up to 1918 and beyond. They would need a great deal of faith in order to do so, as indicated by another poem by Small in the same issue - “The Sea” - which acknowledged that only God could calm a ‘troubled Sea’; so too a troubled war-torn world, or so it seemed by the close of the conflict.

THE BEGINNING OF THE GREAT WAR

group of nine Camberwell Old Boys who had landed at Anzac Cove in the first weeks of the campaign, two of whom would remain on the peninsula in unmarked graves, others falling in later service here and elsewhere – at least twenty-eight Grammarians would eventually be able to claim service during this ill-fated campaign of 1915, some throughout the eight months, some for days only. They were joined by a single war correspondent. Back home, only gradually did the full significance of the Gallipoli campaign dawn on the school community and on the nation as a whole. Ω

“Our War” had also referred to Australians roaming “Far on Egypt’s plains”, but by the time of its publication over 16,000 ANZACs had been landed on an unknown Turkish peninsula further to the north. Amongst this expeditionary force were a

On Monday 26 April 1915, the death occurred in Hawthorn of the eight-five-year old founder of the Camberwell Grammar School Cadet Unit, Major William Whitehead. The mutton-chop whiskered Major was well respected and fondly remembered by Old Boys, most of whom had served in his unit at times when such service was either voluntary or, in more recent years, the subject of ‘boy conscription’, for the ageing Major had continued to drill cadets up to at least 1912. Camberwell cadets appropriately provided the guard of honour on the following day at his Melbourne General Cemetery ‘military funeral’, the boy soldiers now under acting commander Lieutenant. A.E. Burke, who had been the school captain in 1914, having been at Camberwell since 1911.16 Headmaster Hall reminded the scholars of the present in the next issue of the Magazine that Whitehead had been ‘a man who taught us all many things such as cheerfulness, manliness, tact, and a strong sense of duty’. No-one attending that funeral would have been aware of the details of the events in the distant Dardanelles, where on the day before the Major’s death most of those characteristics had been on display as the ANZACs landed on Turkish shores. This was the beginning of a war of a nature that Whitehead’s generation could never have imagined, something that no Camberwell cadet had been prepared for in

26

27

CHAPTER ONE

the nearly three decades of the cadet unit’s existence. By May 1915 the Camberwell cadet detachment had received the official title of “J” Company of the 48th Battalion and many of those in the cadet uniform in mid-1915 would soon don the khaki of the regular Army.

CHAPTER TWO Camberwell Grammar and Gallipoli, 1915.

“Then when done is your duty/ We’ll welcome you back with pride/ And always remember the fallen/ Those who have fought and died.”

Untitled poem by Lauder Wallace, Year 6, aged twelve, mid-1915.

A group of Camberwell Grammar cadets visited Gallipoli in 2015, locating the name of Guy Quarterman (1892) on the Lone Pine Memorial. Quarterman has no known grave.

The wreath laid at Gallipoli by Camberwell cadets, July 2015, in memory of the Grammarians who fought and fell during the 1915 campaign.

28

I By the end of 1914, there were already approximately forty Old Grammarians in the various ranks of the Empire’s diverse armed services, ready to serve ‘King and Country’ and the broader Empire wherever needed – few would have anticipated that they would do so against the Turks and their decaying Ottoman Empire. Over half of these volunteers - the twenty-eight servicemen plus one war correspondent - would take part in the Gallipoli campaign either in the Australian or other services, a campaign that marked the Australian psyche over the coming century. All of them would have expected a short campaign in a short war, but despite any subsequent disappointment, several attained a distinction that would mark them for life, being amongst those who had landed at ‘Anzac Cove’, as it 29

CHAPTER TWO

CAMBERWELL GR AMMAR AND GALLIPOLI

became known, before dawn and throughout that milestone day, Sunday, 25 April 1915 – the original ANZACs. Particular distinction would be reserved for one of them, the interrupted medical student Lieutenant Alfred Derham (1908; Gallery of Achievement; Melbourne University Rifles; 1904 portrait, 3rd row, 4th from right), who soon received the recently introduced Military Cross (next in merit to the Victoria Cross and the first MC awarded to a Victorian in this conflict) ‘for having shown great bravery and ability, and having continued on duty until 30 April although shot through the thigh and shoulder on 25th April’ – the August Magazine proudly quoted his official commendation in detail. This fair-haired, blue-eyed young man, aged only twenty-three, was a platoon commander when wounded in the shoulder and elsewhere - Derham’s leg wound alone was ten inches long - and, in total, he would be wounded six times, three in as many days prior to his evacuation. He described, and downplayed, his wounds in a letter home:

He was narrow, at 5’10”, and indeed ‘lucky’. Soon to be a Captain (he had enlisted as a Private in August 1914), A.P. Derham would later join the British Military Expedition and serve in AIF Administration from October 1916 before being sent home to complete his medical degree and then to commence an outstanding medical career between the wars, when he also served as a citizen soldier. Dr Derham would also later serve in Malaya during the Second World War, enduring burdensome Japanese captivity, 1942-45, alongside his son Tom. Alfred Derham would serve as a worthy role model for Camberwell boys until his death in 1962 and well beyond.

Lieutenant Derham was not the only Old Grammarian wounded or killed on the Gallipoli peninsula on that fatal day of the landing or in that ferocious following week. Erstwhile tertiary student, Bugler Edwin Wood (‘Hair: Dark Brown’), only a few days short of his twentieth birthday, was also wounded in the head and leg on that first day – he would later lose that leg entirely in December 1916 on the Western Front. Corporal Raymond Dawborn (1907; 5’8”), a former salesman, was also wounded in the shoulder on that first terrible day and would receive a more serious wound in the head in August – another dangerous head wound would follow in France in 1918, but Dawborn survived until 1966. However, the first Camberwell Grammar Gallipoli fatality would be the former insurance clerk and cadet Private Guy Quarterman (1892; a tall 6’2” and ‘Tanned’ complexion), was a promising MCC cricketer and onetime Camberwell cadet, who had landed on Monday 26 April with the 5th Battalion and fell on this first day of his active service; Quarterman had dropped his age by eight years (to thirty-years old) in order to join the AIF. He and others went out on patrol to the ‘2nd Ridge’, but nothing was heard of them for several days until a burial party found several bodies around a fresh shell hole. Quarterman was at first thought to be a prisoner of the Turks, but his body was amongst these abandoned corpses. Quarterman has no known grave, but a visiting group of Camberwell Grammar students, members of the Camberwell School Army Cadet Unit, located his name on the Lone Pine Memorial during their visit to Gallipoli in July 2015 and later laid a wreath to commemorate the Camberwell fallen of the campaign.18 Another Grammarian, the former farmer and now bugler Tom Bolton (1908), proud of having earlier climbed up one of the Egyptian Pyramids, landed on the peninsula on Wednesday, 28 April, ready for another steep climb, but was ‘simply’ wounded in the leg two days later through a bayonet thrust. Bolton wrote back to his old School from a military hospital in Alexandria on 1 May 1915 relating that it was an Australian bayonet that had caused his injury,

30

31

I was pinked in the thigh and shoulder on the first morning – both nonstop clean wounds, the thigh one about ten inches long just missing the bone. So slight was its result that it did not even knock me over and I had no time to look at it till Thursday morning early – nearly 5 days – when I came out of the firing line for the first time – wounded in three places and hit six times and never stopped running. Lucky I am pretty narrow!17

CHAPTER TWO

CAMBERWELL GR AMMAR AND GALLIPOLI

one held in place on the projecting rifle of a fresh corpse in the trench, but the Camberwell boys were reassured that he had not suffered before having ‘just shot a Turk down about 20 ft in front of our line’. The bugler then spent an uncomfortable night in the trench before limping down to the beach for proper treatment.

Although now ‘living in luxury’, Bolton was keen to again take the field – he did and was wounded a second time in August, being discharged in early-1916. His older brother, hazel-eyed Francis (1907; ‘Complexion: Fresh’) would similarly suffer two wounds in France in 1916, later joining the small number of Grammarians who served in both world wars. Another casualty, grey-eyed Private Charles Wood (1914; ‘Complexion: Dark’) was wounded in the arm at Gallipoli on 8 May having just turned twenty – he was invalided to Malta, then to ‘Blighty’ before being returned home in time for Christmas 1915. It is not likely that Wood immediately regarded himself as one of the lucky ones, but perhaps he did so with due reflection.

were also now serving in the Light Horse, removed from Egypt and dismounted at Gallipoli, where they suffered wounds; the Duntroon-trained professional soldier Lieutenant Malcolm Stuart Kennedy (1910; later killed in Belgium) in September at Lone Pine; brown-haired Private Frederick Tuckfield (1907) in October, wounded by shrapnel in the forehead and consequently losing the sight of his left eye – the dim-sighted Frederick died in Sydney in 1966; Sergeant Keith Ewan (1911) in November and hospitalised in Malta – he would later be gassed in France in 1918, but would continue to serve in the post-war military and in the Second World War. These wounded Light Horsemen were joined later by another comrade brought down by influenza – the first of many to follow – William Stanhope Pender (1908), a six-foot Presbyterian farmer from Minyip, unaware that he was not, as he suspected, the sole Grammarian on the peninsula; in fact, during the course of the war, over a score of Grammarians would serve in the Light Horse at Gallipoli, Egypt, Sinai, Palestine and on the Western Front. Behind the Gallipoli trenches, Lieutenant Shirley Goodwin (1912; Gallery of Achievement) of the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade had already been praised for assisting in hauling 18-pounder guns over the 250-feet cliffs of Gaba Tepe – he would be taken prisoner by the Turks in November following an Aegean Sea air crash which had killed his companion. Consequently, Goodwin’s father soon received a letter from his son’s commander stating:

Some Grammarians, however, were not fortunate enough to survive their wounds. The twenty-one-year old fair-complexioned Private Edward Kennedy (1911) of the 6th Battalion, another farmer (and agricultural student), was killed on 8 May with ‘No Known Grave’ (like Quarterman) after having been listed as “Missing” for some time until a subsequent Court of Enquiry confirmed his death on the peninsula. This second Grammarian casualty on the peninsula was a sniper, killed by a Turkish counterpart when returning with a patrol to a British trench at Cape Hellas following a pursuit of other Turkish snipers – Kennedy had been engaged in a sniper duel but was hit in the leg and head while entering the trench. He died instantly and was praised as one of ‘Our Heroes’ in the Shepparton Advertiser on 12 July, but his mother was forced to wait until April 1916 for a confirmation of her youngest son’s death. At least her two older sons, Thomas and James, survived the war after respective service as a mechanic and a driver. Several Old Boys 32

Your son at Anzac did splendid service and showed absolute fearlessness of danger. He did most valuable work as an observing officer, under often most trying conditions, was ever ready, and, in fact, anxious, to take any position that demanded extra skill, energy and courage in carrying out the task set. I had, before his unfortunate accident of capture, recommended him for ‘meritorious and gallant conduct’, and hope he will be suitably rewarded.19

Goodwin would need to wait for another world war to demonstrate further gallant conduct, which would cost him his life in New Guinea in a 1943 air raid.

33

CHAPTER TWO

CAMBERWELL GR AMMAR AND GALLIPOLI

Meanwhile, Captain Charles Barber (1908; Gallery of Achievement), one of the few ‘originals’ landed on the morning of 25 April, was not behind the trenches, but beneath them on 6 November 1915 when he stormed a Turkish ‘listening tunnel’ at Lone Pine. A mining engineer from Broken Hill, he had trained further in Mesopotamia and constructed a pontoon bridge over the Suez Canal before being shipped to the peninsula, where his adventures were something straight from the Boy’s Own Paper adventure stories of the period, as the official Army Dispatch Record later recounted:

probably learned whilst on the peninsula.21 Joining the growing list of Gallipoli ANZAC casualties, both fallen and wounded, was another former sharpshooting cadet, Sergeant Lyndon James (1911; older brother of the diminutive Alfred, but himself only 5’6”), barely eighteen-years old and only three years out of school, where he had briefly commanded the revived Cadet Unit in 1911 before command was passed to a staff member. ‘Lyn’ remained in the Gallipoli trenches for several months mid-year, suffering “trench foot” and influenza in the process, before repatriating funds to his old school to establish a champion-shot prize for his cadet corps. James had fondly remembered his old school and unit whilst musing in the trenches at Gallipoli, avidly reading school publications in his moments of leisure. His coveted “Lyn James Medal” continued to be the subject of school competition until 1922; James himself was reported in December 1918 in the first peacetime Magazine as ‘returning home, and is expected to arrive before Christmas’ – he did so and became a clerk in the new, burgeoning Repatriation Department, ‘home again’, and thus able to present his eponymous medal in person to the 1918 cadet winner, the newly commissioned fourteen-year old Howard Goodwin (1919), later an Army Captain in the Second World War and a POW. Lyn James married Marion in 1920; he died in Camberwell in 1952.

During the evening of the 6th November 1915, an opening was driven into a Turkish listening tunnel in front of Lone Pine. The work of reconnoitring was at once taken in hand by Captain Barber and his party under difficult and extremely hazardous circumstances. Over 70 feet of the enemy’s heavily timbered main gallery was occupied, barricaded and surveyed within an hour of the first entry being made. The party had to enter the enemy work one by one through an untimbered hole barely large enough to crawl through. Their prompt action gained for us additional and most valuable protection for the Lone Pine front.20

A widely circulated illustration at the time showed ‘Captain Barber surprising a Turkish sentry in a hostile listening tunnel’.

Barber received a promotion and the Military Cross for his efforts, but typhoid fever soon forced his repatriation – he is commended by Charles Bean in the definitive Official History of this war and, after an inter-war career as a biscuit-maker, later served as a Brigadier in the second global conflict, 1939-43.

Other Old Grammarians blooded at Gallipoli included former cadet of seven years’ experience, blue-eyed William (“Billy”) R.F. Macrow (1904), a distinguished cricketer who had played for Victoria in the Sheffield Shield and a former clerk (1904 portrait, 3rd row, 3rd from left). Macrow would later attain the rank of Lieutenant and be decorated with the Military Cross in France and Belgium in 1917 and 1918, when he distinguished himself in vital pack transport areas during operations: ‘He proved himself a most capable and fearless leader’, skills he had 34

On the home front, the industrious schoolboy poets were as busy as those Old Boys in the trenches and more confident with the pen. An anonymous poet submitted “The Poster” in August, referring to a widely distributed image of an entrenched (British) soldier resolutely standing in a ‘shell-swept trench’ alongside the body of his fallen comrade, anxiously waiting reinforcements from home as he asked himself “Will they never come?” By offering a positive response to such a question, the poet had unwittingly opened a wound that would fester throughout Australia over the coming years in the two great ‘Conscription’ referenda of 1916 and 1917, but now, in the early part of the 35

CHAPTER TWO

CAMBERWELL GR AMMAR AND GALLIPOLI

conflict, he was confident that his subject’s question would receive an affirmative reply: They come. They come. From Australian homes They are flocking in every State For they’ve sighted the streak on that soldier’s cheekGod grant they may not be too late.

‘They’ certainly would not be too late, but seventeen-year old prefect and cadet Quartermaster-Sergeant Clive Chadwick (1907-15; School Councillor 1925-29) attempted to hasten the process in his poem “Australia’s Call” where young men such as himself were urged to ‘take arms for the country’s weal’ and to ‘uphold the traditions of Britain’ which their country had inherited: Australians, awake and be active, Enlist! Though it cost you your life; What is life at a time like the present, When the world’s in the throes of such strife?

Unlike the patriotic poet Ron Small, Chadwick dutifully offered his own services, attaining the rank of sergeant, but he did not ‘come’, as he was only ‘employed on home service’ unable to serve overseas during the conflict, continuing his accountancy studies at home. He had nevertheless been able to help farewell Old Boys in camp awaiting embarkation and was eligible for inclusion on the school’s growing Roll of Honour despite not having served abroad.22 At the war’s end, Chadwick was assisting in judging for the school’s Debating Society and had donated a prize ‘to encourage the writing of poetry’.23

36

Captain Charles Barber (1908) distinguished himself at Gallipoli and his achievements were celebrated in popular prints such as this.

II The Gallipoli landing had failed within days to attain its military objectives, but further battles followed – Gaba Tepe, Lone Pine, Chunuk Bair and the Nek would soon become as familiar to Australians as Anzac Cove itself. By now, in August 1915, Lieutenant William Pender of the Light Horse mistakenly thought he was the only Grammarian remaining on the peninsula ‘owing to casualties’. Accordingly, he appreciated the copies of 37

CHAPTER TWO

CAMBERWELL GR AMMAR AND GALLIPOLI

‘old Grammarians’ provided to him by the School, thereby filling in ‘a monotonous time with pleasant memories’. Pender was far from alone, for Edwin Wood was already earning distinction through to September ‘in charge of the night bomb throwers’24; engineer Charles Barber and former accountant Harold Rodda (1910; 1904 portrait, 2nd row, 2nd from right), both officers, were also still there, as were infantrymen and former bank clerk, fresh-complexioned Esbert Edwards (1908) and Clarence Daly (1903), both of whom later died on the Western Front. The 1916 Magazine would hope that Rodda’s ‘good luck will continue’ – it did, on the Western Front, and he died in 1945 after having served as OCGA President in 1920.

great success, ‘materially assisting the funds’. Over £200 (nearly $19,000 by today’s figures) was raised, which provided eight beds for the base hospital for convalescent soldiers. Each bed was inscribed with the name of the respective class which had raised the appropriate funds.26 Subsequently, Mr Hall received a letter of praise from Mr Trumble, Secretary of the Defence Department, based at Victoria Barracks, Melbourne: ‘The Minister for Defence [Senator Pearce] desires me to convey to you and to your scholars his deep appreciation of the generous and patriotic spirit which prompted such splendid action on the part of your School.’ This was high praise indeed and all in accord with the call of Lauder Wallace (1920), aged 12, who penned an untitled poem in mid-1915 that already looked to the end of the current campaign:

Back home, the School itself soldiered on with another fete, chiefly organised by the formidable Mrs May Hall, mistress of the boarding house. Advertised as another ‘American afternoon and evening’, this fete was held in Adams’ Hall, Camberwell on Saturday, 10 July 1915, ‘with the express purpose of providing beds in the base hospital for the returning Australian Wounded Soldiers’.25 With the aid of staff and prefects, the funds raised surpassed those gathered for the ‘Motor Ambulance’ in October of the previous year, as hundreds of people crushed in to see the ‘decorated and latticed stalls’ as well as the sideshows that included a shooting gallery, hoop-la stall and the inevitable, pugilistic Punch and Judy Show. Afternoon tea was provided in the supper room for those perturbed by Mr Punch’s inevitable aggression and by the crush: ‘The stage in the hall, besides being used to exhibit the suite of furniture, held the flower stall, which made a fine setting for Mr Hall himself, who, when making announcements to the general assembly, mounted the stage in order to be heard.’ This was all a world away from the now fly-blown Dardanelles trenches, but business resumed on the evening of the fete and many Old Boys attended, some in anticipation of a state-of-the-art presentation of ‘Cinematograph Entertainment’ by the poet-prefect Ronald Small. It proved a 38

Go fight for your King and Country, And protect your kith and kin, March forward then, brave soldiers, And help the victory to win.

Then when done is your duty, We’ll welcome you back with pride, And always remember the fallen, Those who have fought and died.

The end of the Gallipoli campaign did come, not in the way that was expected earlier in the year, and not before former clerk Private Charles Michael (1911) provided his old school with a vivid picture of life in the Gallipoli trenches towards the end prior to the withdrawal, including mention of two other Grammarians, Esbert ‘Jerry’ Edwards and Light Horseman Eric Hain, whom he had met after an absence from school of several years. ‘Charley’ reminded the readers of a publicised letter in the Geelong Advertiser that ‘every available man was needed’, describing the 39

CHAPTER TWO

CAMBERWELL GR AMMAR AND GALLIPOLI

constant noise of shellfire landing on the Turkish trenches and of aircraft overhead as he completed a forty-five-hour shift in the Australian trenches. He further described his trench dug-out as ‘bonza’ with its improvised fireplace, which did not, however, prevent him from suffering from pneumonia. Michael’s lengthy trench shift was followed by a ‘lovely’ swim in the sea when down by the shoreline, something of an understatement common amongst the home correspondence of these veterans, who usually stressed the comradeship of army life – fresh-faced Charles Michael was killed in action in Belgium in September 1917, aged twenty-three.27 That shoreline on the Aegean Sea was busier in the following month and although Allied forces had evacuated Gallipoli by 20 December 1915 in an exercise of unprecedented tactical and technical skill, it was now apparent to even the most patriotically obtuse at home that Australians would soon be blooded elsewhere, most likely in France and Belgium. Nearly 90 Old Boys had now enlisted for the Gallipoli campaign by the year’s end and three had already fallen - Guy Quarterman, Edward Kennedy and Oscar Walker. Thus, nearly three per cent of the total of Camberwell recruits had fallen after only some eight months of active service, a disturbing figure made more serious when the wounded were included, and something that did not augur well for a future when military forces were to be numbered in the hundreds-of-thousands, even the millions. Worse would indeed soon follow. However, in his end-of-year Prize Night address at the Camberwell Town Hall on Monday, 13 December, ‘Principal’ Hall preferred to look on the bright side by highlighting the £400 (over $37,000 by 2015 standards) that the school had now raised ‘for the different war funds’. Given that the school’s population had only just reached 260, this was a patriotic contribution worth boasting about. At the same time, the Magazine suggested that 1915 had been ‘a year of varying vicissitudes, of successes and disappointments, of resolutions and failures’. This was a remarkably accurate and remarkably candid assessment.

III The chief contribution of Camberwell Grammar towards the incipient war effort, however, did not come through fetes, eggs, hoop-la, Punch and Judy, flower stalls or patriotic poetry – it had come before the end of 1915 through the behind-the-scenes efforts of one particular Old Boy, the war correspondent Keith Arthur Murdoch. Now thirty-years old, Murdoch had earlier reversed the common order of educational precedence at the time, leaving some undistinguished local schools to complete his education at Camberwell Grammar on the grounds of St John’s, Burke Road (Dux of the School 1901; Gallery of Achievement).

This was a notable vote of confidence by a socially significant if financially modest, clerical Camberwell family in a school that was still regarded in some circles as fly-by-night given that it had already shifted twice by 1901. Even if this Old Boy complained in 1942 that he had not received, in general, ‘a good schooling’ here or elsewhere, he nevertheless had pleasant memories of a fulfilling Camberwell childhood, for which his old school could claim some credit. It must also have some claim for helping to formulate Murdoch’s later principle of ‘individualism’, a concept that can only have been fostered by Alfred Hall’s commitment to a liberal education for the boys under his aegis: A.S. Hall was noted by contemporaries as a ‘mental and moral philosopher’ and his partner W.A. Gosman was described as a ‘scientist with no university degree’ who would nevertheless distinguish himself in later years as a metallurgist of note in the Mt Lyell mines on Tasmania’s rugged west coast. Hall and Gosman were joint Principals for most of the 1890s, big-frogs-in-a-little-pond, but by the time Keith Murdoch arrived there in the new century there was only one frog remaining – Hall – and the young scholar succeeded here academically in a manner which he was never able or willing to repeat elsewhere. His first contemporaneous biographer, C.E. Sayers, was clearly impressed by what he had been told about Camberwell Grammar by his subject and he

40

41

CHAPTER TWO

CAMBERWELL GR AMMAR AND GALLIPOLI

elegantly summarised the achievements of those years of his patron’s scholarship, 1901-03: ‘He made no mark in the school’s corporate life, played few sports, was as much a timid stammerer.

But he emerged from it in 1903 as Dux of the School.’ This last sentence speaks for itself, even though Murdoch’s title of Dux dated from earlier years.

of an ‘unofficial adviser’. This “Gallipoli Letter” (c.8,000 words) circulated amongst British and Australian politicians at the top and it was a bombshell, arguably the most historically important document that has been penned by any Old Boy of Camberwell Grammar. In summary, Murdoch referred to this whole, ’unfortunate expedition’ as a ‘continuous and ghastly bungling’ and the product of ‘gross selfishness and complacency on the part of the [British General] staff’. His old school soon became conscious of the important role that Murdoch had played in the first campaign of the Great War, referring to him in 1920 as ‘an Old Boy who has become famous’ and portraying him, with some understandable exaggeration, as a spark igniting the decision to evacuate Gallipoli.28 Certainly, the Murdoch account of the campaign had not matched the image that had been presented at the time to those at home, where it was in due course mistakenly thought that four Old Boys had already fallen, including Guy Quarterman, Edward Kennedy, Captain Oscar Robert Walker (of the Worcestershire Regiment) and a mysterious ‘Private Omerod’, listed in the Grammarian of December 1915 as also having fallen on that distant Turkish peninsula. However, there is no CGS record of this individual, who would survive his service in the British army in Mesopotamia, contrary to earlier reports. His name was later removed from the school Roll of Honour, a roll that would eventually contain the names of another nine of the twenty-eight Camberwell Gallipoli veterans, those killed in later European or Middle-Eastern campaigns, 1916-18; one of these ANZAC casualties, Shirley Goodwin, died in the Second World War. The figure of twelve fallen Gallipoli veterans out of twenty-eight speaks for itself.

It was what Hall later called ‘business pursuits’ that appealed to the young, stammering Murdoch, a youth of considerable promise but without much academic ambition. Journalism, the written word, was the path he chose to follow, like his uncle and mentor Walter, an Argus columnist and an original Old Grammarian (1889; Gallery of Achievement). Already a scribbler of some local, suburban note and following some study in the imperial capital (1908-10), Murdoch was commissioned by Prime Minister Fisher in 1915 to report on the activities of the Australian forces overseas, having recently again ‘gone to England to take up very important duties as war correspondent’ for several Melbourne journals. He undertook this task with considerable verve and effect, contrary to strict military censorship, from September 1915. The young correspondent was unimpressed by what he saw on the peninsula, an experience that reinforced the colonial reservation that he had already formed about the modus operandi of the British establishment he had observed earlier in London. Soon, after only four days, Murdoch intended to return to London bearing a letter critical of the campaign written by the British correspondent Ashmead-Bartlett (a man whose early reports had laid the foundations of the seminal ‘Anzac Legend’), but he was detained at Marseilles by British military police and the letter confiscated. Unabashed, once in London the young Australian sought the amnesty of the Australian High Commission, where he composed his own account of what he had seen at Gallipoli for the benefit of (now former PM) High Commissioner Andrew Fisher, to whom, in the not-too-exaggerated later description of the 1952 Grammarian, he had become something 42

Ω The Camberwell Grammar School community had been as uninformed as the rest of the broader Australian society in celebrating as a sort of victory what was in reality a military 43

CHAPTER TWO

CAMBERWELL GR AMMAR AND GALLIPOLI

disaster, one in which heroism had not always been an option – Eric Hain (1910), for example, a twenty-year old boundary rider turned (dismounted) Light Horseman had landed at Gallipoli in September, but was soon withdrawn with a heart condition leading to his discharge in 1916. This condition was thought to be likely to shorten his life, but Eric survived until the age of 70 in 1965. This common, quite ordinary picture of a Gallipoli veteran was not the image of the campaign that had been presented to those at home, where all those Gallipoli veterans were lauded as heroes; as Dr Johnson had suggested in his inimitable style in an earlier century, truth is often an early casualty of war. So, it seemed that despite the significance of the Gallipoli campaign to the national psyche (and that would only increase in the following years), it was still business as usual at Burke Road in late-1915. Headmaster Hall, who continued to prefer the more business-like title of ‘Principal’, still insisted that the aim of the school was to produce scholars, businessmen and country gentlemen, not soldiers despite its active cadet unit (the history of which is discussed elsewhere).29 Yet the annual prize distribution night at the Camberwell Town hall on Monday, 13 December 1915, could not, of course, ignore the conflict and here, Hall proudly noted that the School had now raised £400 for different war funds. He also observed that close to 100 Old Boys had now enlisted, the distinguished Lieutenant Alfred Derham, MC, amongst them.30 Here, at least, was one who could legitimately be called a hero.

old to serve himself and age had even debarred him from the South African conflict at the turn of the century.31 There was now no escaping the growing conflict in Europe itself even in the distant Antipodes; the local Glenferrie Theatre had recently staged a production of the supposedly-Eastern classic “Kismet”, a sign that some at least were steeling themselves for the further workings of an unavoidable Fate - soon, the staff and boys of Camberwell Grammar and their fellows serving overseas in uniform would be doing the same.

Keith Murdoch (Dux of the School, 1901) was a war correspondent at Gallipoli, during which he wrote his controversial “Gallipoli Letter”, condemning the operation of the campaign. This letter is one of the most important Australian primary sources of this period.

Further stress and anxiety would come in 1916, as an increasing number of Grammarians received the green leather wallets featuring the embossed school badge that Headmaster Hall had begun to present ceremoniously to Old Boy recruits. Perhaps, as a military censor and former Militia officer, ‘The Boss’ had quietly accepted the proposition that a more extended and bloody war in order to sustain the glorious empire was the future that awaited his school community in 1916 – Hall, of course was too 44

45

“AUSTR ALIA’S ANSWER”

CHAPTER THREE

the Camberwell Grammar school community would discover just how great that cost was following the first commitment of Australian troops to Western Front trench warfare at Fromelles and Pozieres in July-August 1916. The committee of the OCGA had hoped just before the beginning of those battles ‘that the time is not too far distant when we shall be able to tender a welcome home to Old Boys of the AIF’, but that hope was still premature.33

The “Soldier’s Pay Book for use on Active Service” was issued to each Australian serving in the 1st AIF during the Great War. This document carried a page at the rear entitled ‘Short Form of Will’, allowing a soldier over the age of fourteen to dispose of property in the event of his death during the conflict.32 It was a grim reminder to those happily receiving their relatively generous weekly payments of six shillings per week, or more, that there was also a cost – like every other body in Australia at this time,

The 1915 Gallipoli campaign had been a milestone in the development of Australia’s national consciousness, and Old Boy Keith Murdoch had played an important role in disseminating the reality of modern war in his candid “Gallipoli Letter”, as opposed to the propaganda images so common at the time. But Gallipoli was only the end-of-the-beginning of Australia’s commitment to this titanic struggle and 1916 would see the AIF deployed in France in the trench warfare which we today tend to associate strongly with this particular conflict. Three Grammarians who had served in the Dardanelles had died before the end of the Gallipoli campaign or soon after from their wounds (Private Edward Kennedy, Private Guy Quarterman and Captain Oscar Walker) and eight other Gallipoli veterans would later be killed on the Western Front and elsewhere before the end of the war (Corporal Esbert Edwards and Lieutenant George Manders in 1916, Lance Corporal Walter Anderson, Charles Michael and Edgar Millward in 1917, Lieutenant-Colonel Clarence Daly, Thomas Eales and now-Captain Malcolm Kennedy in 1918). The surviving cohort of Gallipoli veterans of 1915 would be supplemented before the end of 1916 by over 150 Old Boys who had voluntarily joined the armed forces of the Empire – only 1165 boys had passed through the various portals of the Camberwell Grammar School at St John’s, Fermanagh Road and Burke Road since 1886, so this was quite a staggering proportion of the School’s alumni (many of whom, of course, were now well over military age). Of these 150, another seven would pay the ultimate price in the course of

46

47

“Australia’s Answer”: Camberwell Grammar Faces Trench Warfare, 1916.

“A great number of the old boys had gone to the front, and several had been awarded with distinctions.”

Headmaster A.S. Hall at Speech Night, 14 December 1916.

suave et decorum est pro patria mori– “A sweet and becoming thing it is to die for the fatherland.”

Magazine of the Camberwell Grammar School, November 1916 From a memorial dedicated by Mrs Johnson to her fallen son “Buff”.

I

CHAPTER THREE

“AUSTR ALIA’S ANSWER”

1916 alone, four in the initial battles at Fromelles and Pozieres in France in July-August. Two others serving in the British Army also fell in the months before Australians were first exposed to the horrors of the Western Front; one in Mesopotamia in April 1916, the almost forgotten Lieutenant George Manders (1902), and another in Belgium in June, Sergeant Frank Cochrane. The final casualty of the year died of disease in December, bringing the total number of Camberwell fallen to ten by the close of 1916 – the putative eleventh victim, the elusive ‘Private Omerod’, would later be removed from the list.

at home and abroad had his fate not been so unfortunate; his death notice in the Age of 2 May 1916 stated that he had ‘showed great promise’ – this promise would be unrealised, unlike that of Lieutenant Alexander McIntosh (1910; Prefect) of Hawthorn, another expatriate recruit; this school tennis champion also travelled to Britain in 1915 to join the King Edward’s Horse, in which he served until 1922, then returning home to Armadale with his new Irish wife – his name is missing from Camberwell’s Roll of Honour. Unfortunately, Manders was soon joined by another Grammarian serving in the British Army, Sergeant Frank Cochrane (1898), a British-born machine gunner who had returned home at the beginning of the war to enlist in the Manchester Regiment. He was killed in action on 17 June 1916, but his old school did not become aware of his passing until 1918. These two expatriate recruits would be the thin edge of the 1916 wedge, for their schoolmates who had enlisted in the AIF were also soon to be exposed to European trench warfare.

The first would fall only two days after Cochrane as the AIF went over the trenches of the Western Front for the first time.

The interregnum between the withdrawal from Gallipoli in December 1915 and the initial AIF blooding in France in July 1916 witnessed the death of two expatriate Grammarians serving in the British Army, the first a man of a calibre different from that of many of the younger casualties – older, more prosperous and more widely travelled, hence his commission in the British Army, although death in battle fails to acknowledge differences in age or class. Lieutenant George Manders of Glenferrie would be the oldest (and the first) of the 1916 casualties, having left the School in 1899 in Year 9 (class of 1902). A journalist in Melbourne, Manders had left for Britain soon after the outbreak of the war and enlisted in the British Army, like many other Australians, some resident in the Old Country, others having been rejected by the AIF at first. Manders served in Gallipoli and then transferred from King Edward’s Horses to the Royal Artillery, serving in the campaign against the retreating Turks at Kut in Mesopotamia, where he died of wounds in April 1916.34 He was thirty-one years old and an example of the fact that service in the cause of Empire came under many flags, all containing the Union Jack. A professional man, he joined the ranks as a private but was soon promoted, commissions in the British Army having not yet been extended to the ‘lower classes’ – this came later out of dire necessity. Like the younger men listed below, one wonders what Manders might have achieved in later life 48

Naturally enough, the official Magazine of the Camberwell Grammar School preferred to focus on the living, reporting in detail in its regular “The Old Boys” column of July 1916 the activities of men such as aviator/soldier Shirley Goodwin, captured by the Turks in 1915 following the engine failure of his aircraft, Alfred Derham MC, now a Staff Captain, and the 1913 Rhodes Scholar Dr Frank Kerr (1906; DSO) serving with the British Army in France. Alfred’s older brother, ex-solicitor Major Francis Derham (1901; Gallery of Achievement), another Gallipoli veteran, was only briefly mentioned, now a ‘gunner’ in command of an artillery battery near Amiens in France and later serving in Britain, helping to form an Australian Artillery Brigade. The tall, distinguished F.P. Derham would in due course become one of the more decorated Camberwell Grammar Old Boys (DSO, VD and Croix de Guerre) and the most prominent 49

CHAPTER THREE

“AUSTR ALIA’S ANSWER”

veteran in the post-war years, continually present at ANZAC Day observations up to his 1957 death, a passing that was mourned

by Prime Minister Menzies himself. Derham House is named in his honour. President of the OCGA (which Derham had earlier helped to establish as the first secretary) in 1914 and 1924, his widow, Adeline, presented her husband’s medals and papers to Headmaster David Dyer in 1984 – both collections are treasured in the School Archives. Less distinguished servicemen were also noted in the 1916 Magazine, those such as the five Old Boys serving in the 3rd Divisional Ammunition Column in France, including former solicitor Lieutenant George Fielding (1881; member of the School Council in 1925), already aged over forty.

Whereas the ranks of Grammarians at Gallipoli had been thin, their numbers on the Western Front were growing exponentially.

Fielding’s ‘gunner’ group, for instance, included four other Old Boys – W. Bates, W. Eales, W. Taylor and W. Henderson. Greyeyed William Bates (1915), a warehouseman, joined the AIF just before his nineteenth birthday in April 1916. He was wounded in action and gassed two years later, but was fortunate enough to return home in 1919 via America ‘at his own cost’.35 William Eales (1916), the same age, enlisted in Lilydale as a Driver, suffering a back wound in September 1917 – he would end the war as a Lieutenant; his son and grandson would eventually attend Camberwell Grammar, but his soon-to-be decorated brother, Thomas (1913), would not survive the conflict. Fellow driver, farmer Walter Henderson (1915) was also eighteen-years old at the time of his enlistment - he survived the conflict with his physical health intact, but not before he had been diagnosed with a ‘neurosis disability’, that is, “shell-shock”.

“shell-shock”, the pathological phenomenon which was emerging out of trench warfare, along with physical maladies such as “trench foot”, from which the vulnerable Barnett would additionally suffer in the following November. The syndrome of personal trauma related to the experience of armed conflict would endure in countless veterans long after the Armistice.

These men were never honoured in the way of the fallen, the seven of whom in 1916 must remain our focus. Since the reality of war is the human factor, it is worth examining the records of each of these fallen young men who had once graced the halls of Camberwell Grammar, for they would soon be joined by many others in the following two years of the conflict.

Attempts to shine a light on the rosier aspects of military life would, by necessity, pass over the experiences of those who had found little glory in trench warfare, men such as Private Lawrence Barnett (1908), a former farmer wounded in the battles of July 1916 and taken out of the line with the reluctantly acknowledged

The July 1916 Magazine was published too late to report the deaths of four Old Boys at Fromelles and nearby from that fatal night, Wednesday 19 July, until the end of the month. The initial exposure of the Australians to their German enemies would be costly indeed. The first Grammarian casualty of these battles was fair-haired Private Ralph “Buff” Johnson of Healesville. Johnson, aged only nineteen, had been a notable athlete at School, thrice an Athletics champion and a Prefect in 1913. He left the Burke Road campus in 1914 after three years, enlisting in July 1915 after working briefly as a clerk. His incipient military career had been promising, as his commanding officer later informed his parents: ‘Corporal Johnson’s work has always been of the best and he was marked down by all the officers as a splendid soldier, his extreme youth being the one bar to rapid promotion.’36 “Buff” ran out of luck on his first exposure to fire and was listed as one of the 1300 ‘Missing’ (presumed ‘Killed in Action’), but he had been taken prisoner by the Germans, dying of his wounds either that night or within two days. He was subsequently buried with the fallen of the enemy and although his fate was reported by the Germans in February 1917 with the return of his identification disc, Johnson was still listed as missing as late as October 1920. Not until August 1924 would his parents learn

50

51

CHAPTER THREE

“AUSTR ALIA’S ANSWER”

from the Australian Graves Service that their son was believed to have been buried in the German Extension of the Beauchamp Communal Cemetery, ‘but whose grave is now lost. THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT’.37 “Buff” accordingly represents one of the countless hundreds-of-thousands, if not millions, of victims of the Great War whose resting place had been lost, a grievous blow to the distant families of that era. His memory had certainly not been blotted out at home:

Unfortunately, Private Johnson was not the only Grammarian to fall in that dreadful month of July 1916 in France. He was soon joined by Douglas Wood, who had left the School in 1914 after only eighteen months of study at Burke Road. He was born on 18 January 1901, according to the records of his old schools, Camberwell Grammar and Auburn State, and was therefore, astonishingly, only fourteen-years old when he enlisted on 9 July 1915. Accordingly, Private Wood was fifteen-and-a-half at the time he was killed in action a year later, rendering him amongst the youngest circle of AIF recruits of the Great War (i.e. those aged 14-16; the ‘boy soldiers’) and the second youngest Digger who died on the Western Front, if his recorded birth date is accurate – the youngest, (Leslie Prior), was only three months younger than Wood at the time of his death in May 1917.38 Nevertheless,

Wood was certainly the youngest Grammarian to fall, 1914-18, and, it seems, the only one from the School to enlist in defiance of the official age of recruitment - eighteen years of age from 1915 with exceptions made for some categories such as buglers - a regulation often ignored in any case at a time when certification was somewhat looser than it is today. Apparently, his father Frank gave Douglas, his only son, permission to join the Army in June 1915, but when this apprentice baker of Sandringham did so a month later, he falsely stated that he was eighteen-years old (a not uncommon practice at this time). After several months in Egypt, Wood was serving as a stretcher-bearer in France in mid-1916 in accordance with the common AIF practice of keeping recruits under nineteen from direct combat service, but to no avail, as Private Wood was also amongst those listed as ‘Missing’ on that first day of the Battle of Fromelles, although several witnesses later testified to the Red Cross that they had seen him that night ‘lying dead [in a ditch] after being killed in action’.39 Sadly, Wood’s body was never recovered and he has ‘no known grave’ (like all three CGS Gallipoli victims of 1915 and many in Europe, joining one-third of the total Australian casualties in the war, that is, over 20,000 of the AIF fallen).

The Wood family did not learn of the precise circumstances of Douglas’s death until early-1917 and then only after the Red Cross had pursued one of his former comrades-in-arms seeking confirmation of what he had reportedly seen on the night of 19 July 1916. This witness was reminded that it was ‘far more distressing for his relatives and friends when no news can be obtained’. 40 Following the clarification that followed in April 1917, two of Douglas’s former schoolmates were able to place a notice in the In Memoriam column of the Melbourne Argus on Saturday, 21 July 1917, recalling a ‘brave young hero…an old Camberwell Grammar School boy. Spectemur agendo. Suave et decorum est pro patria mori’. Above it was the more mournful notice of his ‘lonely mother, Brighton Beach’. Here, Christina Wood, ‘in loving memory of my darling only son’, hoped that

52

53

To perpetuate his memory, Mrs Johnson gave the school a photo of Ralph in uniform, with his old school colours, and those of his battalion, attached. Upon it is the quotation ‘suave et decorum est pro patria mori’ – “A sweet and becoming thing it is to die for the fatherland.” This was also hung in the assembly room, where it may be seen by all.

Mrs Alice Johnson also promised to donate an annual athletics gold medal for High Jump to the School. This medal was presented annually until 1926, after which date (with the retirement of Alfred Hall) there is no further record of it – the memory of this fallen young man had therefore already begun to be ‘blotted out’, except, of course, amongst his family members.

CHAPTER THREE

“AUSTR ALIA’S ANSWER”

his death and those of other members of C Company, 59th Battalion, would not ‘be in vain’. She referred to her son as having been sixteen-years old in July 1916 (contrary to the records of the School) and the grieving family later donated a memorial prize for French students in the name of ‘Douglas Wood’, an award which endured until 1921; perhaps this boy could almost serve as Camberwell Grammar’s ‘unknown soldier’, given the especially tragic tale of such an inexperienced, under-age youth killed on his first day of action so far from home – otherwise, his sacrifice, as his mother feared, could very well have been in vain. 41 Memory of Wood ought also to stand alongside that of one of the School’s older recruits, Captain Benson Lewis, who enlisted in October 1915 aged 40, a generation older than Douglas Wood. A 6’2” Ivanhoe bank manager, Lewis had enrolled at the fledgling Camberwell Grammar at Fermanagh Road in 1887, leaving the School in 1893, where he had been a cadet sergeant.

Before joining the AIF, he had experience in the Victorian Field Artillery and was accordingly directed to the 14th Field Artillery Brigade in France following service in Egypt. This father of two young children (Lewis b.1908; Margaret b.1911), he survived the war, although suffering a serious face wound.

grief to the unfortunate Cox household in Auburn. A fourth Grammarian then died on 31 July at Pozieres, a fortnight short of his twenty-third birthday. The former bank clerk, Corporal Esbert Edwards (1911) of Balwyn - “Jerry” - had been a popular prefect at the School and a noted sportsman in the Cricket XI and Football XVIII, having entered Camberwell Grammar in 1908 in Year 9. He left in 1911, working in the Bank of Australasia, until joining the forces in the first month of the war, August 1914.

Edwards had landed at Gallipoli in April 1915, surviving a head wound at Lone Pine in August 1915, subsequently recovering on Lemnos before returning to the peninsula in time for the evacuation in December. Now on the Western Front with the other surviving ANZACS, Corporal Edwards was wounded a second time (in the left leg), at Pozieres, on 24 July 1916. His luck had run out, however, and he died a week later of this wound.

The fresh-complexioned, fair-haired Edwards was twenty-five years old and one of the many sporting ANZACS who would die in subsequent battles: ‘Some few days after his death was reported, Mrs Anne Edwards, the grieving mother, sent a laurel wreath, which was hung in the assembly room, just beneath the merit board, in memory of her son’. Esbert was referred to as her ‘loved youngest son’ in the family’s Argus death notice. 42 Four Old Boys had thus perished in France within the fortnight of those last weeks of July 1916, more Grammarian victims than the Gallipoli campaign had claimed in eight months, joining the 5,533 Australians who had been killed (some 2,000) or wounded on a single July day during the Fromelles-Pozieres battles, but this was only a taste of what was to come for a group whom the Magazine was later convinced had ‘died nobly as heroes while serving the Empire in France’. These four young men had much in common – all were of a barely mature age, all unmarried, all at the very beginnings of their adult life, all extinguished in their prime. One can only speculate what they might have achieved had their lives not been cut violently short, far from home.

The fallen privates Johnson and Wood were soon joined amongst the fatalities of this milestone battle at Fromelles by a third Grammarian, Private Thomas Cox of Auburn, who had entered the School in 1911 in Year 9 and left in 1913 to become a shop assistant. When he enlisted in March 1915 he was still living with his parents. The baby-faced Cox was killed at Pozieres on 28 July 1916, the day after the deaths of “Buff” and Douglas Wood – this dark-complexioned young man was a diminutive 5’4” in height and only twenty-years old at the time of his death. His early demise was common enough in this period, a family tragedy of the most profound depth. His younger brother, Frederick Cox (1916), survived the war only to die in an East Melbourne car accident in 1928, aged thirty, adding further 54

55

CHAPTER THREE

“AUSTR ALIA’S ANSWER”

II

the bitter end. He was therefore one of the exceptionally lucky ones. Before the battles of 1916 were over, Lieutenant Rodda had already been mentioned in despatches owing to his performance in the Battle of Mouquet Farm, from August-September. Here, the Lieutenant led his platoon against a nest of German machine gunners, surviving as the only unwounded officer of his entire Company (a unit consisting of up to six platoons, consisting of up to 150 men). Under his leadership, the Company survived in a hemmed-in shell-hole. His ‘good luck’, as the Magazine termed it back home, was unscathed. 43

It is an unfortunate aspect of war that the suffering of the living endures, as we have seen with Mrs Johnson and Mrs Edwards.

Alongside those commemorated In Memoriam, stood those Old Boys who survived the horrors of the trenches, but often at considerable cost – Lieutenant Hewlett Wright (1903) of Auburn was wounded in the arm on 6 July 1916 at Fromelles and immediately began to suffer from “shell-shock”, a malady that was still in the early stages of its diagnosis. Soon, hundreds-of-thousands of men of many nationalities would suffer from the same condition.

Wright subsequently served in ‘Non-Military Employment’ until his discharge from the Army in January 1920. A timber merchant, he would have felt a sense of shame for his illness until his death in 1949. His old school Magazine, of course, knew nothing of what we today term post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition impacting on many veterans, amongst others.

Lieutenant Harley George (5’11”), of Auburn, had only spent two years at Camberwell Grammar (1898-99), after which he worked as a warehouseman. He too was wounded in the wrist and elbow in France in July 1916 and returned home in the following year, enduring the effects of his wounds for the remaining half-century of his life. He died in NSW a septuagenarian in 1965. Gallipoli veteran Lieutenant Harold Rodda had also taken part in the Pozieres offensive, the November 1916 Magazine quite rightly observing that he was ‘very fortunate in getting through safely’. Rodda had come to the School in 1902, aged nine, from the ‘Auburn Ladies School’, soon establishing himself as Captain of Football and as the 1908 Rhodes Ideal Scholar, the in-house recognition of a boy combining scholarly and athletic skill. He was a former accountant who served in the AIF from February 1915 until June 1919, steadily rising through the ranks to a captaincy following very distinguished service in every Australian offensive from the beginning of the war to 56

Equally lucky was Brian Cavanagh of the appropriately named Waterloo Street, Camberwell, who had only left school in 1912, then working as a station hand near Horsham. By August 1916 he was serving in a Light Trench Mortar Battery, wounded in the arm on the 5th of that month, the only survivor of his battery following a German strike. His old school congratulated him on this survival and on his subsequent receipt of a Distinguished Service Medal, awarded for ‘conspicuous gallantry’ when he had kept his mortar in action despite his wounds: ‘On a previous occasion he put out of action two hostile machine guns and a bomb thrower’. 44 Cavanagh’s war, however, was over – he was repatriated to Adelaide in the following December. The former Corporal died in Mildura in December 1992, aged 96, eight decades after his military service; such longevity focuses the mind on the terminated lifespans of those who had fallen, whether fellow ANZACs or German bomb throwers. Fortunately for his mother (Jane), her sons Brian, Arthur and Eric had all survived the conflict.

Elsewhere in the service of the Empire in 1916 was twenty-sixyear old Gallipoli veteran William Stanhope Pender, who had originally enlisted in September 1914 in the Light Horse in that first intake of Australian recruits. He had been despatched to the peninsula alongside other dismounted Light Horsemen, as 57

CHAPTER THREE

accounted above, he later served in Sinai and points north with the Egyptian Expeditionary Force under General Allenby, who mentioned him in despatches. Pender’s post-Gallipoli record serves as a reminder that the Empire was a broad canvas in this period. So too is the extensive record of Major Stanley Symonds (1896), a veterinary officer (and a graduate of the University of Melbourne), a man much in demand in a conflict that utilised millions of horses. Australia alone shipped some 136,000 to the Middle East, 1914-18 – only one, ‘Sandy’, ever returned to the pastures of home. Symonds, born in 1878 in Hawthorn and a Camberwell student from 1891-93, was a veteran of the South African War, 1901-02 (one of three Grammarians), in the 3rd NSW Mounted Rifles. He accordingly knew his horses and must have found the general equine slaughter of the Great War somewhat distressing – although aged only thirty-eight in 1916, this veterinarian was already described as having ‘grey hair’. Symonds’s studies of tropical medicine in London were interrupted by the outbreak of war and from May 1915 he served in the veterinary corps of the British Army in France and the Balkans, retiring at the war’s end as an AIF Major and subsequently working in the Straits Settlements (Malaya), where he had also worked before the war supervising the transfer of horses from Australia to India.

He died in 1968, aged 90, having retired to Canterbury, only a few hundred metres from his old school. Stanley Symonds’s veterinary career had been in the service of the Empire at home and abroad in both war and peace, a typical experience of many members of the British diaspora living in the era of the Great War. III Before the bloody details and losses of Fromelles and Pozieres were fully digested at home, the school community had maintained its optimism and determination. Twelve-year old Harold Rigby (1922) of Hawthorn was typical of his cohort in penning a patriotic poem “Australia’s Answer” in the Magazine of July 1916. The first verses were: 58

“AUSTR ALIA’S ANSWER”

We are coming, we are coming, As we’ve never done before, While the battle’s fiercely raging And the deadly cannon roar.

The young poet, subsequently praised at the 1916 Speech Night, remained confident that Australians would soon be marching through Germany itself as he closed his paean to the AIF: Though the fighting may be hard, We have come to do our share, And while the Empire calls for men, Australia will be there.

The European fighting was much harder than Master Rigby could ever have imagined, and Australia’s divisions soon suffered more casualties than had fallen in the whole of the Gallipoli campaign - around 8709 in the 1915 battles; some 6,800 falling at Pozieres alone. Australia certainly was ‘there’, but not marching through Germany.

Back home, the School formed a Fete Committee under the guidance of Mrs Hall and held its third ‘fete’ on Saturday, 8 July 1916 (as the battles raged in France), raising the considerable sum of £250 (over $24,000 by today’s figures) for the Camberwell Convalescent Home for Soldiers, funds shortly thereafter forwarded to the Town Clerk of Camberwell – some of these funds probably found their way to the nearby, newly opened ‘Highton Convalescent Home’ (Red Cross Auxiliary Rest Home No.3) in Mont Albert Road, where some thirty recovering soldiers were accommodated. 45 That this donation was gladly accepted is beyond question, Headmaster Hall understandably boasting about it at the annual prize distribution night in December, when he celebrated what had been a ‘prosperous year’ for the School. 46 Camberwell Grammar’s contribution to the war effort 59

CHAPTER THREE

had already been noted in the Herald on 25 July 1916 and in the Hawthorn, Kew and Camberwell Citizen, which had lauded the “Patriotic Schoolboys” of Burke Road three days later. The Magazine of November 1916 also carried two other responses to the School’s recent generosity – the first from R. Earl Jenkins, a former ‘public [i.e. private] school boy’ and recuperating soldier in the Sandringham Convalescent Hospital, who had noted with gratification the existence of several Camberwell Grammar labelled ‘cots’ at the Base Hospital some weeks earlier; the second was from the Camberwell Town Clerk himself, the delightfully named R.M. Smellie, when on 27 July he conveyed the Council’s thanks for the forwarded £250, describing the recent fete as ‘a generous and patriotic action’. His Worship the Mayor (Cr W.G. McBeath) also expressed his civic pride in having ‘such a fine public school bearing the name of the city’ situated in Burke Road. However, the closest appreciation of what was actually occurring in Europe did not come from His Worship or from Mr Smellie, or even from that military censor Headmaster Hall, but from fifteen-year old William Wiseman (1916) of Canterbury who penned an essay in the final Magazine of 1916 – “A Reverie” – where he described his dream, a vision, that had followed his sighting of a ‘withered laurel wreath’. The dream took him to the trenches ‘somewhere in France’, where he sighted five diggers, each sporting a CGS badge. Soon these diggers (and their invisible puerile observer) were over the top, heading for the German trenches opposite. Master Wiseman then imagined that he had witnessed the death of one of these ‘Old Boys’, blown apart once he had reached the barbed-wire entanglement: ‘I was hurled backwards; the acid smoke got into my mouth and nostrils; I coughed violently – and the spell was broken, and I found that I was again in the room gazing at the laurel wreath.’

Unfortunately, relief from the terrors of the Western Front was more difficult for the living to obtain than in Master Wiseman’s dreaming “Reverie”, strangely accurate though his description of combat had been. For some veterans, repatriation would only be

So, the first year of trench warfare for the Australian forces closed on an unpleasant note for those at the School prepared to avert their gaze from dream-like laurel wreaths, convalescent homes and fetes, in order to focus on the likelihood of future costly battles in the manner of Fromelles and Pozieres. The German peace offer unveiled in the Reichstag on 2 December 1916 and subsequently relayed to the Allies did not bear fruit and the Camberwell Grammar In Memoriam list would soon be considerably augmented in the new year, the third of this terrible conflict. Meanwhile, “Australia’s Answer” to the challenges of 1917 would the same one that had been offered to those of 1916. The war went on and the Camberwell Grammar School community on Burke Road continued to believe in the ethos suave et decorum

60

61

at the cost of a limb, as for Edwin Wood, the Gallipoli veteran bomb-thrower, later gravely wounded in France. For others, only death would lead to rest, like those ‘Old Boys’ falling at the front in France (and Mesopotamia) in 1916, joining the growing Roll of Honour back at Burke Road. Despite the pro patria sentiments of some back home, there seemed little ‘becoming’ about their nightmarish deaths. Nonetheless, a number of senior boys had participated with vigour in a series of local conscription meetings in October, when the Australian electorate was asked by plebiscite whether it favoured ‘compulsory powers’ being assumed by the Commonwealth government for overseas military service. They could only have done so with the approval of their Headmaster, A. S. Hall, that former Captain in the peacetime Militia, which had itself been subject to domestic conscription. The referendum proposal was defeated, so the Camberwell seniors sought other methods to aid the war effort, including the conservation of gas ‘used for heating purposes’. It was hoped that future economies could be made before the year’s end for the same cause in the use of ‘ether, alcohol, and phosphorus’. 47 Ω

CHAPTER THREE

est pro patria mori, confronting what the Magazine now called ‘the German lust for blood’. The same journal noted in its last issue of 1916 that: ‘At the present time men of high rank and men of no importance at all, are side by side performing such acts of bravery as will descend through the ages’ allowing the school community ‘to know best what men are, in their worst jeopardies’. 48 Not all the casualties, of course, were necessarily due to the jeopardies of the field – Private William Pemble (1909) passed away in a British hospital in the last weeks of the year, a victim of pneumonia. He had been amongst the first boarders of the School when it moved to the Burke Road campus in 1908 and had been school champion in the following year. However, youthful physical fitness had not allowed him to escape the maladies of war, becoming the seventh Grammarian fatality of 1916. Nor were all members of the school community offered the opportunity to face the challenges outlined by the Magazine – Will Ethel (Captain of School; 1913) was captain of both the 1st XVIII and of the 1st XI, but defective vision, which had clearly failed to inhibit his sporting prowess, kept him out of the ranks.

He died in 1919 of influenza, one of the victims of the post-war epidemic that numerically surpassed the numbers of those who had fallen on the field of battle. The sense of frustration that this Rhodes Ideal scholar and Prefect must have felt during the war years is easy to imagine.

“AUSTR ALIA’S ANSWER”

“Highton Convalescent Home” – “Red Cross Auxiliary Rest Home No.3”, c.1916. Camberwell Grammar raised and contributed considerable funds to assist the recuperation of the patients at this nearby facility.

Whatever the ‘acts of bravery’ that allowed the School and its official magazine ‘to know best what men are’ during 1916, there were more to come, as those ‘worst jeopardies’ deepened in the following year.

62

63

CHAPTER FOUR The Year of Faded Hopes, 1917.

“On April 25th we had a celebration in St Mark’s Hall, kindly lent to us by the Vicar and his Churchwardens, to commemorate the landing of the Australians at Gallipoli in 1915.”

Magazine, June 1917.

“In loving memory of my darling only son, Private Douglas Wood…also the brave boys of C Company, 59th Battalion, killed in action…Let not their sacrifice be in vain. Inserted by his lonely mother, Brighton Beach.”

In Memoriam, Argus, 21 July 1917.

Major Stanley Symonds (1896), Boer War veteran and a noted veterinary officer in both the British and Australian forces during the Great War.

64

The Great War had entered its third year in August 1916 and some efforts by some elements within the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey) to negotiate a peace towards the end of this year had failed. As 1917 progressed, witnesses as far away as Camberwell Grammar in leafy Melbourne suburbia would see significant developments in the history of this conflict; Russia would endure revolution on 65

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YEAR OF FADED HOPES

two occasions (in February and October) and signalling its likely withdrawal from the struggle, whilst the United States tipped the balance further in favour of the Allies in April by joining the conflict. There was now a distinct conviction, despite the uncertainty about further Russian participation in the struggle, that the Central Powers were on the defensive – to the optimists, time seemed to be on the side of the big battalions of the Allied nations, including Australia, where the ranks of the services continued to be filled by volunteers only following the failure of a second conscription referendum in December. However, any who hoped that 1917 would bring about the conclusion of this terrible war would be disappointed. It became obvious before the end of the year that the struggle was far from over and that Camberwell Grammar would not be spared an increasing death rate amongst the ranks of its growing legion of Old Boys striving to sustain the Empire.

Ten Grammarians had fallen in the war by the beginning of 1917 from a total recruitment level of over 150 – a growing death rate of over six per cent, a morbid figure but one perhaps accepted by some as only to be expected in a conflict of the magnitude of this ‘Great War’, the conflict having now assumed a scale hitherto unknown to history. Unfortunately, the new year would exceed these figures and bring into question the human cost being endured by the nation as a whole, and by the Camberwell school community in particular. The School boasted of having a new flag pole as the year commenced – the waxing 1917 casualty figures would have made it appropriate for this pole to feature an Australian ensign at permanent halfmast as the news from France and Belgium seeped back home.

Nevertheless, the boys on the Burke Road campus maintained a level of patriotism untarnished by the grim realities of trench war, much of which remained unknown to them, if not to their

schoolmasters. The official Magazine of June 1917, for example, mentioned (unpublished) contributions such as a verse by eleven-year old John Law calling upon ‘slackers to awake and help their brothers at the front’. It also mentioned “A Call to Australia” by the new student Alex Jones, a fifteen-year old from Croydon.

These young writers were reflecting the official view of the School as an institution under the tutelage of Headmaster Alfred Hall, still a military censor, and the steady flow of recruits from Camberwell Grammar was maintained at a time when it was slackening nationally. The invalided sharp-shooter Sergeant Lyn James, now in the Pay Office in London, continued to host many of them as they passed through the imperial capital on their way to France and Belgium, but despite the excitement of overseas travel, a certain level of homesickness soon became evident amongst these recruits. Former shipping clerk, the ruddy-complexioned Gunner Reginald Treacy (1893) of the Field Artillery, for example, was one of the older recruits (and one of A.B. Taylor’s first students in 1887), now in his mid-thirties (born in November 1880), and despite admitting the beautiful scenery of France, Treacy was amongst those who soon preferred the beauty of Blacks Spur, Mount Buffalo and other sites at ‘home’, where he had been a keen member of local rifle clubs. 49 In the course of the conflict, he would suffer from carbuncles and boils, before being invalided in May 1918 with ‘deafness’ (euphemistically known as ‘defective hearing’), the perennial disability of those who had served in an artillery formation. Ex-Gunner Treacy would be able to resume his club memberships and to admire the Victorian bush for forty-two more years following the war. Back at that distant home, Camberwell Grammar had fostered vigorous debate since 1912 and few of the school’s many societies and clubs were now as strong as the Debating Society – audi patienter, loquere sapienter – “listen patiently, speak wisely”. The six topics selected by this Society for debate in 1917 reflected the feeling of total war felt throughout the nations of the growing number of belligerents. They included, in June,

66

67

I

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YEAR OF FADED HOPES

“That America Has Furthered the Cause of the Allies More by Entering the War than by Remaining Neutral” and “Should Compulsory Military Training be Introduced Throughout the British Empire After the War?” In July, the boys debated “Will the War Improve the Trade of Australia?” and “Will the White Australia Policy be Possible After the War?” – this discriminatory immigration policy endured for another fifty years, but that may not have appeared inevitable in 1917. Only in August were the debaters able to choose their own impromptu topics that did not include issues related to the war or its aftermath.

By that time, the numbers of fallen listed in the Magazine’s In Memoriam following the battle at Bullecourt in April-May (where some 10,000 Australians had perished) had already reached an official total of fourteen - it was in fact seventeen by May (and eighteen by June), as the juvenile Douglas Wood had not yet been included in the listing until his status was known in early-1917 (and not entirely settled until early-1918). Nor was the School yet aware of the death on 3 May 1917 of Oscar Wiedemann (1897), a mature former coach builder of thirty-seven, but still ‘fresh-complexioned’; this veteran of the local Militia Garrison Artillery was the son of a Swedish (or German) migrant and long separated from his wife in Auburn. Private Wiedemann was machine-gunned whilst a member of a bomb carrying party near Bullecourt – he was left lying, unburied, in a shell hole and his identity disc was not recovered until 1926.50 Oscar had been one of the only a dozen boys who had enrolled at Fermanagh Road in 1894 in the midst of the ‘Nineties depression; separated from his wife, Ruby, for the previous eight years, his wartime death ended a troubled period of his life – his only son, Francis (b.1905), died in 1975; Ruby had died in 1961. Wiedemann serves as a reminder that many men of middle-age were keen to serve alongside their comrades of an earlier generation, some young enough to be their own sons.

when former bank clerk Lieutenant Henry Thomas (1903; ‘greyish-green eyes’) was killed in the trenches at Armentieres by a loose, high explosive shell that followed him to a dead-end, killing him instantly. The young Henry featured as a nine-year old in the centre of the first row of the 1904 school portrait – he is holding a drooping staff with the school colours. ‘Harry’, alongside his friend Billy Pemble, was one of the first of the school’s boarders in 1908, when the Burke Road campus opened, even though his home address was Prospect Road, Camberwell. He had played in the 1st XVIII. Mrs Hall, the well-respected and maternalistic backbone of her husband’s boarding establishment, must have been especially grieved over the deaths of a number of the young men whom she had once mothered as school boarders. Once the 1917 campaigns opened in the northern spring, Thomas would soon be joined by other casualties. The Grammarians who fell in those spring weeks included twenty-six-year old ex-farmer Herbert Tuckfield (1906) of Hawthorn, older brother of Frederick, who had survived Gallipoli at the cost of his left eye. Killed on 14 April after less than a year’s service, Herbert had no known grave. A current member of the school staff is related to these two brothers, the family being amongst the many who suffered multiple casualties in this period. The most grievous example of this phenomenon was the McKinley family of Camberwell.

Lieutenant Harry (‘Rob’) McKinley (1902), one of four brothers on active service – three of whom were killed in action – died at Bullecourt on 11 April, three weeks short of his thirty-third birthday, torn by shell fragments in the back and abdomen and dying of his wounds almost immediately. The dark-complexioned ‘Rob’ had already been twice wounded in 1916 and his body was left on the field when the Germans recovered the ground on the same day. An engineer, McKinley was a noted athlete at both Camberwell Grammar and subsequently at Melbourne Grammar. Described in his service record as ‘indefatigable’ and ‘punctilious’, both significant military virtues, he left a young widow in Hawthorn where the couple had owned a motor garage.

The first victim of the year had fallen earlier in February, 68

69

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YEAR OF FADED HOPES

The last two of the Bullecourt casualties of 1917 fell on the same day in May. The first of this unfortunate pair was ex-bank clerk Corporal Edgar (‘Ted’) Millward (1913) from East Camberwell, a former Prefect, cadet NCO and outstanding sportsman as ‘one of the best players in the XVIII’.51 The twenty-year old former Bendigo bank clerk had enlisted in May 1915, being subsequently wounded in the ankle and wrist at Gallipoli in September of that year. On Saturday, 5 May 1917, at Bullecourt, he was taken down with a fatal stomach wound by a German machine-gunner – such abdominal wounds were especially feared by the men in the trenches. A comrade laid his body in a shell-hole, but that hole was later covered during the battle and Millward, like so many others, has no known grave. However, his name is inscribed on family gravestones at the Bendigo cemetery. Back home in 1917, ‘Ted’ had joined his cousin, Henry Thomas on the school’s In Memoriam list. The second casualty of that May Saturday was former Lance Corporal Walter “Hughie” Anderson (1908), another Gallipoli veteran and one of four brothers (Edward, George and Warren) in the AIF – two of these brothers were already training in England when Walter enlisted in January 1915. Wounded in the head at Lone Pine in August 1915 and again at Pozieres in July 1916. Walter’s luck ran out on 5 May 1917 when he died at Bullecourt from concussion caused by a shell that landed on his bombing post in the line, instantly killing the other four occupants of the post. The diminutive Walter (5’3”) seemed to have survived, as his body was unmarked, but he collapsed soon after, despite assuring his comrades that he could walk back to the dressing station unaided. His personal Bible and fountain pen were returned to the parents of this twenty-seven-year old bachelor. Anderson, who had earlier voluntarily surrendered his Corporal’s stripes to return to the trenches with his mates, a not uncommon practice, has no known grave.52 He was remembered by his comrades as ‘a very popular and fine fellow’; his Age death notice listed the fact that he had returned to his battalion from his English sick-bed.53

Millward and Anderson, however, were not the last of the Australian spring casualties of 1917 – this bleak honour went to Eric Vaughan, killed at Ploegsteert Wood in Flanders on the last day of May, three days short of his twenty-second birthday.

A slight young man (5’4”) this former farm manager died when he was buried following the landing of a German shell near to his working party building an ammunition dump: ‘He lived only a few seconds.’54 Unlike many who died in a similar fashion, Vaughan’s body was disinterred and later given a proper military burial at the Strand Military Cemetery, Belgium. He was described as ‘well-liked by his mates’ and as ‘a decent fellow’.

Warren Vaughan (1909), his older brother and a Light Horseman in Egypt, survived the war and died peacefully at East Brighton in 1980, fully recovered from wartime mumps and a shoulder wound. Two brothers - a young man of twenty-one killed in action and an octogenarian, these two brothers give us an instructive indication of the life span denied to those who had fallen in the Great War.

70

71

II The CGS toll had now reached twenty before the close of the (northern) summer of 1917 with, firstly, the report of the death from enemy shellfire in June of Lieutenant John McWhae (1901), a former Ballarat miner and stockbroker (like his father, Sir John McWhae, MLC) serving in the British Army (Royal Field Artillery) at Ypres in Belgium, a place name that would soon become familiar to Australian readers. McWhae had received the Military Cross following the Battle of the Somme in 1916, when he commanded an artillery unit with distinction following the illness of his two senior officers. However, his luck had not endured through the fighting at Ypres, where he was killed by enemy shellfire. The Lieutenant’s younger brother and grazier, Kenneth (1912), serving in the Australian forces, survived the war, having been repatriated in early-1916 following episodes of

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YEAR OF FADED HOPES

gastric pain, headache, loss of appetite and heartburn. Returning to the Old Country in the 1920s, Kenneth served as a civil servant and pastoral manager on the island of Guernsey. He re-enlisted in the British Army during the Second World War, eventually serving in the Home Guard prior to his shipboard death en route to Australia in 1943. That same summer month of June 1917 also saw the death of Gunner Arnold Bailey (1913), a twenty-one-year old Camberwell electrician who died at Messines in Belgium - he had first enlisted in March 1915, but for some reason had been discharged shortly thereafter, re-enlisting in April of the following year only to be killed on 19 June 1917. He is buried in the Belgian Strand Military Cemetery near Eric Vaughan, a former schoolmate.

The official Magazine back home had always paid a suitable level of respect to those who had sacrificed their lives in the service of the Empire since 1914, but understandably, it still preferred to offer readers details of the living in accounts of good fortune, ones that hinted at the prospect of a final victory. Amongst these was the fate of Lieutenant-Colonel Edward Waters (1894), former prosperous St Kilda Road patent attorney, former President of the OCGA (1913) and a Gallipoli Light Horse veteran for the last two months of that ill-fated campaign. Waters, a married man, was also the oldest Grammarian serviceman, having been born in 1873, enlisting in 1915 as a quadragenarian – he had been subject to a ‘lucky escape’ when in command of the First Anzac Entrenching Battalion in mid-1917: ‘A big shell smashed up his telephone hut and his office and damaged his sleeping hut. He had just left his telephone. As the explosion shattered the face of his watch, he was extremely fortunate in being unhurt.’55 Waters went on to command the 4th Light Horse Brigade Headquarters until April 1918; he died peacefully in Melbourne in June 1936, two weeks after his sixty-third birthday. A younger brother, William (1899), was commissioned in 1916 as a Lieutenant in the 16th Battalion as an engineer, but his record indicates that

soon he ‘was in trouble with his superiors who wanted him discharged’.56 A six-footer, William was prevented from embarking and discharged in April 1917, but he managed to re-enlist in the 32nd Battalion soon after, returning from European service in March 1919 – his service medals were ‘forfeited’, for some unspecified reason. The Magazine back home failed to mention the name of this rebellious soldier in its accounts of overseas service, now featuring a section of “PROMOTIONS” alongside that of “HONOURS”, where it listed the elevation of some and the distinctions of others, offering their old School’s ‘heartiest congratulations’. The honours list was lengthening as the war went on - Harold Rodda was now a Captain and sharing a French dug-out with fellow Old Boy Captain Walter Spiller (1908; ‘Complexion: Medium’), a former warehouseman and another Gallipoli veteran wounded twice on the Western Front before being invalided with lung and thorax complications; twenty-six-year old Clarence Daly, (1903) DSO, was now a Lieutenant-Colonel, one of the few Grammarians to have reached this high rank during the war. Clarence Wells Didier Daly (to give him his full name), was a Tasmanian who had moved to Canterbury as a child, had been a bank clerk after leaving school, but he had joined the fledgling Australian Army in 1911, having reached the rank of Captain by the beginning of the war. He was amongst the small number who had landed at Gallipoli on that first day, alongside Alfred Derham - an original ANZAC - when he was wounded in the calf. Re-joining his comrades in the following May and noted for storming the German Officers’ trench at Lone Pine in August 1915, Daly remaining on the peninsula until the evacuation in December, a distinguished, exceptional, example of an ANZAC present at both the beginning and end of that ill-fated campaign.

In France from April 1916, he fought at Pozieres, where he was praised for having ‘maintained discipline and esprit de corps in his battalion’.57 The British field commander Sir Douglas Haig noted his qualities of leadership which had, on one occasion, resulted in the capture of an entire German fighting patrol of

72

73

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YEAR OF FADED HOPES

one officer and forty-two men. Unfortunately, Clarence Daly would not survive the campaigns of early-1918 – he would be killed in the following April during the final German spring offensive of the Kaiserschlacht. Nor would another Grammarian of distinguished service in 1917 survive the final year of the war - the former Lilydale law clerk Lieutenant Thomas Eales (1913; also twenty-six-years old), was decorated with the Distinguished Conduct Medal in mid-1917 after ‘daring and valuable reconnaissance work’, going forward alone and locating an enemy machine gun ‘which was then silenced by the rifle-fire of the Australians, several casualties being inflicted on the enemy’.58 Eales’ moment of glory would be fleeting.

the landing of the Australians at Gallipoli’ two years earlier – it was a special occasion intended to include the girls of Fintona, a school then neighbouring on Burke Road, as well as Grammarians themselves. The flags of both schools were draped at the back of the stage of the church hall alongside the Union Jack, all prepared by the prefects themselves in readiness for a capacity audience of over 600 that included those neighbouring girls under the supervision of Miss Hughston. Communal singing included “The Bugles of England”, and “Rule Britannia”, after which the Head ‘read Sir Ian Hamilton’s message to the people of Australia and said a few words on school loyalty and patriotism’ – Hamilton was the British general who had commanded during the Gallipoli campaign. The guest speaker (Sir Robert Best, MHR for Kooyong) then addressed his audience on ‘the part the Empire had taken in the Great War’. Finally, ‘the captain of CGS’ (Austin Byrne, 1918) ‘called for cheers for the flags of the Empire’, a call greeted with enthusiasm. Captain Derham closed the occasion with his description of the Gallipoli landing on 25 April 1915, including his personal experiences. Derham would later similarly address the first term School Concert, describing life in the trenches, speaking of ‘the comradeship and mutual sacrifice amongst the soldiers’, an early example of the beginnings of the legend of Australian military ‘mateship’. ‘He praised in the highest terms the discipline of the Australians’, something he had personally witnessed in the Dardanelles and elsewhere.

Interestingly enough, discipline was not generally considered to be amongst the many virtues of the average Digger, but the assembled boys and girls were not aware of this widespread view.

The “Old Boys” column of the 1917 Magazine was also now able to list those who had survived service in France and Belgium and been repatriated home, ‘returned’ servicemen owing to ill health and/or war injuries – their overseas service entitled them to join the new, ex-servicemen’s RSSILA (later the RSL), thereby gaining status and a certain level of social privilege.

Amongst this group of the returned were Harry Michael (1913), a former clerk who had enlisted in Geelong and was now being treated in Caulfield for a fractured ankle after abortive war service in England that had been punctuated by skin disease.

Fred Johnson (1915), another former clerk, was at the same clinic with a wounded arm, alongside Private J. Coyne, who was not an Old Boy but who wrote to the School in order to thank CGS for bestowing cots on the St Kilda Base Hospital, where he was recovering from wounds. Camberwell students would also later donate forty-four dozen eggs on ‘Hospital Egg Day’ for the benefit of such convalescing soldiers.59 One celebrated returned servicemen, the highly decorated Captain Alfred Derham, was able to attend the School’s 1917 ANZAC Day service – its first such occasion – held at St Mark’s on Wednesday, 25 April, where he was greeted by Mr Hall as a ‘real Anzac’ – Hall was not exaggerating.60 This service was held in order ‘to commemorate

The ANZAC Day singing group also performed particularly well at the revived School Concert (following a gap of 19 years) held at the end of the first Term, also in April, where the boys (or at least the Prefects) were again allowed to organise the event themselves with the staff taking, literally, back seats at St Mark’s Hall.61 The boys marched across Burke Road ‘with the

74

75

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YEAR OF FADED HOPES

school flag in front’ and the vigorously applauded items in the concert included Mr Taylor (who taught at the School in 1917 only) presiding over more patriotic songs: ‘A School song was sung for the first time, and proved a welcome contribution to the boys.’62 This School Song, undoubtedly composed by Mr and Mrs Hall, has remained unchanged in the subsequent one hundred years, despite falling out of official favour in the early 1950s and disappearing for many of the Dyer years (1966-87) - it is still sung with vigour in the twenty-first century, even if the school referred to is no longer ‘On the hill that looks down towards the golden west’. Camberwell Grammar nevertheless remains ‘the School that we shall always love the best’. The talented thirteen-year old Roy Fitcher (1924; in his first year at the School in 1917, but destined to be School Captain), sang the verses of this new song very well and the new School Choir, established after the ANZAC service and again under Mr Taylor, joined in the chorus.

Fourteen-year old boarder and pianist Ronald Coote played the accompaniments to various subsequent songs and also played a piano solo. Their contemporary, Gordon McKenzie (who came and went in 1917) and Herbert Saunders (Year 10) played a piano duet. Recitations were given by Horton Browne (a seventeen-year old in his final year at the School) and a younger brother – his older brother Matthew (1914; aged twenty-one), a former prefect and head of the Boarding House in 1916, was already serving in the Field Artillery in France. Matthew survived the war and married in Sydney in 1949, aged fifty-three. This 1917 concert was almost like the distant days of peace, even if the broader environment was now a world removed from that of the inaugural concert of 1898, when all looked forward to the coming century with optimism. As the toll of war dead continued to mount, perhaps this modest revival of the performing arts at the School provided some with hope that life may one day return to normal after the war, hope that the ‘happy days at school’ lauded in the School Song would not always be followed and despoiled by the clash of arms.

Of course, not every Old Boy working to sustain the Empire was so militarily distinguished as Alfred Derham, or even in uniform. Many were working in civilian war industries, both at home and in the ‘Old Country’ and they were often overlooked amidst the wartime fervour for those uniformed veterans.

One of these distinguished civilians was thirty-three-year old Walter Holmes, MA, BSc (1900; Dux of the School 1898), who was based at Teddington in south-west London. Walter wrote an extended letter to Headmaster Hall on 13 May 1917 outlining the vital war work he was undertaking at the Metrology Department, National Physical Laboratory, near Hampton Court Palace, work that involved measuring the accuracy of gauges for artillery shells and cartridges.63 These gauges were used by inspectors before the shells were authorised for use at the front.

It was clearly an important job, but perhaps one without much glamour – he was working eleven-hour days, Monday to Friday, and four hours on Saturdays. Walter’s only social activity was choir practice in the local Baptist church on Tuesday evenings, a choir that was void of all young men of military age, conscription being rigorously enforced throughout Britain. Sundays were generally spent at the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court. Travel into central London, Holmes informed Mr Hall, was rare owing to exorbitant train fares as ‘the policy of the Government is to reduce railway travelling, so fares were put up by fifty per cent early in the year’. Walter had rarely met any Grammarians since moving to that great sink-hole of the Empire (London), other than Charlie Cherry (1892), who worked in the Commonwealth offices at the High Commission in the Strand, and Lieutenant Harley George (1901), who was still recovering in the capital from his wounded wrist and elbow sustained at Pozieres in the previous year. Walter Holmes was already looking forward to returning home to Melbourne, a time when he would be able to greet personally those he fondly recalled at his old school, that is the matronly Mrs Hall, the talented Miss Winnie Hall and the revered Mr McMenamin (“Mac”) – he was not able to

76

77

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YEAR OF FADED HOPES

do so until after the war, when working as a physicist at the Melbourne Observatory.64 The fact that mature Old Boys like Mr Holmes could maintain an impressive level of affection for their old school despite being half-a-world away speaks volumes for the ethos of the Camberwell Grammar School in this troubled era, when the war had been raging for almost three, long years.

A revolution had occurred in Tsarist Russia in February 1917, offering an impression of the democratisation of this hitherto authoritarian polity. The new Russian government immediately declared its intention of continuing the struggle against

the Central Powers and had unleashed an unsuccessful, costly military offensive in July which had nevertheless give some indication that the Austro-Hungarian Empire was teetering.

Back on the Western Front, however, the Germans were able to hold their position on the Siegfried Line (otherwise known as the ‘Hindenburg Line’) to which they had withdrawn in February, despite the spearheaded ANZAC attacks in June at Messines and later, in July to November at Ypres/Passchendaele.

Before the year’s end, the gathered forces of the British Empire had suffered 448,614 casualties since July, for the recovery of 130 square miles – the five Australian divisions alone were now severely depleted by 38,000 casualties, dead and wounded, and some wondered about their future viability, but the war, now three years old and no end in sight, went on. Cracks were appearing in Australian society, notably during the ‘Great Strike’ of August 1917, during which over 100,000 workers walked off the job (14,000 in Victoria), and the second conscription referendum in December, when the majority of voters again rejected notions of compulsory military service, despite being warned that those opposed to the notion were amongst the ‘Pro-Germans, the [socialist] I.W.W., the Sinn Feiners, and the Pacifists’.65 The boys of Camberwell Grammar did not seem to include any of those groups, so they pitched in to patriotic causes, attempting to thwart the industrial turmoil, as the Magazine reported in December: ‘Some of the senior boys were engaged on the wharves as carters and timber lumpers, etc., in the holidays during the strike. Although finding the work heavy at times, they enjoyed the experience.’ Wharf and timberyard labourers had been in the forefront of this industrial campaign, hence the disposition of these young Grammarian strike-breakers, who had answered the call of the federal government for ‘National Service’, joining teams from Geelong Grammar, Scotch College and Melbourne Grammar, whose volunteers even included some of the schoolmasters – there were over 1,000 strike-breakers on the Melbourne waterfront alone. Motivated by political and

78

79

Francis Derham’s Pay Book, 1915-17 – the final pages of the booklet contain a “Short Form of Will”. CGS Archives.

III

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YEAR OF FADED HOPES

industrial outlooks of a similar nature, a number of these senior Camberwell boys also attended local pro-conscription meetings later in the year, as they had done in 1916. Pleased though they may have been over the collapse of the strike, only disappointment followed this second referendum, but Camberwell boys nevertheless continued to serve in the ‘University and Schools [cadet] Corps’ and in the citizen Militia prior to joining the depleted AIF. Similar levels of disappointment were also evoked by the continued fighting in Europe, where peace continued to be elusive and where Camberwell Old Boys continued to pay the ultimate price demanded of the combat soldier, all convinced, as one Form III poet put it, that there could be no peace until the elusive final victory:

period of wartime inactivity, was at the forefront of maintaining contact with those hundreds of Old Boys still overseas, benignly excusing them from the need to pay their subscriptions ‘during the period of the war’, a war that was still showing no signs of conclusion, not at least on the Western Front.67 The Headmaster was now unable to communicate directly with the almost 200 Old Boys serving in the AIF, so he hoped that ‘they will accept as a substitute the School Magazine, a copy of which he sends to all those whose address can be obtained through the Hon. Secretary of the OCGA”.68 Understandably enough, a few on the frontline complained that their copies of the Magazine had ‘gone astray’, therefore being unable to read the news that Francis Derham was now a Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the 14th Field Artillery Brigade or that former commercial traveller Gunner Harold Bowden (1905) was returning home with varicose veins to “Tirohanga” at Auburn Road, Hawthorn. Harold was a pre-war friend of Francis Derham, with whom he had served in France, as had his younger brother, Colin (1903), another gunner. A former farmer, Colin chose to remain overseas for an extended period after his war service, not returning home until 1920. The Bowden family consisted of five brothers, but like many other Australian families in this period, it had been determined that not all of them would serve in the armed forces during the war. Two of Harold and Colin’s older brothers were also proud Grammarians; John (1899) was in the forefront of the establishment of the OCGA in 1910, alongside Alfred Derham; Oswald (1897) would be OCGA President in 1926.

“Peace!” The echo rang round the world – Peace to this world of war; But no peace can come till the Huns are hurled Back over their blood-stained shore.66

IV The “Old Boys” notes of the last half of 1917 continued to be dominated by military news – who had joined, who had been wounded, who had been decorated, who had returned and, of course, who had fallen. Visits to the Burke Road campus by these returned servicemen sporting the now coveted RSSILA badge, were now a common event in the school day – machine-gunner Herbert Wood (1913; Dux of the School 1911; proxime accessit, 1912), a dark-complexioned third-year dental student at the University of Melbourne prior to his enlistment in January 1916 was home having been demobilised following chest and abdomen wounds in March. He would complete his studies at his alma mater in 1918 – first in his class – and become a dentist in Ballarat and Hawthorn after the war. The OCGA, revived after a two year 80

Some veterans preferred to continue their sustaining service elsewhere in the Empire other than on the Western Front. Former farmer, Lighthorseman (and Gallipoli survivor) William Pender wrote to his old school from Palestine in September 1917 with an optimistic message: I have decided to take up the Army permanently. It is generally recognised that Indian Army is the place for the man who is keen on it, 81

CHAPTER FOUR

and my AIF sojourn has been such a fortunate one that I certainly am keen on following it up…We quite realise how fortunate we are to be in this theatre instead of France. Now that we are out of the Sinai desert, we have a splendid climate, and just enough fighting and cavalry work to make it interesting.69

His understandable relief at being away from the Western Front is obvious. True to his word, now Captain Pender’s Australian appointment was terminated in October and he set sail for Bombay to take up a captaincy in the 11th Lancers of the Indian Army. He finished his career as a married man in India, the jewel in the crown of Empire, as a Colonel (MBE) and Director of Farms, Military Farms Department. Pender had come a long way since joining the Light Horse regiment in September 1914 as a private, an example of war broadening the opportunities of young man who would most likely otherwise have remained farming at Minyip in the Wimmera. Few, however, were as fortunate as W.S. Pender and the In Memoriam roll grew significantly with more deaths on the battlefields of France and Belgium before the end of 1917, bringing the School’s number of fallen since 1915 to twenty-six. Gallipoli veteran Private Charles Michael, brother of the recuperating Harry, died on 22 September of leg wounds, to the surprise of his comrades who had carried him to a dressing station a mile back whilst he smoked and talked freely; ‘Charley’ was described by his comrades as ‘not a strong chap’ – he had suffered from pneumonia at Gallipoli – and he had told his mates on the morning of his wounding that ‘he knew he was going to “get one” which, hopefully, would get him a trip to Australia’.70 Unfortunately, he did ‘get one’, but it took him to Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery in Belgium rather than home to Seymour Grove, Camberwell, where his mother Emily was waiting for him. This former clerk was twenty-twoyears old. The fallen Private Michael was joined four days later

by Sergeant Thomas Hall, one of the boys featured in the 1904 school portrait (Dux of the School 1906; 1909; cousin of Edgar Millward, KIA in May). Hall was shot in the head by a German 82

THE YEAR OF FADED HOPES

sniper at Polygon Wood near Ypres in September – following service in Egypt ‘supervising native labour’ on the Canal, his knee had been accidentally injured in January en route to the French and Belgian trenches in 1916, troubling him thereafter, but he had first seen battle at Fromelles in July 1916. Hall’s body was never recovered. A more mysterious Grammarian also died in mid-September in Belgium – Donald Mackintosh (1908) of Auburn, who had enlisted in Dubbo, NSW, in August 1915 under the name of “Paul Harriss”. Wounded in the right arm in July 1916, Mackintosh/Harriss, a man of illegitimate birth, suffered the anonymity of death with no known grave and no Red Cross record. He was forgotten, like millions of others, except by his mother, Caroline, back in South Yarra. The Magazine back home failed to note his passing until June 1919 and then without accurate details.

The following month was worse and one day in particular seemed cursed. Forty-two year old Hugh Glass (1893) died in Belgium on 4 October of buttock, thigh and ankle wounds – still described in his military record as a ‘student’ despite his mature age, he left a daughter aged eighteen and a son aged ten at home in Sandringham with their mother Louisa; his 22nd Battalion comrade, former optical mechanic Lance Corporal Horatio Stuart Harvey (1918) had been in the same scouting unit and later praised the contribution of this senior Old Boy, old enough to be his father. Harvey would himself be wounded on the same costly day with ‘injured fingers’ leading to his eventual discharge.

Australian Army Medical Corps surgeon (Mr) Captain Eric Kerr (1910; younger brother of Dr Frank Kerr in the British Army) also fell at Ypres on 4 October, wounded by a shell as he was taking a breath of fresh air outside his forward Regimental Aid Post.

His comrades thought that no other medical officer had been held in ‘greater love or esteem’ – another brother, Alan, had been killed in action in July 1916. Eric’s widow Ottilie, whom he had married in January 1916 just prior to his enlistment, later moved 83

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YEAR OF FADED HOPES

to Stanley Grove, Canterbury, in time to witness the relocation of her late husband’s old school in 1935. Polygon Wood then claimed its penultimate Grammarian victim of the year on that notably fatal day (4 October) when former wool-dealer Sergeant Henry Smart (1900; ‘Hair: Dark, slightly Grey’) was severely wounded in the chest, shoulder and thigh. He died soon after, ‘delirious’ – Smart had suffered from lumbago and bronchitis prior to being despatched to the trenches, where he had been wounded in September but sufficiently recovered to be returned to the front in the following month. He was in his early-thirties at the time of his death in a military hospital. Thursday, October the fourth, 1917, would therefore constitute Camberwell Grammar’s ‘black day’ of the Great War, as costly in a single day as the entire Gallipoli campaign of eight months - a suitably grim ending to a terrible year of conflict. Ypres had been a curse and there was little joy in any recollection of service in this Belgian municipality. One Grammarian who survived was able to gain some distinction from this appalling month – twenty-four-year old Private Tamillas (“Tam”) Mappin (1913; Captain of School, 1912), a Medical Corps stretcher-bearer, would later receive the Military Medal for his persistence in rescuing numerous wounded men whilst under fire on 13 October. Tam received his own wound in the thigh but continued to lead his squad through a heavily shelled, cratered area, despite it ‘being practically impossible for an unencumbered man to make headway’.71 Mappin studied in Melbourne and London post-war and became an Anglican minister. President of the OCGA in 1930 and a chaplain in World War Two, his ‘wonderful example of self-sacrifice’ in October 1917 had offered indication that war often allows some men and women to demonstrate great humanity amidst the gross inhumanity of armed struggle. His experience also indicated that the unarmed members of the Medical Corps frequently displayed dauntless courage under fire. “Tam” died peacefully at Queenscliff in 1965.

It is quite possible that Private Mappin, or his fellows, attended on the following day to the final Grammarian victim of 1917, former storekeeper Lance Corporal Gilbert Brinsden J.P. (1896; ‘Complexion: Medium’), killed in action on 12 October at Passchendaele, wounded in the arm and dying on a stretcher.

Thirty-nine-year old “Bert” was distinguished in local government in Kingston, Hepburn Shire, as a coroner and secretary of the Mechanics’ Institute, amongst other offices - his death was noticed in the Ballarat press with regret as ‘the deceased was well and favourably known throughout the district’.72 Brinsden has no known grave but is commemorated at the Creswick cemetery on his parents’ grave, a consoling measure adopted by many families in the realisation that they would never be able to make the journey to the European sites of war.

84

85

Ω It had been business as usual at the Burke Road campus throughout 1917, despite (or perhaps because of) the momentous events occurring both overseas and at home. The Annual Athletics Sports took place at the Glenferrie Oval on Friday, 26 October, following which Mrs Hall hosted an afternoon tea for returned veterans and those about to engage in military service.

The former included Captain Alfred Derham, the recuperating Fred Johnson and Harry Michael, the driver and former tertiary student, twenty-two-year old William Sutherland (on leave from his Ammunition Company in France) and the demobilised machine-gunner Herbert Wood. Sutherland was the only one who had not been wounded at the front and he would survive the war unscathed. On that October afternoon, amongst the four guests about to depart for service in Europe were three recent school leaver recruits from the class of 1917: engineering student Gunner Allan Moon, bound for France in two weeks, where he was subsequently wounded and invalided owing to influenza in October 1918; Sapper Robert Robinson, who would serve at

CHAPTER FOUR

THE YEAR OF FADED HOPES

the front in late-1918 and would die just short of his hundredth birthday in 1998, thus being the longest surviving Camberwell Great War veteran; Geoffrey Ford, subsequently accepted as an Officers’ Training School in England, but unable to gain admission owing to the fact that he was still under nineteen. Instead, Ford trained as a Lewis gun instructor in 1918 and sent a prize back home for the Cadet Corps, of which he had been a member.

He escaped service at the front. Gunner Moon was able to resume his engineering studies post-war under the new Repatriation scheme. The fourth recruit present on that afternoon, Henry Anderson (1914 – no relation of Walter), was a re-enlisted veteran.

A twenty-one-year old civil engineer, Anderson had landed at Gallipoli on 2 December 1915, a fortnight before the evacuation began and was discharged from the AIF in July 1916. However, he re-enlisted at Hawthorn a month after Mrs Hall’s afternoon tea and returned to Europe in August 1918.73 Whatever was to come in Europe in the following year, this mixed gathering at the Burke Road mansion was a success: ‘They were delighted with the opportunity thus provided of meeting together again…

Afternoon tea, which was greatly appreciated by the lady visitors, was carried round by some of the boys.’74 Life went on at the School ‘On the hill that looks down towards the golden west’.

made the immediate prospect of pushing the Germans back to their homeland seem even remoter – there was no immediate prospect of pushing the enemy ‘back over their blood-stained shore’, as one schoolboy poet was about to suggest in the Magazine. Further east, the Ottoman Empire was being gnawed at the edges in Mesopotamia and in Palestine, but these fronts remained sideshows. None of those gathered at Burke Road for that afternoon tea were likely to have considered that 1918 would be the last year of this dreadful conflict. The battles of 1917 had taken a marked toll of Grammarian volunteers – the year 1917, an annus horribilis, had claimed the lives of sixteen Old Boys, the In Memoriam list now totalling, although not accurately acknowledging, twenty-one deaths (it was, in fact, already twenty-six) and the Roll Of Honour had expanded to now number just over 160 – a death-rate of over fifteen per cent, more than double that at the beginning of the year. No amount of patriotism, imperial sentiment, familial pride or afternoon tea could overlook this grim statistic and Headmaster Hall grimly announced at the annual prize distribution night in December that the School would establish a scholarship program for ‘war orphans’, something that he claimed had been on offer for the last two years.75 No-one in August 1914 had entertained that prospect, but times had changed, as sustaining the Empire was proving an ever-costly task.

Discussion on this pleasant October afternoon no doubt included matters dealing with the precarious state of the war.

Considering the prospect of an Allied victory, there was sufficient scope for both optimism and pessimism, depending on the outlook of any observer. On one hand, the German unrestricted submarine warfare campaign had failed to strangle Britain, bringing the United States into the conflict in April and American forces were now arriving in France in significant numbers. However, on the other hand, the Eastern Front had disintegrated, with revolutionary Russia only weeks away from another insurrection and only months away from a withdrawal from the conflict. Additionally, mutinies in the French Army had 86

87

The gravestone of Corporal Leslie Thomasson (Captain of School, 1911), killed-in-action at Villers-Bretonneux in August 1918. He was twenty-three-years old.

Major Francis Derham (seated, centre), battery commander in the 4th Field Artillery Brigade, pictured with fellow officers and a mock battery mascot. Amiens, France, August 1916.

This lanyard was presented to Major Bruce Doery by the Cadet Auxiliary in 1997 in recognition of his outstanding service to the Unit.

CGS Archives, Doery Collection.

Four of the five ‘Bowden boys’ with their parents in 1913, including Harold (1905) at the front – Colin (1903), the other AIF serviceman from this family, is absent.

Harold Bowden (l.), Francis Derham and Colin Bowden at “Tirohanga”, Hawthorn, prior to departing for France, November 1915.

Gunner Harold Bowden returns home to Hawthorn with varicose veins, December 1917. He died in 1953.

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

CHAPTER FIVE “Fighting Chances” and the Endgame, 1918.

“There Should be Reprisals in War.” Debating topic, Camberwell Grammar Debating Society, 13 July 1918.

“We are very proud that one of our members lately offered his services with the AIF; though he will not now be required to go. Still we are proud that he offered.”

Intermediate Form notes, November 1918.

entered the Holy City at that time. Nevertheless, the German homeland remained defiant and physically untouched by a conflict that had devastated large parts of Europe and no-one could have predicted with any well-founded conviction or plausibility that the war was likely to end in the year 1918. Unexpectedly, the year would in fact prove to be an endgame in which the Germans came within a whisker of victory on the Western Front in March, only to be near collapse before the year’s end, then seeking an armistice in November. On the Western Front, the newly constructed Australian Corps was to play a vital part in driving back the enemy during the period July-October 1918.

Back home, the graduates of Camberwell Grammar in 1917 and those reaching the end of their school years in 1918 could only have expected that the Great War would continue into 1919 and perhaps beyond; the level of recruitment amongst Camberwell Old Boys remained high, despite the increasing number of the fallen and despite an increasing disinclination in the broader Australian society to don the khaki or navy-blue of the Australian forces.

I

A new year, 1918, and still no indication that any serious attempt at peacemaking seemed possible. From the Allied point of view the entry of the USA into the war was promising, but it soon had to be balanced against the formal withdrawal of now Soviet Russia from the conflict following the burdensome Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918. On the other side, the Central Powers could take pleasure from the fact that they continued to survive relatively intact as the fortunes of war wavered. The Austro-Hungarians had even managed (with German help) to rout the Italians at Caporetto in November 1917 to the surprise of all, but the Turks had lost Jerusalem in the following December – several Grammarians were amongst the Light Horsemen who

The new year had barely begun when the first Camberwell Grammar death was registered, and it was a very significant one.

Light Horse Captain Malcolm Kennedy was a twenty-six-year old Gallipoli veteran, wounded in the wrist at Lone Pine where he had served as a machine-gunner. On the Western Front, Kennedy was an early proponent of the use of the tank as a method of overcoming the stagnation of the trenches, but he was mortally wounded on 2 January by a shell which exploded at his feet at Onraet Wood, Belgium. The Captain was attached to the Divisional HQ of the Australian division and he had been proceeding to the front at night. Treated at a nearby pill-box for chest wounds, Kennedy was carried towards a dressing station, but died of his neck and chest wounds after two hours. A popular

92

93

CHAPTER FIVE

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

officer, Kennedy’s military funeral featured a firing squad of over 100 riflemen. One of the few AIF officers who had trained at Duntroon before the war, this young man had been amongst the first to train tank crews in England and was highly regarded as ‘a good scholar, a fine musician, a leader in sport and, above all, a straight, manly fellow’.76 He had played for Melbourne in the VFL competitions of 1911 and 1912. A memorial tablet dedicated to Captain Kennedy was unveiled at St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne, by Archbishop Lees in November 1928 and one can only speculate what such a gifted person would have achieved in the post-war years had he survived the Great War.

of at the front of ‘risk and danger, while we remain at home in peace and quiet because we are a year or two younger than they are’. Candidly, Baker now suggested that ‘we [i.e. the boys of his cohort] do not regard the war in the light of an adventure’. This was in direct contrast to the outlook of many young Grammarians over the previous four years and a direct contradiction of the official line that these young men had been exposed to since August 1914. Since then, millions had died on both sides and Baker now (correctly) suggested that the war had become a struggle in which his old school mates had gone abroad to take their ‘fighting chance’ – there was no suggestion of the old heroism that had so often marked the official school addresses of recent years. Baker was, of course, respectful towards those who had made the ‘supreme sacrifice’, but the survivors were simply, steadily, ‘doing their bit’ and he now believed that the chief virtue amongst them was the determination to see this struggle through to the end:

Other Gallipoli veterans were recalled back home when ANZAC Day was suitably observed at the School on Thursday, 25 April 1918, with the flying of a new Australian flag donated by Craig McCormick (1920); the (red) Southern Cross emblazoned flag flew alongside the Union Jack (for the Empire) and the School flag, this trio representing the loyalties that any worthy Camberwell student was inevitably to display in this period – nation, Empire and School. McCormick returned to his native Britain (and Northern Ireland) once he completed his studies, but not before donating funds for a ‘War Orphans Scholarship’ for the following three years, matching the School’s intention to do so.

Naturally, some boys were more perceptive and more meditative about current affairs than others; amongst them was sixteen-year old Bernard Baker of Upper Hawthorn (1920; his birthday was 11 November). Baker’s school record indicates that he was an outstanding student – Captain of cricket, tennis and football; member of the 1st XI and 1st XVIII; Prefect; Captain of School; Rhodes Ideal Prize winner; cadet. It is not therefore surprising that his Magazine article in June – NON SIBI SED PATRIA (“Not for himself but for his country”) – was a subtle one that was of a more profound and insightful nature than was common in much of the Australian press at that time. Here he noted the unfairness of the departure of many ‘school-chums’ for a life 94

Thus we find our school-chums “walk up to the most perilous enterprise, beckoned onward by the shades of the brave that were”, and although they “made be weak by time and fate, they are strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find but not to yield”.77

His assessment, quoting Tennyson, was a wise one, tempered by the years of a conflict that still seemed unfinished. It was written when the massive German offensive of March-April (the Kaiserschlacht – “Kaiser’s Battle”) had been halted. Despite the compensation of this tactical success, the School’s death toll alarmingly escalated in the first six months of the year from twenty-six to thirty-four as the ‘shades of the brave that were’ darkened. These developments were undoubtedly a factor in the transition from hero-worship to fatalism displayed by the perceptive Bernard Baker and others.

The German offensives and other military complications of the first part of the year claimed the lives of eight Old Boys, a 95

CHAPTER FIVE

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

disturbing figure equalling the death toll of the first two years of the war. Those who paid the ultimate sacrifice in these months were not all victims of the Kaiser’s armies, including one, Lieutenant Joseph Sorby (1914) of Hawthorn, a gunner who died in a Yorkshire hospital on 4 April of a duodenal ulcer and peritonitis – he was buried in the mother country. Another who perished in unexpected circumstances was Private William Pettett (1898; known as “Claude”) of the 39th Battalion, the Association of which has now formed a relationship with the Camberwell Grammar School Army Cadet Unit. The thirty-six-year old former farm manager Pettett was wounded by an Australian sentry on 30 April 1918 and subsequently died – he had served for over two years in France, suffering from bronchitis on the way, and his ‘accidental’ death was the subject of a subsequent Court of Enquiry, which exonerated the sentry, considered to have acted ‘in the execution of his duty and no blame is attachable to any person’.78 Untoward though these deaths were, Sorby and Pettett had at least been spared the undignified fate of the trenches, but they were soon joined by those who were arguably less fortunate.

Daly was buried with great honour at Hazebrouck Communal Cemetery in northern France alongside nearly a 1000 other fallen Allied serviceman – his beloved horse was said to have been buried with him. The death of this high ranking twentyeight-year old was noted with particular sadness in the following year’s Magazine.

A week after Sorby’s illness came to its conclusion, the second Grammarian casualty at the front occurred with the death of the decorated Lieutenant-Colonel Clarence Daly, the Gallipoli veteran wounded in that campaign in 1915 and again in France in 1917. On the morning of 13 April 1918, he was approaching the lines of “Fritz” in France on horseback with his unit when the enemy opened fire in an ‘inferno’. An eye-witness noted that Daly dropped after being hit by a shell: Though badly hit, he got up and staggered along a few paces, leading his horse which was also wounded…He had been badly wounded in the jaw and stomach. After applying a field dressing, Bob said to him “I’m afraid we we’ll have to shoot your horse, Sir.” “Alright,” answered the Colonel, “but take him behind the hedge, as I could not bear to see you do it.” …One of the stretcher bearers told me later that the Colonel lasted about half an hour after being hit.79

96

ANZAC Day 1918 saw the death of a veteran older than Daly (a bachelor), when Eric Bruun (1897), aged thirty-eight, was felled by a sniper as he was going forward to collect some German prisoners. Private Bruun was the father of two daughters and a son back in Woodend – his sister, Alice, was an Army nurse serving in England. Their father, Ludwig Wilhelm Bruun, was a German migrant who had migrated to Victoria in the 1870s and Private Bruun was accordingly one of many Australians of German descent who felt the need to display their allegiance to the new country rather than to the old in this terrible internecine war. Bruun was described in his war record as ‘about 5 feet 10, dark, well built, of an enquiring mind’. He has no known grave, but his death occurred on the outskirts of a French village that was entering the annals of Australian military history in this last week of April 1918 - Villers-Bretonneux, the recapture of which General Monash later referred to as ‘the finest thing yet done in the war by Australians or any other troops’. German descent was, of course, the subject of contention during this period, but Camberwell Grammar appears to have been more tolerant of such diversity than many other similar institutions at that time. Richard Heinrich Löhn (1919) of Canterbury, for example, a Prefect (1918), and Athletics champion (1918,1919), was accepted and promoted as a cadet Sergeant in 1918; however, he usually spelt his surname without the distinguishing umlaut.

Nevertheless, the suggestion in the official school history that the enrolment of a student of German extraction at Camberwell Grammar would have been ‘foolhardy’ in these years, needs to be qualified.80 ‘Lohn’ later became a shearer in NSW in later years.

97

CHAPTER FIVE

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

May 1918 was an equally sombre month. Thirty-one-year old Lance Corporal Oscar Watt (1902), once a St Kilda storekeeper, was killed by a shell on 9 May. A member of the 3rd Pioneer Battalion, Watt was the father of two daughters aged five and three at the time of his death. Married in 1913, his wife Clarice survived him by forty-three years. Although Watt was buried in the field and his grave was photographed as late as 1919 by old comrades touring the battlefields, he was later reburied in a communal grave, the site of which could not be identified in the years that followed. His older brother, Charles, served in the same pioneer unit as a driver – he survived the war and died in 1983 aged 96. This grim month also saw the demise of two particularly outstanding Camberwell veterans – Lieutenants Thomas Eales and Robert Little – the latter of whom has entered the annals of Australian aviation history. The first, Lieutenant Eales (1913), formerly a law clerk at Lilydale, was a Gallipoli veteran who had suffered frostbite and jaundice on the peninsula in November 1915 and was then wounded in action twice on the Western Front, in the arm and chest (August 1916) and in the cheek (October 1917), both lucky escapes. After being decorated for ‘daring and valuable reconnaissance work’ which had involved the silencing of an enemy machine gun, and after attending Officer School at Cambridge, he was promoted from Corporal, but on 19 May 1918 his luck ran out at Villers-Bretonneux. Aged only twenty-one, Eales was killed instantly by a shell at 6am on that day. A witness reported that after the shell had burst above his patrol, the Lieutenant ‘put his hands up to his neck and said “I’ve got it” – they were the last words he spoke and he died directly after’.81 The Lilydale Express subsequently noted the passing of this distinguished local with great sadness.82 Two brothers (Duncan, Dux of the School 1914, and William, 1916) survived war service, the former untouched, returning to ‘bank duties’ after the war and the latter returning home after being wounded in the back in action in September 1917.

A younger third brother, Kenneth, served in the Second World

War. The extended relations of Thomas Eales thus provide an exemplary insight into the fate of a typical Australian family during the Great War, as well as indicating just how extensive the Camberwell Grammar connection was in many families at that time; their older cousin, Lance Corporal Gilbert Brinsden, had been another of the fallen in late-1917.

A week later, on 27 May 1918, these losses were matched by another of great significance, when former bookseller Lieutenant Robert Little (1914; Gallery of Achievement) of the newly formed Royal Air Force was shot down in his Sopwith Camel biplane.

Little is regarded as the most successful Australian air ace of the Great War with an official tally of forty-seven victories – he thus ranks as the fifteenth most successful (or deadly) ace of the First World War, the tenth most successful of all Allied pilots and the eighth ranked pilot of the British Empire – a significant achievement. Born in July 1895, Little had an undistinguished time in the three years that he attended Camberwell Grammar School, but, as so often, war gave him the opportunity to shine. A travelling salesman in his Canadian father’s bookselling business, Little, aged twenty-nine, travelled to Britain at his own expense in 1915 following the repeated rejection of his applications to train as a pilot at the Point Cook facilities of the Australian Army’s Central Flying School. Once in the mother country, he was able to join the Royal Naval Air Service in January 1916 – this determined young man had paid for his own training at a private aero club in Hendon and had gradually mastered significant bouts of air sickness and issues affecting his eyesight. Posted to France and Belgium in June 1916, the new pilot thereafter began to clock up victories at a steady rate. By mid-1917 his tally was twenty-four, including twin victories in a day on four occasions. His skill in the Sopwith Pup and later the Camel (known to a later generation as the aircraft of “Biggles”) was especially notable and before the end of 1917 he had been promoted to Flight Commander and decorated with the DSO, the DFC (Distinguished Flying

98

99

CHAPTER FIVE

Cross) and the Croix de Guerre, a rare award for a British airman.

“Rikki” to his comrades (nicknamed after an aggressive Kipling character, the mongoose “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”) was not considered a polished pilot by some, but he was accepted by his comrades as ‘bold, aggressive and courageous’. By now a loving and sensitive husband and father, his chief hobby was collecting wild flowers, but Little turned down the offer of a desk assignment in 1918, returning to action high above the Western Front in March. His squadron was now part of the Royal Air Force after its formation in April and Captain Little extended his number of kills in a three-month period to an acknowledged total to forty-seven – his likely score was higher - before he was downed by a shot from the ground (or from a German bomber he was pursuing) on Monday, 27 May. With wounded thighs and groin, Little was forced to land, fracturing his skull and ankle in the process and subsequently bleeding to death still strapped in his aircraft. His body was not discovered until the following morning and was buried in a British military cemetery in the Pas de Calais, the grave marked by a crafted Celtic cross that bore the inscription “Killed in Aerial Combat”. Little’s widow, Vera (who died in 1977) and young son eventually returned to Melbourne; in later years Vera felt that her husband’s reputation had not been given due recognition – her home at Elwood housed a wooden propeller from one of her late husband’s aircraft.83 Certainly, Camberwell Grammar did not afford the war record of this ace the credit it deserved, leaving Scotch College to claim his heritage almost unchallenged. The centenary of the Great War is an appropriate occasion to redress this imbalance, not only because Little was a record setting pilot, but chiefly because of his commendable, personal level of determination and grit. He indeed is one who met the challenge of Spectemur Agendo.

100

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

Corporal Allan Fisher (1913) of the 5th Camel Corps Field Ambulance in Palestine, 1918. Fisher became a noted post-war academic and author of Palestine and Jerusalem: Reflections of an NCO in the Australian Imperial Force at the end of the First World War.

II Despite the continuing ferocity of the war in mid-1918, the flow of Grammarian recruits remained unchecked – this was not the case nationally, where it was becoming difficult to replace AIF casualties. The Magazine of Camberwell Grammar continued to express the disappointment of those Old Boys who, for various reasons, were unable to reach the battlefields of France and Belgium. Campbell Dickinson (1911; 1904 portrait, 2nd row, 7th from right) as Chief Veterinary Officer of the Northern Territory was unable to enlist as ‘the Government considered his services too valuable where he is’ – he received the compensatory title 101

CHAPTER FIVE

of a ‘Remount Officer’. Similarly, Stanley Mackay (1908), aged twenty-eight, was repeatedly rejected for six months (after which time the war was over); Jack Askew (1908; 1904 portrait, 2nd row, 4th from right) too was ‘still in the Garrison Artillery at Queenscliff [in June 1918]. He would like to get to the front’.84 He never got there. Sergeant Barry Chadwick (1916), a former Prefect, was employed on ‘home service’, allowing him to qualify as an accountant and to later serve as a member of the School Council, 1925-29; Keith Burnett (1917), a fresh school leaver, was invalided out of the services by mid-1918 before overseas embarkation, ‘much to his disgust’, later recovering his health in ‘the wilds of Western Australia’85 – he was one of the lucky ones, able to avoid the less desirable fate of, for example, Ammunition Column Driver William Bates (1915), who, the Magazine noted, ‘has had the misfortune to be gassed’ in April and kept in non-military employment thereafter. A warehouseman, Bates then returned home via the US at his own expense in order to study further his craft. Old enough to have enlisted legally in the Great War (b. April 1897), Bates was later young enough to re-enlist in the Second World War, serving from 1942-45 as a Captain.

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

We had a great reception and it would be impossible for me to my feelings of appreciation for the citizens of that great city, where we were received with open arms. We were invited to dinner, taken to theatres and for motor rides….On the Saturday I gave addresses to the New York public in the principal streets, and sold about £2,000 worth of Stamps and War Bonds. After dinner, at the Athletic Club, I sold the “A” (Anzac) off my shoulder for 15,000 dollars (about £3,000) for the War Fund.86

Private Anderson was later taken to Coney Island, ‘which is equal to about five hundred St Kildas’, and to a country club house. He also appeared in a local newspaper with an American flag draped over his shoulders. However, his reception back on the Western Front from August 1918 was not so cordial, but Anderson survived the war, discharged again in October 1919.

He died in 1979, aged 82.

It was the sense of adventure and the opportunity to travel that continued to attract Grammarians to the ranks (and cause those who later enlisted, too late for active service, to be honoured nonetheless). Civil Engineer Harry Anderson (1914) was one whose taste for both was not diminished by his extensive service. He enlisted in May 1915, aged only eighteen, and landed at Gallipoli in the last weeks of the campaign barely a fortnight before the withdrawal of 15-20 December in that year. He was subsequently discharged as an invalid in July 1916, but re-enlisted in November 1917 back at Hawthorn. This recovered, adventurous engineer sailed from Sydney soon after but was able to leave the ship in New York City in mid-1918, en route, in order to participate in a War Bonds rally in that city. His reception as an Australian soldier was a warm one, as he told those at home in a letter:

The failure of the Kaiser’s great offensive by mid-1918 would inevitably lead to an Allied counter-attack and back home, the boys of Camberwell Grammar maintained their patriotism at a high level. Their sentiments were fired at the time by a visit to the School in mid-1918 by “Captain Mac”, that is, William McKenzie, the famous pugnacious, Scottish-born Salvationist and military chaplain who had served with distinction at Gallipoli and on the Western Front - he was popularly known as “Fighting Mac”, “Salvation Joe”, “Holy Joe” and “Padre Mac”, a big man with a big voice. Now relieved from active service and in wavering health, “Mac” was touring Australia in the course of this year, delivering patriotic addresses in favour of the continuing war effort as the conflict entered its fifth year. Over 7,000 people had greeted him at the Melbourne Exhibition Building in the weeks prior to his visit to Camberwell Grammar, where his reception was also notably enthusiastic. Here, “Mac” described, amongst other things, the fight between HMAS Sydney and the Emden in November 1914, a naval battle that had already entered Australian naval mythology. The audience was especially keen to see his steel helmet and a number of his boxing trophies earned in many AIF contests through ‘a long reach, jarring upper-cuts and dangerous

102

103

CHAPTER FIVE

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

half-hooks’.87 It was not therefore surprising that pupils such as Henry Laurie (aged 9) simultaneously penned poems such as “Our Duty”, which stressed the theme of maintaining the duty of sustaining the Empire:

Canadians in tandem. The boys of Camberwell Grammar soon learned of the victorious outcome of this ninety-three-minute battle of Hamel and on Wednesday 17 July presented a new Union Jack to the School in gratitude. Following an address by Headmaster Hall on the “Old Flag”, School Captain Frederick Jarrett (1919) hoisted the new banner to the masthead ‘amid great cheering’.88 The boys could never forget their old mates serving overseas; soon after, the Debating Society received a prize from an enthusiastic former member, former law student Cuthbert Dickinson (1916; Captain of School 1915), currently serving as a gunner with the AIF in France – he would survive active service from June 1918, graduating post-war from the University of Melbourne (BA, LLB 1920; B.Com 1927), becoming President of the OCGA in 1927 and a member of the School Council, 1942-53.

We must fight till the war is over, We must work till it is done, We must fight like all good soldiers And the war will soon be won.

And when peace has come upon us, And the time is passing fair, We’ll greet the boys returning With shouts that rend the air.

Now it was time for the anticipated Allied offensives of mid1918. Significantly, from 31 May, the Australian Corps was commanded by one of their own, General John Monash, who would shortly demonstrate that he was one of the most innovative of the Allied commanders. His first major challenge came in early July at Le Hamel, where Monash utilised what he called ‘the maximum array of mechanical forces’, including aircraft and tanks – the first example of a proto-blitzkrieg which would contribute mightily to later victories by the Australians and

Later, the December 1918 Magazine, now flushed with a sense of victory, understandably wanted to concentrate on the stories of the victors, rather than the ‘sad news’ of those six who had died in the last half of the year, components of the year’s horrifying toll of fourteen, a figure second only to that of the previous year. However, a dozen Old Boys had sailed to Europe in the last months of the year as replacements. Others, like English-born Captain Stanley Cochrane (1898; Dux of the School 1896; brother of the fallen Frank), a medical officer from East Melbourne, arrived too late to serve at the front with his adopted compatriots – he had been brought to Australia aged three, but returned ‘home’ for his medical education at Edinburgh and Glasgow. Dr Cochrane became a well-loved medical practitioner at Mitcham after the war, known for cycling to his patients’ homes when called upon. By the war’s end, of course, the School’s list of those decorated whilst on service was lengthening – there were now 11 MCs, 4 MMs and 4 DSOs, amongst others; 1918 alone had seen the award of five Military Crosses and a Distinguished Flying Cross to Lieutenant John Gould-Taylor of the Australian Flying Corps, a twenty-one-year old pilot. One of the last winners of

104

105

And then we’ll all be happy When the foes have died away: There’ll be fires on the hilltops At the closing of the day.

Despite this youthful optimism, there would still be much bloodshed and anguish before the boys returning home could be greeted with ‘shouts that rend the air’.

III

CHAPTER FIVE

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

the coveted MC was Lieutenant Ivon Murdoch (1911;15th from the left in the 1904 portrait, to the immediate right of the mutton-chop-whiskered Mr Campbell). Murdoch had led a raid on an enemy pill-box in July, killing twenty of them and taking three prisoners. This action was despite a wound received three months earlier, with bruising on the left side of his face from gunshot wounds, resulting in ‘defective vision’ for the remainder of his life (he died in 1964). Further notable extended night patrols and raids on enemy positions followed in August, when the young Lieutenant further distinguished himself with some spirited defence of the many German field guns captured that month by the AIF – he would receive a bar to that Military Cross before the war’s end, an unprecedented achievement for a Camberwell Grammarian. Ivon was a younger brother of Keith, who had already established a reputation in journalism and war correspondence; Keith subsequently helped to fund a post-war study tour by Ivon to America, where he examined modern methods of fruit production under irrigation. The Department of Repatriation and Demobilisation unusually permitted Lieutenant Murdoch to be discharged in the US in 1919, allowing him an additional sixty days pay after that discharge. This younger Murdoch was considered to have lost twenty per cent of his vision owing to war injuries and he returned to farming after the war at Shepparton and in NSW, whilst his older brother moved in different circles in Melbourne and elsewhere. The Murdoch family was also represented at the front in 1918 by a third brother, Alan (1912; b.1894) the youngest of this outstanding trio. Like his older brother, Lieutenant Alan Murdoch, a former clerk, was awarded the Military Cross (at Messines in 1917 for ‘coolness and total disregard for danger’) and wounded in action in the right toe in August 1918. The Herald (a journal later owned

by Keith Murdoch) noted in May 1918 that this was the second MC awarded to members of the Murdoch family: “Two Brothers Win Cross.”89 By October Alan was serving on the headquarters staff of the 3rd Australian Division, thereafter being treated in

England for influenza and pneumonia, the afflictions that were taking almost as many lives as the trenches themselves.

106

107

Only the troops in the Middle East were able to avoid these northern maladies, at least while they remained in situ. One of these more fortunate servicemen, Old Boy Light Horse Trooper Austen Byrne, aged twenty, wrote to the School towards the end of the conflict expressing his delight that his regiment used the same colours as ‘the dear old school’. He was camped in Palestine, enjoying the nights which were ‘the most beautiful I have ever had the pleasure of sleeping in’, something of a contrast to the trenches of Belgium and France. Recalling his sporting days at the School, Byrne concluded that having ‘a hard go’ was his still guiding principle: ‘A game is only worth playing when you are playing all out.’ General Monash in France thought much the same, as did his nephew, who had served with his famous uncle at the front, and who was soon visiting the Burke Road campus of Camberwell Grammar as one of a series of speakers promoting patriotic outlooks. The Magazine relished such rays of light amidst the wartime gloom and continued to show great interest in any stories of good fortune, including the experiences of many veterans fortunate enough to have survived the trauma of recent conflict towards the end of 1918. Lieutenant Alan Burke (Captain of School 1914) was one of these lucky ones.

He had interrupted his architectural studies at the University of Melbourne in order to enlist and had been decorated for carrying wounded men out of danger and for rescuing five guns under fire in September 1918. Even though his battery’s position was enfiladed and attacked by gas, he remained at his position ‘under shell fire’. Burke was himself wounded in the legs and buttocks, but later commended for having ‘set a fine example to all ranks of the battery’ – he had enlisted in January 1916, aged only nineteen.90 The list of publicised achievements went on throughout the summer of 1918 – the highly decorated Harold Rodda continued to enjoy his characteristic good fortune and

CHAPTER FIVE

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

was now well known to the School’s readers, having received the Military Cross after rushing a German blockhouse and taking fifteen prisoners; six-footer Herbert Birch (1915) had won three silver egg cups in his Regimental High Jump before taking up a ‘Kitchener Overseas Scholarship’ at Oxford following a wound in the leg received in June 1918 when he was a stretcher-bearer – he graduated B.A. in 1920 and later qualified for the English bar, serving as a Major in the Second World War; Colonel Francis Derham was again mentioned in despatches; his brother Captain Alfred Derham had now passed his medical examinations in Melbourne and was returning to serve in military hospitals in France when the war came to an end; thirty-nine-year old Norman Mackintosh (1895; he had entered the School in 1887) had recovered the full use of his leg following several operations, despite a piece of shrapnel remaining embedded in the wounded limb for the rest of his life. Heroism, survival, bloodshed – when would it end?

both experienced the military leadership of the revered Major Whitehead in their respective cadet units in these pre-war years and one of those former cadets, young Berry had passed from his new school to the Dookie Agricultural College in early-1917, where he apparently struggled with the book work, but was ‘greatly interested in the practical work out-of-doors’.91 After only six months of study, this challenged young man joined the AIF in August 1917, aged only eighteen. He was soon ‘out-of-doors; in the trenches of the Western Front. Wounded in the head from shell fire near Proyart, France, on the night of 9 August 1918, Berry died two days later, on the first anniversary of his Melbourne enlistment and two months short of his twentieth birthday, but his family’s tragedy had begun ten months earlier in Belgium in October of the previous year, when Geoffrey’s older brother Guy, a sapper, was killed-in-action at Passchendaele.

Guy, like his other three brothers, was an alumnus of Canterbury Grammar, but being the oldest by three years, had not passed onto the Burke Road campus of Hall’s growing institution. The horrifying picture of multiple deaths within a family, siblings or otherwise, was all too common in the Great War, as an astute observer of any Australian war memorial may note, but at least the Berry family was spared even deeper misery through the younger ages of the remaining siblings, Richard and Hugh, both Camberwell Old Boys, who subsequently served in the Second World War; Richard (b.1902) served as a Private in the Army and Hugh (b.1905) in the RAAF as a Wing Commander – these younger brothers both survived this conflict, unlike their two older siblings two decades earlier.

IV The war went on through that northern summer of 1918, but the beginning of the end was signalled on Thursday 8 August. the Australian and Canadian Corps were at the forefront of a successful Allied offensive, followed by further Australian successes at Mont St Quentin and Peronne from 31 August, culminating in the breaching of the Hindenburg Line in September.

The Allied offensive launched against Amiens on 8 August (the ‘black day of the German Army’ as General Ludendorff called it) soon took its toll of Grammarians. The first was Geoffrey Berry (1917), a diminutive (5’4”; ‘Complexion: Fresh’), a nineteen-year old orchardist and another vulnerable, unarmed member of the Australian Field Ambulance. He had been one of the twenty-three students absorbed by Camberwell Grammar in December 1912 when A.S. Hall purchased the goodwill of the defunct Canterbury Grammar School from R.O. Tucker. The two schools had 108

On 12 August, Geoffrey Berry’s death was followed by that of former Warrnambool bank clerk Corporal Leslie Thomasson (1911) at Villers-Bretonneux. The Magazine described this fairhaired, blue-eyed, twenty-three-year old as ‘one of the most popular boys we have had’. The gifted Thomasson had been school champion in 1910, Captain of School and winner of 109

CHAPTER FIVE

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

the coveted “Rhodes Ideal” prize in 1911: ‘He was cheerful in disposition, utterly unselfish, and, above all, full of loyalty to the school. [This youngest son of his family] was ‘killed by shell fire…whilst assisting to carry a sick comrade from the line.’92 This sad death and fine example of mateship was followed twelve days later by that of thirty-one-year old Captain Harold Dench (1905), former Camberwell Grammar cadet and estate agent.

He had gained the reputation of a ‘very fine officer’ during the 1917 campaigns, where he had displayed ‘courage, ability and cheerfulness’, being considered worthy of the Military Cross.

A German sniper killed him instantly – ‘sniped through the heart’ - near Bray on the Somme. Well built (5’10”) and popular, Harry Dench was mourned by his comrades as an outstanding company commander and lauded by his commanding brigadier as ‘gallant’ in a letter which sought to console his parents with the thought that their son’s actions had contributed to an advance in the line.93 This was meagre consolation, perhaps.

Dench was a member of the Australian Natives Association, the patriotic organisation restricted to the Australian-born, aimed at fostering a sense of national identity and he had, at least, experienced more of life than the next casualty, Private Lionel Barnett (1916). He was a twenty-year old clerk and veteran of the Militia, who had enlisted in Claremont, Western Australia in 1917 and was killed-in-action on 29 August 1918, having returned to the trenches following his earlier recovery from influenza.

Dench was another young man, full of promise, who left the shores of his native land to serve overseas, but would never return home to Australian shores – it is very unlikely that any members of his family were ever able to visit his grave at the Military Cemetery, Harbonnieres, France.

A short intermission followed before, on 28 August, the last well-documented Grammarian of the Great war died, a veteran who elegantly personified much of the romanticised glamour that would adhere to the history of this conflict in later years.

Flight Lieutenant John ‘Jack’ Gould-Taylor (1918) had enlisted in the AIF in September 1916 as a nineteen-year old student.

Arriving in England in the following January, he was soon hospitalised with mumps for nineteen days. Then sent to France as a driver in an ammunition column, Gould-Taylor soon sought greater adventure and transferred to the fledgling Australian Flying Corps, where he became an accomplished pilot by November 1917. Having recently recovered from tonsillitis in July 1918, Gould-Taylor returned to active service in August, taking his aircraft on reconnaissance, when he was attacked by five enemy Fokker planes east of Dompierre, France, but ‘by skilful manoeuvring and dash’ he shot down one and drove off the others, continuing his mission to identify German trains, horse transports and batteries ‘which were [subsequently] neutralised’.

The award of the Distinguished Flying Cross followed. A young pilot of ‘great pluck and endurance’, Gould-Taylor’s luck ran out on Thursday morning, 3 October 1918, when his aircraft on early artillery patrol spotting was hit by an enemy shell. When soldiers of the Australian 21st Battalion recovered the wreck of his R.E.8 aircraft three days later, Gould-Taylor and his fellow pilot, an observer, were buried in the fields of a French farm besides their almost intact aeroplane, the bodies being relocated to a military cemetery after the war – members of his squadron later erected a cross of broken propellers at the site of his death.

John Gould-Taylor and Robert Little were the most notable Grammarians to have served in the Empire’s various flying corps in the Great War, a dangerous calling that perhaps makes their sudden deaths unsurprising. Both men were highly decorated during the course of their distinguished, if brief, military careers and have gained significant places in the history of Australian military aviation. Gould-Taylor’s mother later presented the School with a punching-bag and stand, the School Captain writing to her and thanking her for her kindness. One outstanding Grammarian, Clive Baillieu (1907; Gallery of Achievement), scion of a distinguished Melbourne family, Oxford graduate

110

111

CHAPTER FIVE

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

and eventually “Baron” Baillieu, would later play a significant role in the evolution of the Royal Air Force in Britain, having been seconded from AIF HQ in France where he had served as a Major since 1917. Baillieu was mentioned in Despatches for ‘valuable services’ in April 1918 and had received an OBE ‘for conspicuous services’ in June, his elevated social background undoubtedly assisting him in this regard. Clive’s father, the leading industrialist William, had expressed concern in 1914 at the outbreak of war that the ‘working classes’ would be ‘most seriously affected by hostilities’ – his fears had certainly been realised by 1918. Clive’s brothers (not graduates of Camberwell Grammar) also served, Harry in the British Army and Tom in the Australian Flying Corps, winning, like Gould-Taylor and Little, the coveted DFC.

achieved by any Grammarian in this conflict – after setting up in medical practice at Brighton between the wars, he returned to the services as a Brigadier in the Second World War, unsuccessfully standing for the federal parliament in 1943 as a candidate of the ‘Services and Citizens Party’. He died in 1944, chiefly remembered and decorated for his vigilance in supervising and improving medical facilities in the Great War.

In early October 1918, two days after the death of Lieutenant Gould-Taylor and one day before the recovery of his body, the exhausted infantry and artillerymen of the Australian Corps had been withdrawn from the front for rest – they were, according to official war historian Charles Bean, ‘pretty well played-out’, something of a studied understatement. After final fighting at Montbrehain, the Australian divisions were able to enjoy refitting behind the lines and some of the handful of 1914 recruits were permitted, at long last, to make their way home. One of them was twenty-eight-year old medical practitioner Edmund Lind (1906; Dux of the School 1905; Gallery of Achievement) a former member of the Melbourne University Rifles and fresh graduate in 1914 who had then served at Gallipoli throughout the eightmonth campaign, despite a serious shipboard fall which had fractured his skull. Extensive service later followed in England and France at Fromelles, Armentieres, Messines, Passchendaele and, in 1918, during the final assault on the Hindenburg Line – no other Grammarian served the full, uninterrupted term of conflict at both Gallipoli, the Western Front or elsewhere, 1914-18.

Lind ended the war as a Lieutenant-Colonel, the highest rank 112

As men such as Lind had departed from the front in late-1918, the war was now effectively over for the AIF and in those vital final weeks, Monash’s innovative tactics had reduced the death toll. Nevertheless, whereas eight Grammarians had fallen in the first half of the year, six had been added to the growing In Memoriam list in the last hundred days of the Great War, bringing the final, acknowledged total of the fallen to thirty-nine; one other would eventually be added, Roderick Hutton (1908) of Stanhope Grove, Camberwell, who served, and died, in some other undocumented arm of the Empire’s services. The gruesome, mournful list was now complete: the remaining troops of the depleted AIF were in the process of returning to the front when the Allies and Germany signed the Armistice in the early hours of Monday, 11 November, effective from 11am (Paris time). The outbreak of peace in the northern autumn had come with almost the same suddenness as the outbreak of war in that distant northern summer of 1914. Finally, the ranks of forty fallen Grammarians would no longer be augmented by any further deaths in action – at last, the ‘Great War for Civilization’, (as it later became known, inscribed on the Victory Medals awarded to all servicemen) was over. The ‘glorious Empire’ had been sustained. Ω The School on Burke Road had not been idle during these final months of the war. Another ‘Patriotic Fete’ was held at the 113

CHAPTER FIVE

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

Camberwell Town Hall on Saturday 17 August when a substantial £377 was raised without the accustomed raffles, but through ‘straight-out giving and buying’.94 The fete operated from 2.30 in the afternoon until 9.30 that night: ‘The hall was packed by an eager crowd of prospective purchasers…raffling was strictly tabooed, and all the material sold was given free of cost.’95 An auction disposed of a model yacht (£58) and a ladies gold wristlet watch (£7). The tireless Mrs Hall, assisted by ‘the ladies’, had again organised all of the preliminaries of this very successful occasion; Form VIb alone had raised £26 at their Novelty Stall and the sale of special badges gathered over £115. Camberwell Grammar’s contributions to the war effort through this fete and through contributions to a more extensive Canterbury Fete during these months amounted to £971 (nearly $100,000 by today’s figures). Before the year’s end, the boys of the School had additionally purchased 112 War Savings Certificates and further donated hundreds of eggs to the soldiers’ convalescent home at “Highton”.

following December. On Thursday, 7 November, for example, the Boarders had formed up their ‘Impromptu Band’ outside the campus on Burke Road, blocking traffic and playing suitable ‘martial strains’ despite a split drum. Behind was ‘a noisy, excited and happy crowd of boys following the band in some kind of order’. Soon the senior boys joined the throng marching down the hill towards Camberwell station. They were not alone: ‘Loud and long was the cheering when it was seen that the girls from [the neighbouring] Fintona had preceded us to the station.’ The crowd then returned to the grounds of Fintona in Burke Road, where, under the joint guidance of Miss Hughston and Mr Hall, ‘a patriotic demonstration was held’: As we stood under the Union Jack, the bugle band played the “General Salute,” and we sang patriotic songs with great enthusiasm. The boys then formed in order to march to the Highton Rest Home, but, alas!

The news was unconfirmed, and so school work was resumed for the morning.96

Peace came, peace at last - or was it? The Armistice of 11 November (like those with other enemy powers) was a cease-fire, not a surrender and it would be extended thrice before the final peace settlement with Germany was signed in June 1919, ensuring that hostilities would not be renewed, not, at least for another generation, as some of the more prescient and pessimistic soon feared. The news of the 11 November Armistice reached Australia in the late hours of that day, local time – the Australian press earlier that Monday morning had only carried scant reports of armistice negotiations without any hint of finality. Tuesday, 12 November, however, witnessed the outbreak of local celebrations once the Melbourne Argus, for example, carried the headlines: “Germany Beaten. Armistice Signed.” Some Grammarians had nevertheless sensed for the previous week that the end was in sight, their experience being described in detail in the account “Our Peace Celebrations” published in the Magazine in the

A false alarm - “Highton” in Mont Albert Road would become part of a relocated Camberwell Grammar generations later (in 1966), but in 1918 it was still “Rest Home No.3”, the local home for the convalescence of wounded soldiers run by the “British Red Cross Society, Australian Branch, Victorian Division”. Camberwell Grammar had helped to raise funds for its establishment through its ‘patriotic fete’ in October 1914 and two months later, the Highton Convalescent Home (Red Cross Auxiliary Rest Home No.3) was opened with accommodation for thirty soldiers and over 152 would pass through in its first year of operation. Its staff consisted of a Matron, a cook and a gardener, plus four resident voluntary workers. By the third year of its operation, 1917, as the casualties began to mount, Rest Home No. 3 continued to provide thirty beds, always fully occupied.

237 men had passed through in the previous twelve months and a program of vocational training had been introduced for the disabled. They were taught spinning, weaving and embroidery

114

115

CHAPTER FIVE

“FIGHTING CHANCES” AND THE ENDGAME

‘with good results’. By 1918, the organisation running these homes had reformed itself into the “Australian Red Cross Society” and “Highton” was additionally known as an “Auxiliary Red Cross Home”; 832 repatriated men had now passed through its doors.97

By November 1918, Camberwell Grammar had focused much of its wartime fund-raising on the assisting this nearby institution and consequently felt close to it and its patients.

These simple sentiments were an early expression of much of the recollections and commemorations of the post-war world, where heroism and patriotism would be celebrated, subsuming much of the misery of war. Despite the cost of this dreadful war, there was generally an air of optimism in late-1918, suitably expressed by another school poet, Oswald Robarts (1921) in his “Thoughts of the Night”, which concluded with the observation: ‘Without a sound the world moves on to greet another dawn, when man from dreams awakes afresh, new-born’.

The exuberance of those young Grammarians and Fintonians needed to wait another five days, until late on the night of Monday, 11 November, when the official news of the Armistice came through to Melburnians in the evening issues of the Herald – “Germany Surrenders to the Allies.” Now was the proper time for celebration and the 1918 Magazine later reported the behaviour of Camberwell Grammar boys on this milestone occasion: The “band” came forth, the boys flocked in from all directions, and were joined by “all sorts and conditions,” until a great procession was formed on Burke Road. On Tuesday morning we had a thanksgiving service in St Mark’s Hall. Rev. H.A. Brooksbank officiated [as the School lacked its own chaplain] and Prefect Alec Wilson read the lesson.

Amidst the joy and relief, the minds of many could only focus on the men who would never return and ten-year old Ian Bolton (1921) accordingly published his poem “To Our Old Boys Killed in This War”, which appealed to the ‘God of Love’ to provide the fallen with ‘eternal peace’.

They looked their duty in the face They never shirked the fight; They fought for loved ones far away They fought for right to live, They died as men die in the fray, And dying, all did give.

These men, who fought so steadily, Winning Australia fame.98 116

Those who awoke after 11 November 1918 were arousing themselves from a nightmare rather than from any poetic dream, now to face the grim challenges of sustaining the Empire in peacetime and ensuring that the sacrifices of the last four years had not been in vain. Perhaps Alfred Hall was one of the grimmer observers of the time, for the School’s first post-war Speech Night on Friday 13 December 1918 was a sombre and curtailed one, free of any overt celebration of victory. The night naturally enough began with the new School Song (composed by Alfred and Mrs Hall in time for the Speech Night of 1917) and concluded with the National Anthem, “God Save the King”. A highlight of the evening was the presentation of an award to the twelve-year old John Sutton (1924) for his “Letter to the Kaiser”, which had assigned responsibility for the war to the now deposed German monarch and called for the trial of Wilhelm II as a war criminal.99 It was not a particularly joyful evening and soon the Headmaster announced that the commencement of First Term 1919 would be delayed by a month owing to the influenza epidemic, not something that augured especially well for the future.100

117

The NCOs of the Camberwell Grammar Cadet unit outside the school mansion in late-1918 following the Armistice. These boys were disappointed that they had missed the opportunities presented by the Great War.

Headmaster A.S. Hall presented each Camberwell Old Boy recruit with a leather wallet embossed with the School crest. Forty of them would never be returned home.

Francis Derham Collection. CGS Archives.

Mrs Adeline Derham, widow of Major-General F.P. Derham, presenting her late-husband’s medals to Headmaster David Dyer, 1984.

Camberwell Grammar raised considerable amounts for patriotic funds throughout the war. This badge was presented to those who had donated to the ‘Red Cross and Patriotic Fund’ in August 1918. CGS Archives.

The vanquished “Hun”, a sketch from the official AIF album of 1917. The correspondence of front-line Camberwell veterans generally showed little animosity towards the “enemy” – however, bitter sentiments were common amongst the schoolboy poets back home.

Camberwell Grammar was favoured to receive a captured Krupp field-gun such as this model as a ‘war trophy’. The gun was presented to the School in 1921 by ‘Pompey’ Elliot, a school parent. The gun remained in the school grounds at Burke Road and near “Roystead” for half-a-century.

Many Camberwell veterans fought, and fell, in the vicinity of the iconic French village of Villers-Bretonneux. Old Boy James Carfax-Foster (2010) presented this commemorative CGS plaque to the Victoria School of that village in 2009. It is dedicated to all of the fallen Grammarians of the Great War.

Money was raised from 1919 for the creation of a polished blackwood Roll of Honour Board. It was unveiled in the following year and has been part of the School’s chattels ever since. Particular attention was paid by the architect John Wright to the central memorial slab recording the names of the fallen.

A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

EPILOGUE A Thousand Years of Peace.

“Our hope is that Peace has come to stay…Ring in the thousand years of peace” Magazine, June 1919.

“A better and cleaner world was the prize for which they strove in the midst of the inferno of war. Hold them as your ideal.”

Editorial, Camberwell Grammarian, December 1920.

Although the Armistice of 11 November 1918 was welcomed by all, one may detect a certain level of regret in the faces of some of the School’s cadet NCOs in their official portrait taken in front of the Burke Road residence in late-1918, as many of these young men would forever regret that they had been robbed of the opportunity to enlist, let alone serve. Similarly robbed of one such opportunity was nineteen-year old Clive Mackey (1915), aboard the SS Carpentaria which had sailed from Port Melbourne on 7 November bound for Plymouth but was soon ‘recalled’ – he was discharged in December after only four months of service.

Others had not even been able to sniff saltwater - Sergeant 128

Donald McKenzie (1920), aged eighteen, had made it to the army camp at Liverpool, NSW, in late-1918, gaining first place in the NCO examinations, but to no avail. No longer needed by a demobilising Army, the ex-Sergeant then returned to his studies at Burke Road as editor of the school magazine, soon a Prefect and Vice-Captain of School in 1919. He holds the position of being the only Grammarian veteran who returned to the classroom of his old school. At the First Term School Concert on 28 May (shortly before the signing of the fateful Treaty of Versailles in Paris on 28 June), he exuberantly performed in a piano duet, later taking up land in Yarrawonga, gaining experience in the wool and wheat industries in order ‘to get up physically and regain his former health’.101 However, young Donald’s parents and those of many other frustrated young men were no doubt especially delighted by the end of the conflict and the narrow avoidance of harm’s way by their sons. Despite having missed active service by a whisker, Donald McKenzie’s name was placed later on the “Roll of Honour”. He was also amongst those veterans who attended the Second Term School Concert at St Mark’s on the afternoon before ‘break up’ in August, joined by Gunner Cuthbert Dickinson, recently disembarked from Europe. The audience were treated to Year 11 newcomer Keith Emmerson’s well-rendered selection from The Sentimental Bloke, C.J. Dennis’s masterpiece that had been seizing the Australian imagination since 1915 and which would soon appear on the (silent) silver screen. This was all a world away from life in the trenches and from the tensions of the Great War. Back at Burke Road, Headmaster Alfred Hall, still a Militia Captain but no longer a wartime censor, was determined to ensure that the legacy of the war would remain undimmed in the memories of his current 322 charges – although over 90 new scholars had joined Camberwell Grammar in 1919, something of a post-war boom, the school population would soon begin to fall as the Twenties proved economically strained, and this 129

EPILOGUE

A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

figure would not be surpassed until 1942. Communal attention at Burke Road was soon centred on the challenges of the pervasive influenza epidemic, a ‘preventive odour’ being introduced into some classrooms and sneezing boys being threatened with an immediate dose of formalin. Many had already experienced ‘narrow squeaks’ and the School was forced to rely upon temporary teachers owing to extensive staff absences.102 Not only had the beginning of the 1919 school year been delayed, but the initial term (the first of three) was shortened to twelve weeks. The holidays too were cut short, to the regret of the June 1919 Magazine editors, but despite these local annoyances, ‘the events of more than passing moment’ in Europe called for some comment:

fever” in Flanders, subsequently never regaining his full health.

Married for less than a year, Baird died in Richmond in June 1920, three months short of his thirtieth birthday. His name would appear on the Board’s “Roll of Honour”, the ‘handsome’ design of which was finally approved around the time of his death, but not on the central In Memoriam plaque. This practice of exclusion was, perhaps, understandable at the time to some, but it seems quite unjustified in retrospect.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the preferred imperial poet, was then quoted, expressing the hope that recent events at Versailles should ‘Ring in the thousand years of peace’. Despite their extensive donations to wartime charities, Grammarians contributed a meagre £6 to the French War Babies appeal of that year, perhaps tired of the demands of foreign-oriented benevolence. Meanwhile, the OCGA prepared itself for the provision of funding for a School Honour Board, something that had been promised earlier in the war, but not with the expectation that it would need to include the names of 245 Old Boys, including those of the forty fallen (although not those who were continuing to perish from their wartime injuries after the Armistice) – one typical example of this excluded category was Herbert (“Bert”) Baird (1909; 1904 portrait, 2nd row, 7th from left), who had served as a chemist in the AIF from 1915-19, during which he suffered from “trench

Meanwhile, the demobilising veterans of the war continued to send news from the front and to drift homewards. Garnsey Hooke (1917), for example, sent a letter from the Australian Corps Central School in northern France detailing a reunion dinner held at Le Crotoy (a small nearby fishing port) attended by three Grammarians - himself, the Reverend Garnet Shaw (1893; Dux of the School 1891) and Duncan Eales (1916), brother of William and the fallen Thomas, young men celebrated in the Herald as distinguished “Brothers In Arms”.104 Duncan had not himself reached France until December 1918. This Le Crotoy gathering included about thirty Melbourne ‘public school’ alumni, who referred to themselves as representing ‘our leading Australian schools’, an early indication of the rising status of Camberwell Grammar in the eyes of its former scholars. The ‘Padre’, Shaw, was in the chair and would later become a life Governor of the School and OCGA President in 1928; he had been appointed the inaugural chaplain for the new Royal Australian Navy in 1912, enlisting for war service in March 1917. The gathering toasted “the King”, “our Schools” and, in respectful silence, “Our Fallen Comrades”. Given that such comrades were no longer falling, the 1919 news of Old Boys in the School’s journal was now largely of happy rather than grievous tidings – Herbert Wood, discharged in October 1917, was now qualified as a dentist; Keith Miles (1916), a twenty-one-year old gunner hoped to return from France in time for the 1919 School Sports Day in October – he did, whilst still recovering from conjunctivitis and later took up

130

131

The School has been well to the fore in responding to the Empire’s call, and is proud to feel she [sic] has contributed her sons magnanimously in the saving of the world from the oppressive and aggressive Hun. The public school spirit is the essence of the comradeship demonstrated times without number during the Great War and denotes the true “Digger”.

Our hope is that Peace has come to stay. We believe in a healthy “scrap” between boys now and then, but it’s a pity that a nation’s fighting spirit cannot be devoted to the cause of peaceful development.103

EPILOGUE

soldier-settler land in Queensland. Back from the war were the three Dodgshun brothers – Keith (1912; Gallery of Achievement; 1904 portrait, 1st row, kneeling 2nd from right), Hornby (1914; 1904 portrait, 1st row, 4th from left) and Penton (1915). Keith, a 5’11” farmer and Light Horseman, had not returned home before visiting the grave of his mate Corporal Leslie Thomasson at the Villers-Bretonneux Military Cemetery. He took up a soldier-settlement block in Hopetoun after the war and joined the Country Party in later life, serving as Deputy Premier of Victoria, 1950-52. Keith Dodgshun’s place in Victorian history was cemented by presiding over the introduction of full adult suffrage for Legislative Council elections in this period. The post-war parliamentary career of this senior Dodgshun brother again causes one to wonder further about who amongst the ranks of Camberwell’s fallen would also have warranted inclusion in this prestigious Gallery of Achievement for political achievements (or those in other fields) had they survived the conflict. Lieutenant Hornby Dodgshun had survived service on the Western Front for three years, but he died suddenly in 1942, aged forty-six, when pursuing a thief. Penton, the youngest of the brothers, was fortunate enough to have survived a serious wound in the leg and back in October 1918. He had served in France as a driver and gunner.

A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

Fall of Germany” for the June 1919 Magazine: The fateful hour hath struck; the darkness falls Abhorred and loathed, condemned or doubly spurned, Behold the wage that Teuton blood has earned!

Beside the noble stream whose turbid waters rush through old Cologne, A stricken nation makes its anguished moan, Where from the bank the Allies’ campfires gleam.

Particularly welcome good news had arrived by mid-1919 about Captain Shirley Goodwin, a prisoner of the Turks since November 1915, now released and studying in England: ‘He has written enthusiastically of a visit to Stratford-on-Avon. He attributes his keen appreciation of Shakespeare’s country to his studies of English literature at school.’105 At the home of the Bard, Goodwin had also met the vivacious, popular, Gothic novelist and mystic Marie Corelli (Queen Victoria’s favourite author).

Generally, the signing of the peace treaties by mid-1919 was a period of celebration in the Allied nations and, accordingly, thirteen-year old John Sutton (1924) composed a poem, “The

The poem ended by suggesting that the Teutons no longer dreamed of Empire and had accordingly sheathed their swords: ‘No more for pow’r to rule they longing crave.’ This young poet was mistaken, but he did not live long enough to realise his error – Sutton died in a motor-cycle accident in 1924. Whatever the future of that ‘stricken nation’ astride the Rhine, the first anniversary of the Armistice on 11 November 1919 was observed with a morning assembly and by two minutes silence as the King wished his subjects to do, according to the Headmaster’s address.

At 11am the school flag was lowered to half-mast and the boys stood silent in their classrooms until a second bell marked the conclusion of the ceremony. A week later, boys were allowed two hours class time to compose a “Hymn of Thanksgiving for the Great Peace”. The results were middling. Mr and Mrs Hall had entertained Grammarians at the beginning of the war with an ‘at home’ at the Burke Road residence, an intimate occasion that had served as ‘send-off’ for many young men. Now, five years later, the couple prepared to hold a promised, more extensive ‘welcome home’ for the returned men in the Assembly Hall, in the expectation of a large body of attendees. Duly, on Monday 13 October 1919, 140 veterans (nearly seventy per cent of the survivors) attended the ‘tastefully decorated hall’ for a social gathering managed by the ever resourceful Prefects. Headmaster Hall was accorded an ‘overwhelming ovation’ by these Old Boys, whom he thanked for their ‘duty well and nobly done’,

132

133

EPILOGUE

A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

sympathetically referring to those ‘who would never return’. The attendees included Box Hill bank clerk Douglas Brock (1918) only twenty-years old and recently demobbed after a year’s service in the AIF, including six months at the front punctuated by frequent illness. He was typical of thousands of young men whose lives had been interrupted by war and who were now keen to pick up the pieces – in the following year, ex-Gunner Brock was able to begin university study under the Repatriation scheme. This ‘welcome home’ occasion featured pianoforte selections, chorus singing, the singing of the School Song by the Prefects and, of course, concluded with the National Anthem.106

by many, something that had been signalled two weeks earlier when the entire school stood silent for that two minutes after 11am on 11 November. The irrepressible school poets remained active in peacetime, Prefect Victor Drinkwater (1921) penning “Lest We Forget” or “Our Honour Board”, where he called for perpetual reverence for ‘The heroes bold, / The glorious dead’ whose names were now ‘inscribed in gold’. The editorial of the retitled Camberwell Grammarian in December 1920 thought it unlikely that the boys of the coming generation(s) would be tested on the battlefield in any future ‘Great Game’, but the peace was thought to bring its own challenges: ‘The world is calling for manly, open-hearted men, men who will recognise and do their duty to mankind.’ These young men were incited to follow the examples of the veterans named on the Honour Board: ‘Hold them as your ideal’ in the pursuit of a ‘better and cleaner world’.

The new decade of the Twenties did not see any lapses in the determination of the Camberwell school community to remember the lessons of the Great War. The School Concert on Tuesday evening, 11 May 1920, was able to witness the first performance of the new Dramatic Society, “The First Class Hotel”, a one-act farce set in the bedroom of a hotel, presented on the modest stage of the Camberwell Town Hall – it was a great success, particularly for John Gosman (1921), who played ‘Schnell’ - ‘a typical Hun of the milder variety’ displaying a ‘courageous indifference’ to the melodramatic effect of a pistol shot. Unfortunately, these ‘milder’ Huns would not endure much beyond the decade, but few suspected that in 1920, when the German eagle seemed to have been subdued. The first veteran member of staff, B.C.S. Southwell, was appointed in time for the school year of 1920; he was a graduate of the University of Melbourne, had served in the AIF, rising to the rank of Captain before completing his Diploma of Education in England and returning home – this new master stayed at Camberwell Grammar for only one year.

Meanwhile, the funds had been raised for the construction of the School Honour Board, which was unveiled by ‘Pompey’ Elliott on Thursday, 25 November (as mentioned in the Prologue). This memorial was intended to be a constant reminder to the boys of the School of the sacrifice that had been made

Few veterans at the time were as revered as Brigadier-General ‘Pompey’ Elliott, something that the School had made clear during the November Honour Board ceremony. A Boer war veteran, Elliott had been one of Australia’s leading military commanders in the Great War, having served in the field from Gallipoli to the Armistice. He was then elected to the Senate in 1919 as a Victorian representative of the Nationalist Party. He also remained a commander in the Militia. More importantly, ‘Pompey’ was a Camberwell Grammar parent, his only son, Neil, enrolling at Burke Road in 1920, aged seven. The Elliott family lived in Moorhouse Street, East Camberwell and Neil had come to Burke Road from Canterbury State School. The Brigadier-General was accordingly considered a person of appropriate dignity to return to his son’s school in the following year on Wednesday, 10 August 1921, in order to present the cadet detachment and the broader school community with its own ‘War Trophy’, a 77mm Krupp Field Gun captured in France by the Victorian 6th Battalion, AIF, from the retreating Germans in the last months of the war at Herleville Wood, close to at the

134

135

EPILOGUE

A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

iconic village of Villers-Bretonneux (or what was left of it) on 23 August 1918. This attack, which cost the lives of 28 Diggers on that day alone, followed that ‘black day of the German Army’, 8 August, on which the Germans lost 173 guns. The Australian War Museum (predecessor of the Australian War Memorial) based in Melbourne, the federal capital until 1927, had established a post-war Commonwealth Trophies Committee to distribute such captured war materiel to municipalities and worthy community organisations. Victoria was initially allocated thirty-three pieces, a collection of 150mm, 77mm field guns, mortars and machine guns. Alfred Hall had applied for a grant successfully on behalf of ‘his’ school and accordingly formally received one of the six coveted field guns (constructed in 1916 and shipped to Australia in 1919) as a captured war trophy on this August afternoon in 1921. Its allocation was an indication of the high regard in which Camberwell Grammar was held – many local councils complained that they had received only smaller items.107 Elliott described to his school audience the events around the capture of the gun, one of a battery of four taken on the same day, as the Germans were being pushed back beyond the Somme, and he hoped that it would now serve as ‘an object lesson to the boys upon whose shoulders would rest the future safety of the Empire, for which our soldiers had fought and died’. In accepting the trophy, Hall promised that it would be well looked after, several trustees being responsible for its care. The Camberwell Grammarian of 1921 dutifully reported his reply:

The school community was particularly grateful to Senator Elliott, given that ‘the idea of presenting war trophies to the larger schools had been suggested by the General himself’. Elliott was apparently concerned that people were already beginning to forget the events of the war; accordingly, he now hoped that the trophy would conspicuously contain the legend “Lest We Forget”.

Elliott could not himself forget the war, taking his own life in 1931 after episodes of what we today term post-traumatic stress.

The School of the 1920s was indeed determined not to forget those who ‘never came back’, commemorating them again in the same Grammarian issue through another piece of schoolboy poetry, “The Gun”, by John Hamilton, who had entered the school in Year 1 in 1914 and would leave in Year 11 in 1924 – a ‘lifer’. To him, it symbolised both the humbling of the Prussian ethos and the sustenance of the Empire: This gun, now ours, saw battle at its height, And from its mouth its deadly missiles aimed At our entrenched battle front, and maimed Or Killed our men; its task in that Great Fight.

‘Twas captured just when victory was in sight Three years ago, when in that drive now famed Our troops pushed on despite all odds, and tamed For aye the Prussian army’s boasted might.

It stands within our grounds, a monument Of those who bravely fought, of those who fell, n those far-famed historic fields of France.

Far from those gory scenes of wild torment The war-worn gun in peaceful nook doth dwell, In token of our great deliverance.

He asked all the boys to realise that the gun belonged to them and that they would see that it was well looked after. He felt that the gift of a trophy was partly a recognition of the fact that a great number of “old boys” had served in the war, and that the school had raised large sums towards the various war funds. The gun would bear eloquent testimony to the courage, self-sacrifice and loyalty of our soldiers. Above all, he hoped it would always be regarded as a sacred thing, a kind of memorial for those forty “old boys” of the Camberwell Grammar School who never came back, and whose names are inscribed on the memorial slab of the School Honour Board.

This ‘war-worn gun’ was placed in the ‘playground’ besides Lister House at the Burke Road campus – one former student from the late-1920s recalled it as the only piece of ‘play’ equipment

136

137

EPILOGUE

A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

there - but it remained an untouchable shrine for another generation both here and at the new Mont Albert campus from 1935, where the “German gun” stood on a concrete plinth near the most eastern of the Roystead driveways. By the mid-1950s it was already showing signs of bad repair, especially the timber spokes of its great wheels, and was considered by some to be a safety hazard.

Memories of the Great War too had by then been considerably overshadowed by those of a more recent conflict. The ultimate fate of ‘our war trophy’ is uncertain - as late as the 1980s, Stan Brown (a former cadet OC) and others were unable to trace the whereabouts of the gun. However, at least one of those students from the late-1950s recalls the gun being scrapped at that time following the perilous deterioration of its wheels. This rather neglected trophy had simply become another dispensable item in the playground, often still preferred by boys of another generation over other play equipment, in what was a sad, undeserved outcome for an important part of war memorabilia. A similar artillery piece captured during the same 1918 campaign survives outside Victoria Barracks, Melbourne, giving the observer some concept of what Camberwell Grammar’s War Trophy would have looked like had it been properly preserved and had it survived until the centenary of its captivity and beyond. The loss of this piece of memorabilia was a blow to the historical record of the School, diminishing the memory of those Old Boys who died in the Great War and in following conflicts. Its presence on the school grounds a century after its captivity would certainly have been a cause of commemorative focus.

common good, for it was these things that had made the Empire great. The traditions of the British Empire were very high in self-sacrifice’. But would these calls endure as the Great War receded in the collective memory? School poet Hugh McClelland (1924) hoped so and composed “In Quietness Remembered” for the Grammarian in December 1922, where he urged ‘Hats off!’ to the heroes who had fallen in France ‘for you…slain in Freedom’s holy cause’. School essayist Aubrey Bellett (1924), on the other hand, chose to direct attention from the dead to the living, arguing with force that the ANZACs had caused many foreigners to take note of Australia and to draw favourable conclusions about this distant, remote country:

The first ANZAC Day witnessed by the then gleaming War Trophy in 1922 was suitably solemn, the Reverend J.A. Schofield from St Mark’s Church, Camberwell (later the ‘Honorary Chaplain’ of Camberwell Grammar), reminding the boys that they must strive to be worthy of the sacrifices made by the fallen. He urged them similarly to ‘have courage to be clean in our manhood, to speak the truth, and to make sacrifices for the 138

Before the Great War, which altered the destinies of the world, Australia was not very heard of…people in Europe had the most vague idea about Australia; but during the war, Australians were seen in every town in Europe and their deeds were told and retold in song and story…people were asking about these young giants who strode along the streets of the old-world cities, and the country from which they came.

Exaggerated though his account may be, its essential thesis was a sound one, at least in the prevailing view of Headmaster Hall, whose 1923 ANZAC Day address stressed the ‘moral effects’ that the ANZAC tradition had placed on the nation. However, it was already necessary for his younger audience to be made aware in outline about the events of the Gallipoli campaign from the landing to the evacuation in 1915. And so the commemorative rituals of the ‘Great Game’ continued, chiefly focused on the chief dates of 25 April and 11 November, on which wreaths were laid before the School Roll of Honour. Armistice Day 1926 was the last occasion on which Alfred Hall was able to reiterate his stance prior to his retirement. He did so with characteristic vigour, dramatically gesturing to the Honour Board in the Assembly Hall, the “Old Boss” reminding his 241 charges, all of whom were either unborn or barely of school age in August 1914, that: We owe it to those whose names are recorded on our Roll of Honour, as well as to all those who gave their lives for the Empire, that we should 139

EPILOGUE

endeavour to copy their example, and be worthy of the sacrifice they made for us.

Unknown to the departing Headmaster, some of his listeners would indeed copy these earlier examples and serve in the armed services of the Empire in a second global conflict, 1939-45. The cynical could very well have concluded by then that the earlier sacrifice of the forty fallen Grammarians had sustained the Empire for only a very brief period, for the ‘King’s peace’ for which they had dedicated themselves, was not kept. Nevertheless, the inter-war period and this second war allowed some relatively undistinguished veterans of the Great War to mature as individuals and contribute mightily to society – one such was Wilfred Chapman (1909; Dux of the School 1907), another only son who had served in France in a machine-gun company in 1918, but who blossomed in the 1920s and beyond as an engineer working in the Victorian railway system. When war broke out a second time, the forty-eight-year old engineer re-enlisted, where he distinguished himself in the 2nd AIF as an ordnance mechanical engineer in Palestine, New Guinea and back home. After 1945, the retired Brigadier Chapman joined the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Melbourne – following his death in 1955, the Victorian Institute of Engineers inaugurated the ‘W.D. Chapman Memorial Oration’, where he was described in 1959 as ‘a great and good man, who was an outstanding engineer, a fine soldier…and with it all a humble man beloved of his fellows’.108 Of a similar character was Corporal Allan Fisher (1913; b.1895), who served in field hospitals in Egypt and Palestine in the Army Medical Corps, 1916-18 – he was not a medical doctor, but had been an outstanding Arts graduate (1916) at the University of Melbourne prior to enlisting, having served in the Melbourne University Rifles. From May 1918 to the end of the war, Fisher also served in the 5th Camel Corps Field Ambulance, although hospitalised in October with an ear inflammation. Discharged in May 1919 as medically unfit, Fisher subsequently built an academic career in Melbourne, New Zealand, Western Australia and at the Institute 140

A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

of International Affairs in London, having gained a PhD from the London School of Economics in 1924. Before leaving Melbourne, c.1921, he had authored Palestine and Jerusalem: Reflections of an NCO in the Australian Imperial Force at the end of the First World War. Originally delivered as a talk at his Melbourne alma mater, these ‘reflections’ provided an insightful account of motivations for war service with extensive rumination about the future of the Middle East once the Ottoman Empire had departed.

This twenty-year old, fair-haired, blue-eyed, sceptical young man had enlisted somewhat reluctantly in 1916, unconvinced of the ‘orthodox’ explanation of Britain’s 1914 casus belli and acknowledging at the end of the conflict that unless Germany received a ‘just peace’, the Great War was not likely to be the last one. He died in 1976 aged 80; Allan Fisher’s exclusion from the Australian Dictionary of Biography is difficult to explain. Wilfred Chapman and Allan Fisher serve as outstanding examples of Old Boys and Great War veterans whose lives and careers after 1918 indicate the great loss that our community suffered when so many of their own generation failed to return, thereby failing to fulfil their potential owing to the premature termination of their lives. Both Chapman and Fisher are worthy of inclusion our Gallery of Achievement.

By the latter part of the Twenties there were already some in the broader community questioning the supposedly excessive veneration afforded to Great War ex-servicemen, but this was not the case at Camberwell Grammar School, where the ANZAC Day practice of inviting veterans to attend ceremonial occasions helped to stimulate the interest of the new generation.

Prominent Old Boy veterans such as brothers Francis and Alfred Derham, Edmund Lind and Charles Barber, amongst others, (all commissioned officers) attended St Mark’s on 25 April 1930 to hear an address given by Brigadier-General Thomas Blamey – the ceremony was presided over by Headmaster Dr Buntine and the Reverend J. A. Schofield. Blamey, himself to command 141

EPILOGUE

A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

in the next war, echoed the 1926 address given by the departed Alfred Hall, arguing that the Gallipoli campaign had upheld Australia’s name ‘in a magnificent way’; it became common practice in the 1930s for distinguished veterans to attend these St Mark’s services every April.109 Within months of the 1930 ANZAC address by Blamey, those conscious of European events would note with discomfort that the September federal elections in Germany had brought to prominence a previously obscure, revanchist party, the Nazis. For those of us with the wisdom of historical hindsight, a December 1931 Grammarian poem, “The Battle”, therefore seems auspicious. The poet was Arthur Angliss Ballard (1938), nephew of William Angliss, the great benefactor of Camberwell Grammar, and “The Battle” relates a discussion amongst students about the nature of armed conflict: ‘We wondered how they fought it / And what they fought it for.’110 Arthur, and his two older brothers (William,1932; Gallery of Achievement; member of School Council, 1953-58 and Albert, 1933) would all eventually see battle, serving in the armed forces during World War Two. Arthur served in an anti-aircraft regiment, as did Albert, whilst William reached the rank of Captain whilst serving in the headquarters of the 1st Australian Corps.

enhanced the prospect of further conflict, and now-Colonel and prominent industrial lawyer Francis Derham calmly suggested at St Mark’s that ‘the burden of keeping the country free rests on the shoulders of the boys now at school’.111 This was an unwitting repetition and reinforcement of the warning that the late ‘Pompey’ Elliott had made seventeen years earlier. Sure enough, the Magazine hope of June 1919 that the Peace would ‘ring in the thousand years of peace’ was to be frustrated in September 1939 by the global conflict that followed. In the second postwar period that followed the final victories of 1945, ANZAC services tended to concentrate on the commemoration of those who had fallen in this second conflict, mercifully fewer, but of more immediate recall. Armistice Day gradually passed away in the popular mind both within the school community and in the wider society. However, the opening in February 1958 of a ‘Memorial Hall’ marked a milestone in the development of the School. The Governor of Victoria, Sir Dallas Brooks, himself a British Gallipoli veteran, stressed in his opening, dedicatory address on that Sunday afternoon in February that the new structure was, amongst other things, ‘a memorial to those Old Boys of the School who had given their lives in three wars’.112 The Korean conflict had joined the world wars in these calculations and the two Honour Boards ‘dedicated to the Old Boys of the school who died fighting for their country’ were re-housed from the William Angliss Building to the new Hall’s entrance foyer - the assembled 565 boys of the School in 1958 would hopefully be mindful of those sacrifices when filing into this impressive Hall. The Boards were moved again in 1997 into the Performing Arts Centre, which replaced the Memorial Hall.

With the rearmament of Germany in the course of the 1930s, there was widespread anxiety that perhaps the ‘war to end all wars’ would not meet the expectations of those in the earlier decade. The 1936 ‘Jubilee Issue’ of the Camberwell Grammarian featured an essay on “The Great War” under the shadow of these developments, conscious that 1914-18 had witnessed ‘the greatest of all wars’ and that Camberwell Grammar had played its part ‘helping the Empire in many practical ways’, a rather modest assessment. It was hoped that any recital of the School’s role in those years ‘will make proud the hearts of present and future Camberwell Grammarians, and help them in their efforts to live and work for others’. By ANZAC Day 1938 it was dawning on the school community and others that tensions in Europe 142

The following decades were periods of great social transformation and even ANZAC Day came under question from some of those who sought to undermine tradition in a manner reminiscent of the dissenters of the late-1920s. The student journal Spectemur, for example, published one anonymous complaint in 143

EPILOGUE

A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

April 1967 that ANZAC Day represented the ‘false glorification’ of all our ‘glorious defeats’ – obviously the fashionable play, The One Day of the Year, on the School’s English curriculum, was bearing fruit.113 The following issue also reproduced a 1915 anti-war poem (“The Next War”) by the English writer Osbert Sitwell, allowing Spectemur to plead for a revised, ‘anti-war’ attitude to this special day, ‘in the interests of peace’. Ironically, one of the most outstanding of the School’s traditionalists, the new Headmaster David Dyer (1966-87), seemed in 1970 to undermine the half-century foundation of 25 April in the Australian psyche when he fore-warned the School Council in February of that year that he intended to modify the School’s traditional ANZAC program, 25 April 1970 being a Saturday. There would, Dyer said, be ‘no address or service in the Memorial Hall’ on the following Monday, which had been the earlier practice when ANZAC Day fell on the weekend.114 ANZAC commemorations of some description had been held at the various sites of Camberwell Grammar in peacetime, during war, in periods of depression and amidst economic booms, since 1917 when Captain A. P. Derham attended the inaugural service at St Mark’s.115 Mr Dyer had followed the ANZAC formula without change since his appointment in mid-1966 and the proposed reform was of staggering proportions given the ubiquity of the sentiment ‘Lest We Forget’ (now hijacked by the student periodical Spectemur as a reference to Aboriginal welfare).The ‘Forum’ column of the unimpressed Spectemur had suggested in the previous year, to their disappointment, that only thirty-five per cent of students thought the ANZAC service should be scrapped, but now the sceptics seemed to have their place in the sun with the Headmaster’s endorsement. Although the School’s cadet unit marched to and from St Mark’s for an ANZAC service on 25 April 1970, accompanied by some veterans (a few of whom were from the Great War) and the newly reformed Drum Corps, there was no ANZAC observation at Camberwell Grammar on Monday 27 April 1970, the first gap in the commemorative cycle in 54 years.

Before the end of 1970, Headmaster Dyer would move to make his ANZAC reforms permanent, informing the Council in November that in 1971 there would be a service at St Mark’s at which ‘the names of fallen Old Boys should be read’, but no subsequent school ceremony of any nature. He suggested that ‘relatives of the Fallen and other special visitors who normally attend the School ANZAC Day service should be informed of the special arrangements.116 Accordingly, there was neither an ANZAC parade to St Mark’s on Sunday, 25 April nor a school ceremony on the following Monday. Those seeking any commemoration needed to be satisfied with the Roll of Honour reading at the scheduled St Mark’s service.117 Anyone seeking redress of these changes surprisingly found no support from the OC of the Camberwell School Army Cadet Unit, Captain John Stafford, who had told Spectemur that ANZAC Day was ‘more for the people directly involved. There used to be a Waterloo Day but they don’t have that anymore’.118 This view failed to acknowledge the fact that Waterloo had not claimed the life of a single Grammarian, unlike the campaign at Gallipoli and the wider conflicts of the two world wars, Korea and Vietnam (which had already claimed its first Grammarian Old Boy). Earlier, Francis Derham’s final ANZAC Day address to the School in 1956 had specifically addressed this issue of Waterloo remembrance and those of other forgotten conflicts, noting that the First AIF had forged Australian nationhood and was therefore of its own unique character (sui generis, as he would have said in court) and accordingly worthy of continuing reverence by Australians.119 By 1979 the anti-ANZAC attitude in some quarters of the School showed evidence of modification and the cadet unit began to participate on the School’s behalf in a series of external ANZAC ceremonies, often in collaboration with local RSL branches.120 Any suggestion of indifference to ANZAC is no longer given serious consideration within the school community and since the opening of the Wheelton Centre in 2013, ANZAC Day dawn services have been conducted by the outstanding Camberwell

144

145

EPILOGUE

A THOUSAND YEARS OF PEACE

School Army Cadet Unit in the new amphitheatre with great success. These commemorative services feature guest speakers and ANZAC rituals, all of which have allowed old and new generations of Grammarians to focus on the connection between the Old Boys of 1914-18 and the twenty-first century. They are now a permanent fixture in the school calendar.

Circus and so on, concluding with Windsor Castle. The album accompanied his own photographs of himself and his comrades at the front. There was never any suggestion from Derham or other Camberwell veterans that the war had been anything other than a successful enterprise to sustain that Empire, however costly the struggle may have been. Even the contentious issue of conscription, the focal point of the 1916 and 1917 referenda, did not produce any noticeable dissension from the young Grammarians who would be subject to its rigours had the electorate approved such proposals. To these young men and to those who instructed them at Burke Road in those years, the Great War was largely the subject of pride and patriotic stimulus, both Australian and imperial. Those who had survived the conflict went on in large measure to live fruitful, productive lives in their chosen occupations and professions that were as diverse as those they had practised prior to enlistment – farmers, commercial travellers, engineers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, academics and every other field of endeavour. On the other hand, the tragic fate of the fallen was publicly acknowledged, but largely nursed within the bosom of the families involved, as in the case of the ‘lonely mother’ Christina Wood, whose July 1917 Argus notice ‘in loving memory of my darling only son’ concluded with the hope: ‘Let not their sacrifice be in vain.’ She lived long enough to witness the gradual dissolution of the British Empire, but she never relinquished the memory of her only son. We owe it to the families of the fallen of our school community to ensure that our collective memories also remain undimmed, even a century later.

In conclusion, looking back at the Great War from the perspective of a tumultuous century begs the question: ‘Was it worth it?’ Did those forty Grammarians who fell at Gallipoli, France, Belgium and elsewhere die in vain or was their sacrifice a valuable element in the struggle to sustain the Empire of which Australia was such an important part? When contemplating these questions, it is necessary to recall the observations of the eminent American historian Stephen Ambrose, who wrote extensively about war: ‘History is not black or white nor is it propaganda. History is ambiguous, if told honestly. It is hard enough to figure out exactly what happened and why; it is impossible to play God and judge the right or wrong of a given action.’ Perhaps also Benjamin Franklin was correct when he observed in 1773: ‘There never was a good war, nor a bad peace.’

Nevertheless, contemporary views on the value of the Great War vary (and this history is not the forum to analyse such contemporary disputes), but it must be stated that the primary sources indicate that there was very little questioning of the worth of the struggle within the Camberwell Grammar school community, 1914-18 and beyond. Francis Derham’s notable 1938 ANZAC Day address, for example, suggested that the war had been necessary ‘to preserve our Empire’, although it had ‘retarded our peaceful development’ – a fair, balanced assessment from one its most outstanding, brightest and bravest veterans.121 Twenty years earlier he had carried home a photograph album donated to commissioned officers by the British government – The Heart of the Empire you came to defend – a pictorial collection of London icons such as St Paul’s, the Tower, London Bridge, Ludgate 146

147

Dr David Bird School Historian, 2019

1. Camberwell Grammarian, December 1921, December 1923, 1936 Jubilee issue.

35. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

2. For the history of the unit, see D. Bird, The Adventure of Military Life: A Century of the Camberwell Grammar Cadets, 1888-1988. Melbourne: Camberwell Grammar School, 2014.

36. Magazine, November 1916.

37. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

4. School Population register, CGS Archives.

38. T he circle of under-age AIF recruits (see AWM website ‘Boy Soldiers’) includes Jim Martin, two weeks older than Douglas Wood, dying at Gallipoli in October 1915; also Leslie Prior, killed in France in May 1917, aged 15 years and three months.

5. C .E. Sayers, “K.M. A Life of Keith Murdoch, Newspaper Reporter”, n.d. and unpub lished, State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, 20.

39. A ustralian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau files, 1914-18 War, 1DRL/0428, Camberwell Grammar Archives.

6. Camberwell and Hawthorn Advertiser, 8 August 1914.

40. Ibid.

7. Ibid., 12 September 1914.

8. Ibid., 3 October 1914.

41. A rgus, 21 July 1917. Both notices (inaccurately?) observed that Wood was 16½ years old at the time of his death.

9. Reserve Bank Currency Calculator.

42. Magazine, November 1916. Argus, 21 August 1916.

3. 1914-18: 58,961 died of 416,809, Australian War Memorial statistics.

10. Camberwell and Hawthorn Advertiser, 31 October 1914.

43. Magazine, November 1916.

11. Ibid., 19 December 1914. Argus, 19 December 1914.

44. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

12. Magazine, August 1915.

45. See D. Bird “Highton - ‘Rest Home No. 3’, 1915-1920.” Spectemur, Term 3, 2014.

13. Magazine, May 1915; Grammarian July 1939. I. Hansen, By Their Deeds: A Centenary History of Camberwell Grammar School, 1886-1986. Melbourne: Camberwell Grammar School, 1986; 84-5.

46. Argus, 19 December 1916.

48. Ibid.

14. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

49. Magazine, November 1916.

15. Bird, The Adventure of Military Life.

50. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

16. Herald, 28 April 1915.

51. Magazine, June 1917.

17. J. Coulson (ed.)., A Platoon of the Century. Melbourne: Melbourne University Rifles Association, 2011; 28-30.

52. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

18. Grammarian, 2015.

19. Brigadier-General J.T. Hobbs, quoted in Magazine, July 1916.

20. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

21. Ibid. Winner, 7 November 1917.

47. Magazine, November 1916.

53. Age, 5 June 1917.

54. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives 55. Magazine, June 1917.

56. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

57. Ibid.

22. Magazine, June 1918.

58. Ibid. Magazine, June 1917.

23. Magazine, December 1918.

24. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

25. Hawthorn, Kew and Camberwell Citizen, 16 July 1915.

26. Herald, 24 July 1915.

59. Magazine, December 1917.

60. Magazine, June 1917.

61. Spectemur, April 1983, was mistaken in thinking this the first School Concert.

62. Magazine, June 1917.

27. Geelong Advertiser, 13 November 1915.

63. W. Holmes, Teddington, to A. Hall, 13 May 1917, Magazine, June 1917.

28. Camberwell Grammarian, June 1920.

30. Argus, 16 December 1915.

64. Ibid. Magazine, Jubilee Issue, 1886-1936. Winnie Hall would later play a prominent part in the arts at CGS; see D. Bird, The Realisation of Dreams: A Century and More of Performing Arts at the Camberwell Grammar School, 1886-1986.

31. Hansen, 74, refers to Hall’s ‘militarist propensity’.

65. All for Australia newspaper, 20 November 1917, CGS Archives.

32. T he School Archives holds that of Major F.P. Derham.

66. Magazine, December 1917.

33. Magazine, July 1916.

67. Ibid.

34. Camberwell Grammar World War One database, CGS Archives.

68. Ibid.

29. Bird, The Adventure of Military Life.

150

151

69. Ibid.

105. Magazine, June 1919.

70. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

106. Camberwell Grammarian, December 1919.

71. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

107. T hanks are due to members the Royal Australian Artillery Historical Company who provided the detail of the 1921 War Trophy – John Morkham, Doug Perry and Kevin Browning. James Kibel (1958) additionally provided some useful memories of the gun and its eventual fate..

72. Ballarat Courier, 21 November 1917.

73. M agazine, December 1917.; Magazine, December 1918; Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

74. Magazine, December 1917.

108. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

109. Camberwell Grammarian, June 1930.

75. Argus, 18 December 1917.

76. Magazine, December 1918. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

77. Magazine, June 1918 78. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

79. Ibid.

80. vide Hansen 77-79, re Methodist Ladies College and Presbyterian Ladies College.

81. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

82. Lilydale Express, 14 June 1918.

83. G reater details on Little’s career may be found in M. Rosel, Unknown Warrior: The Search for Australia’s Greatest Ace, Melbourne, Arcadia, 2012.

84. Magazine, June 1918.

85. Camberwell Grammarian, December 1920.

86. Magazine, June 1918.

87. M . McKernan, “William McKenzie”, Australian Dictionary of Biography, volume 10.

Melbourne: MUP, 1986.

110. S ee D. Bird, “The ‘White Knight’ of Camberwell Grammar School: The vision of Sir William Angliss, 1865-1957.” Spectemur, Term 4, 2017.

111. Camberwell Grammarian, July 1938. F.P. Derham Papers, CGS Archives.

112. Camberwell Grammarian, 1958.

113. Spectemur, April 1967.

114. School Council Minutes, 3 February 1970, CGS Archives.

115. Magazine, June 1917.

116. School Council Minutes, 3 November 1970, CGS Archives.

117. Camberwell Grammarian, 1971.

118. Spectemur, August 1968.

119. ANZAC Day address, 1956, F.P. Derham Papers, CGS Archives.

120. See D. Bird, The Adventure of Military Life, passim.

121. F.P. Derham Papers, CGS Archives.

88. Magazine, December 1918.

89. Herald, 25 May 1918.

90. Australian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives.

91. Magazine, May 1915.

92. Magazine, December 1918.

93. A ustralian War Memorial Service Records, CGS Archives. Camberwell and Hawthorn Advertiser, 20 December 1918.

94. Magazine, December 1918.

95. Hawthorn, Kew and Camberwell Citizen, 23 August 1918.

96. Magazine, December 1918.

97. See D. Bird, “Highton - ‘Rest Home No. 3’, 1915-1920.” Spectemur, Term 3, 2014.

98. Magazine, December 1918. I have edited this poem.

99. Herald, 14 December 1918.

100. Speech Night Programme, 13 December 1918, CGS Archives.

101. Camberwell Grammarian, June 1920.

102. Camberwell Grammarian, December 1919.

103. Magazine, June 1919.

104. Herald, 3 July 1917.

152

153

INDEX Amiens (casualties) 108–109

Australian Army Medical Corps 83, 140

Anderson, Edward 70

Australian Artillery Brigade 49

Anderson, George 70

Australian Corps 85, 93, 104, 112, 131, 142

Anderson, Henry (‘Harry’) 86, 102–103

Australian Flying Corps 13, 22, 105–6, 111, 112

Anderson, Lance Corporal Walter (‘Hughie’): enlists 70; Gallipoli veteran 47, 70, 71; killed on Western Front 47, 70, 71; no known grave 69, 70; wounded at Lone Pine 70; wounded at Pozieres 70

Australian graves overseas see military cemeteries Australian Natives Association 110 Australian Red Cross Society 116

Anderson, Warren 70

Australian War Museum 136

Angliss, William 142

Auxiliary Red Cross Home see Highton Convalescent Home for Soldiers

Anzac Cove landing 26–38, 37, 43–4 ANZAC Day address: Blamey 141–2; Derham 74–5, 142–3, 144, 145, 146; Hall 139, 141–2 ANZAC Day service 94; cadet corps 145–6; dawn service 145–6; Dyer ‘reforms’ program 144–5; Fintona girls included 74–5; first (1917) 74–5; 138–9, 144; in Memorial Hall 144; reforms proposed 143–4; at St Mark’s, Camberwell 141–2, 143, 144, 145; Spectemur on 143–4; veterans invited to 141–2 Armentieres, (casualties) 69 Armistice (11th November, 1918): celebrations 114–15, 116–17, 143; commemorative rituals 139–40; first anniversary 133; Germany asks for 93; Germany signs 113, 114; Grammarian editorial on 128; ‘Hymn of Thanksgiving for the Great Peace’ (student composition) 133; Magazine on 128; ‘Our Peace celebrations’ (Magazine) 114–15; ‘welcome home’ and ‘thank you’ 133–4

Bailey, Gunner Arnold 72 Baillieu OBE, ‘Baron’ Clive: Gallery of Achievement 111; Major, AIF HQ, France 112; mentioned in despatches 112 Baillieu, Harry: British Army service 112 Baillieu, Tom: Australian Flying Corps 112 Baillieu, William 112 Baird, Herbert (‘Bert’) 15, 130–1 Baker, Bernard: outstanding student 94; ‘school chums’ at war (Magazine) 94–5 Ballard, Albert 142 Ballard, Arthur Angliss: ‘The Battle’ (poem) 142 Ballard, Captain William 142 Barber, Captain Charles 19, 141; engineer 34; Gallery of Achievement 34; Gallipoli 34, 37, 38; Military Cross, Lone Pine 34

Berry: Geoffrey 108–109; Guy 109; Hugh 109; Richard 109

Bullecourt 47, 68, 69–70

Best, Sir Robert 75

Burke, Lieutenant Alan E.: acting commander cadet corps 27; Captain of School 27, 107

Birch, Herbert: high-jumper 108; Oxford scholarship 108; wounded in action 108 ‘black day’ for school (October 1917) 84 Blamey, Brigadier-General Sir Thomas ANZAC Day address 141–2 boarders, Burke Road 62, 69, 76, 115 Boer War veteran: Elliott, Brigadier-General H. E. (‘Pompey’) 135 Bolton, Francis 32 Bolton, Ian: ‘To Our Old Boys Killed In This War’ (poem) 116–17 Bolton, Tom (bugler) 31–2 ‘Bowden boys’: Alfred 81; Colin 81, 91; Harold 81, 90, 91; John 81 ‘boy conscription’ 27 ‘boy soldiers’ (aged 14–16): Grammarian on 12, 137; Johnson, Ralph ‘Buff’ 51–2; Prior, Leslie 52–3; Wood, Douglas, the youngest to fall 52–3

British Army: expatriate Grammarians 48–9, 112; Medical Corps 21; Military Cemetery, Pas de Calais 100

cadet corps: acting commander Lieutenant Burke 27; ANZAC Day service 145–6; disappointed to miss war 118, 128; drilled by Whitehead 27, 108–9; formation (1888) 12; fundraising 19–20; Gallipoli visit (2015) 28, 28, 31; height requirements 13–14; Lyn James Medal (champion-shot) 35; NCOs (late 1918) 118; part of 48th Battalion 19, 28; preparing for war 19, 28; ‘Short Form of Will’ 46, 78; Stafford, Captain John 145; and 39th Battalion 96; University and Schools Cadet Corps 80

British Empire: casualties of war 79; enters the war 18; tradition of ‘self-sacrifice’ 84, 136, 139 Broadmeadows military camp 23 Brock, Douglas 134

Barnett, Private Lionel 110

Brooksbank, Rev. H. A. 116

Bates, William 50, 102

Brown, Stan 138

Beauchamp Communal Cemetery 51–2

Browne, Horton 76 Browne, Matthew 76

Auburn mounted riflemen 18

Belgium: Australian casualties 33, 93–4; Australian graves 40, 82; Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery 82; Messines 51–2, 72, 79, 106, 112; Strand Military Cemetery 71, 72

‘Australia’s Call’ (poem, Chadwick) 36

Bellett, Aubrey 139

Askew, Jack 15, 102 Athletic Sports 20, 51, 52, 85

154

Burnett, Keith 102 Byrne, Austen: Captain of School 75; Light Horse Trooper 107; recollections of school 107

Brooks, Sir Dallas 143

artillery: Australian Artillery Brigade 49; and ‘defective hearing’ 67

Burke Road campus (St John’s Anglican: Church) 47; aim of school 44; Armistice celebrations 114–15, 116–17, 143; Athletic Sports 20, 51, 52, 85; bike racks 24; boarders 62, 69, 76, 115; economic strains 11, 129–30; Fintona a neighbour 75; football team (1904) 19, 19; Headmaster Hall on aim of school (1915) 44; influenza epidemic 33, 45, 62, 85, 106–7, 117, 130, 199; Lister House 20, 137–8; Murdoch (Keith), memories of 41; move to (1908) 16–17, 69; Old Boys enlist 44, 85–6; peace celebrations 114–15; school captain Burke 27, 107; school population 17; senior football team (1904) 19; veterans visit 80, 85, 107; wartime (WWI) 11, 44, 66–7, 85–7; whole school photo (1904) 15

Brinsden, Lance Corporal Gilbert: killed at Passchendaele 85, 99; no known grave 85

Barnett, Private Lawrence 50–1

Army Medical Corps: Australian 83, 140; British 21

Buntine, Dr 141

Bruun, Private Eric 97 Bruun, Ludwig Wilhelm 97 buglers 11, 53; Bolton, Tom 31–2; Wood, Edwin 31–2

Camberwell Convalescent Home for Soldiers see Highton Convalescent Home for Soldiers Camberwell Grammarian 10, 42, 43, 135; on ‘boy soldiers’ 12, 137; on CGS response to war 130; editorial on Armistice 128;

155

Cochrane, Sergeant Frank 48, 49, 105

essay on ‘The Great War’ 142; ‘Jubilee Edition’ (1936) 12, 142; old copies sent to Gallipoli 37–8; on School’s response to war 130; see also poetry

Cochrane, Captain Stanley 105

Camel Corps Field Ambulance 101, 140

Commonwealth Military Cadet Corps (CMCC): compulsory military service 12, 17–18, 79

Canterbury Fete 108–9

Commonwealth Trophies Committee 136

Canterbury Grammar School 108–9

conscription: ‘boy’ conscription 27; local meetings about 61, 80; referenda 35–6, 61, 66, 79, 80, 147

Captain of School: Baker, Bernard 94; Burke, Alan 27, 107; Byrne, Austen 75; Dickinson, Cuthbert 105; Ethel, Will 62; Fitcher, Roy 76; Jarrett, Frederick 105; Mappin, ‘Tam’ 84; Thomasson, Leslie 88; Carfax-Foster, James 123 casualties of war 123, 140; Australian total 79; black day for the school 83–4; causes of death 14, 32–3; early 1917 66; families with multiple casualties 69–70; gassed 33, 50, 102, 107; records of 21; summer 1917 66, 71; see also France; Gallipoli; no known grave; Western Front Cavanagh, Arthur 57 Cavanagh, Brian: death (aged 96) 57; Distinguished Service Medal 57; war wound 57 cemeteries see military cemeteries Chadwick, Sergeant Barry: ‘home service’ in wartime 102 Chadwick, Clive: ‘Australia’s Call’ (poem) 36; cadet Quartermaster-Sergeant 36; Debating Society judge 36; donates prize for poetry 36; prefect 36, 102; Roll of Honour 36; School Councillor 36, 102

Chunuk Bair, battle of 37 ‘Cinematograph Entertainment’ (Small) 38–9 Citizen Militia (Old Boys) 12

Cox, Frederick 54

Derham, Tom 30

Cox, Private Thomas 54

Dickenson, Campbell: ‘Remount Officer’ 101–102

Coyne, Private J. 74 Crellin, Colonel William (‘Hope’): ‘Life at Duntroon’ (Magazine) 22; Magazine on 21; military career 22; ‘Rhodes Ideal’ prize, 1914 21–2; sporting champion 21; Staff Cadet, Duntroon 21, 22

Dickinson, Gunner Cuthbert 129; Captain of School 105; offers Debating Society prize 105

Croix de Guerre: Derham, Major-General Francis P. 49, 100; Little, Flight Commander Robert (‘Rikki) 100

Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC): Gould-Taylor, Flight Lieutenant John 105; Little, Flight Commander Robert 99

Dux of School: Chapman, Wilfred 140; Eales, Duncan 98, 131; Garnet, Rev. (‘Padre’) 131; Holmes, Walter 77; Lind, Edmund 112; Murdoch, Keith 41, 42, 45; Shaw, Garnet 131; Small, Ronald 9, 24; Wood, Herbert 80, Dyer, David 120; Headmaster 50; ‘reforms’ ANZAC Day program 144–5; and School Song 76 Eales, Duncan: Dux of School 98, 131; Duntroon Military College 131; war service 98, 131 Eales, Kenneth 98–9 Eales, Lieutenant Thomas 47, 99, 131; decorated for ‘reconnaissance work’ 98; Distinguished Conduct Medal 74; Gallipoli veteran 98; killed at Villers-Bretonneux 50, 98

Distinguished Conduct Medal: Eales, Lieutenant Thomas 74

Eales, Lieutenant William 131; Driver, Western Front 50; wounded in action 50, 98, 130 Eastern Front 86 Edwards, Corporal Esbert (‘Jerry’) 39; Gallipoli 38, 55; killed at Pozieres 38, 47, 55; prefect and sportsman 55

Distinguished Service Medal (DSM): Cavanagh, Brian 57

Egypt, AIF training in 24, 26

Davidson, K. 20

Distinguished Service Order (DSO): Daly, Lieutenant-Colonel Clarence Wells Didier 73; Kerr, Dr Frank Robison 21; Little, Flight Commander Robert 99

Dawborn, Corporal Raymond 31, 73–4

doctors see Army Medical Corps

dawn service, ANZAC Day 145–6

Dodgshun, Lieutenant Hornby 132

death, causes of 14, 32–3

Dodgshun, Keith: Gallery of Achievement 132

Elliott, Brigadier-General H. E. (‘Pompey’: Boer War veteran 135; death 137; Nationalist Party Senate representative 135; presents ‘War Trophy’ field gun 122, 135–7; unveils Honour Board 9, 134, 135; World War I veteran 9, 135

Dodgshun, Penton 132

Elliott, Neil 135 Emmerson, Keith 129

Defence Act (Commonwealth) 12

Doery, Major Bruce 90; ‘Douglas Wood’ award (students of French) 54

demobilisation 80, 85, 129, 130; news from veterans 131

Dramatic Society: first performance 1920 134

Dench, Captain Harold: buried in France 110; killed on the Somme 110; Military Cross, Somme 110

Drinkwater, Victor 135

enlistment 47; age of recruitment 52–3; expatriate Old Boys 48–9, 112; entire football team (1913) 11–12; former occupations 12–14; height requirements 13; in late 1915 44; motivation 11, 141; oldest Grammarian (over 40) 11; overstating age 53; presentation school wallet 119, 119; unable to enlist 101–102; youngest recruit (14 years) 11

Debating Society: Chadwick assists judging 36; Dickenson offers prize 105; warbased debates 67–8, 92

Chapman, Wilfred (Brigadier, retired): Dux of the School 140; Gallery of Achievement 141; W. D. Chapman Memorial Oration 140 Cherry, Charlie 77

Coote, Ronald 76

Derham, Major-General Francis P. 23, 81, 89, 91, 141; ANZAC Day address 74–5, 142–3, 144, 145, 146; Croix de Guerre 49, 100; Derham House named for 50, Gallipoli 23, 49; mentioned in despatches 108; Pay Book 78

Daly, Lieutenant-Colonel Clarence Wells Didier, DFC: DSO 73, 105, 111, 112; former bank clerk 73; Gallipoli 38, 73, 96; horse buried with him 97; killed on Western Front 38, 47, 74, 96–7; leadership qualities 73–4; Pozieres 73–4

Cavanagh, Eric 57

146; describes Gallipoli landing 74–5; Gallery of Achievement 30; medical career 30, 108; Military Cross, Gallipoli 30; and OCGA 81; wounded at Gallipoli 30, 73

Derham, Adeline 50, 120 Derham, Captain Alfred P. 44, 49, 85, 140, 141; Anzac Day address 142–3, 144, 145,

156

Egyptian Expeditionary Force 58

Empire League 19

Duntroon Military College: Crellin, Colonel William ‘Hope’ 21, 22; Eales, Duncan 131; Kennedy, Captain Malcolm 94; ‘Life at Duntroon’ (Crellin) 22; Mackey MC, Major David 22–3

157

Fromelles 61; first casualty, Johnson (Ralph ‘Buff’) 51; Old Boy casualties 32, 47–8, 54, 55

Ethel, Will: Captain of School 62 Ewan, Sergeant Keith 33 expatriate Old Boys: in British Army 48–9, 112

fund-raising 19–20, 40, 59–60, 113–14, 115

families with multiple casualties 69–70

Gaba Tepe 37

Fermanagh Road 19, 47, 54, 68

Gaggin, Private Basil 13–14

fetes (fundraising) see ‘Patriotic Fetes’

Gallery of Achievement: see Baillieu, ‘Baron’ Clive; Barber, Captain Charles; Chapman, Wilfred; Derham, Alfred; Fisher, Corporal Allan; Dodgshun, Keith; Goodwin, Shirley; Kerr, Dr Frank Robison; Lind, Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund; Little, Flight Commander Robert; Murdoch, Keith

Fielding, Lieutenant George 50 Fintona Girls’ School: at ANZAC Day services 74–5; Armistice celebrations 115; Burke Road neighbour 75; joint Gallipoli commemoration 74–5 First Anzac Entrenching Battalion 72 Fisher, Corporal Allan: Army Medical Corps 140; Camel Corps Field Ambulance 101, 140; Egypt and Palestine 140; Gallery of Achievement 141; Melbourne University Rifles 140; on motivation for war service 141; Palestine and Jerusalem: Reflections of an NCO in the Australian Imperial Force at the end of the First World War 101, 141; tributes to 140 Fisher, Andrew 42–3 Fitcher, Roy: Captain of School 76 Fitchett, Rev Dr W. H. 16 ‘flu’ epidemic 130 football team (senior): 1904 19, 19; 1913 whole team enlists 11–12 Ford, Geoffrey 86 France: gas 33; casualties 50, 51, 52–3, 65, 71, 112–13; trench warfare 47–8, 56; veteran reunions 131; see also Amiens; Armentieres; Bullecourt; Fromelles; Villers-Bretonneux France, military cemeteries: Beauchamp Communal Cemetery 51–2; British Military Cemetery, Pas de Calais 100; Harbonnieres Military Cemetery 110; Hazebrouck Communal Cemetery 92, 97; Villers-Bretonneux Cemetery 50, 88, 98, 109, 132, 136 French War Babies Appeal 130

Gallipoli: Anzac Cove landing 26–38, 37, 43–4; cadets visit (2015) 28, 28, 31; Chunuk Bair 37, Daly 38, 73, 96; Derham describes landing 75; Derham wins Military Cross 30; evacuation 40; First Anzac Entrenching Battalion 72; 4th Light Horse Brigade HQ 32–3, 72; influenza epidemic 35; landing commemorated 65, 74–5; letters home from 39–40; no known grave 20–1, 28, 32, 53; old copies of Grammarian 37–8; Quarterman first fatality 28, 31, 40, 43, 47; trench life 39–4; Turkish snipers 32; Wallace’s poems on 29, 39; see also Lone Pine Gallipoli Old Boy veterans: Anderson, Lance Corporal Walter (‘Hughie’) 47, 70, 71; Barber, Captain Charles 34, 37, 38; Brooks, Sir Dallas 143, Daly 38, 73, 96; Derham, Captain Alfred 30, 73; Derham, Major Francis 23, 49; Eales, Lieutenant Thomas 98; Kennedy, Captain Malcolm 47, 93–4; killed on the Western Front 47; letters home 39–40; Lind, Lieutenant-Colonel 112–13, 141; Pender, Lieutenant William 33, 37–8, 57–8, 81; receive old issues of Grammarian 37–8; Rodda, Captain Harold 38, 56; on School Roll of Honour 43; Spiller, Captain Walter 7; on Western Front 47; 70, 71, 93; Wood, Private Charles 32; Wood, Edwin 31, 33, 38, 60–1

158

‘at home’ send-off for recruits 133; composes new School Song 76, 117; first Speech Night post-war 117; former Militia captain 17, 45, 129; joint principal with Gosman 41; military censor 17, 19, 44, 67, 129; presents wallets to Old Boy recruits 44; purchases goodwill of Canterbury Grammar 108; retires 139–40; too old to serve 44–5; ‘welcome home’ for veterans 133

Gallipoli, Old Boys, wounded or killed: Bolton, Tom (bugler) 31–2; first CGS fatality (Quarterman) 28, 31, 40, 43, 47; Daly, Lieutenant-Colonel Clarence Wells Didier 38, 73, 96; Dawborn, Corporal Raymond 31; Derham, Captain Alfred 30, 73; James, Sergeant Lyndon 35; Kennedy, Private Edward 32, 40, 43, 47; Milward, Corporal Edgar (‘Ted’) 70; no known grave 20–1, 28, 32, 53; Quarterman, Private Guy 28, 31, 40, 43, 47; repatriations (ill health) 35; Walker, Captain Oscar 20–1, 47

Hall, May 77: boarding house mistress 38; and new school song 117; organising fetes 38, 59, 114

‘Gallipoli Letter’ (Murdoch) 42–3, 45, 45, 47

Hall, Sergeant Thomas 11, 15, 82–3

Garnet, Rev. (‘Padre’): Dux of School 131; Life Governor 131

Hall, Winnie 77

gas attacks 33, 50, 102, 107

Hamel, Battle of: Monash commands 104–105

George, Lieutenant Harley 56, 77

Hamilton, Sir Ian 75

‘German Gun’ see ‘The Gun’ (war trophy)

Hamilton, John: poem ‘The Gun’ 137

Germany: asks for Armistice 93; signs Armistice 113, 114

Harbonnieres Military Cemetery 110 Harvey, Lance Corporal Horatio Stuart 83

Glass, Hugh 83

Hazebrouck Communal Cemetery 92, 97

Goodwin, Howard: Lyn James Medal 35 Goodwin, Captain Shirley: aviator 49; Britain 132; captured by Turks 49; Chunuk Bair 37; death (WWII) 43; Gallery of Achievement 33; Gallipoli 33 Gosman, John 134 Gosman, W.A.: joint principal with Hall 41 Gould-Taylor, Flight Lieutenant John ‘Jack’ Australian Flying Corps 111; DFC 105; killed over France 111 Grammarian see Camberwell Grammarian

hearing problems from artillery 67 Henderson, Walter 50 Herleville Wood 135–6 high jump medal 52 Highton Convalescent Home for Soldiers: Auxiliary Red Cross Home 116; fund-raising for 59, 63, 115–116; Rest Home No. 3 59, 63, 114, 115; staff 115; vocational training for the disabled 115–16

‘Great Game’ 10, 11, 139–40

Hindenburg (Siegfried) Line 79, 108, 109, 112

‘Great Strike’ (1917) 79

Holmes, Walter: Dux of School 77

Great War see World War I (‘Great War’)

home leave from Western Front 85, 112

gun (war trophy) see ‘The Gun’ (war trophy)

homesick recruits 67

Haig, Sir Douglas 73–4

Honour Boards: design 9, 131; funding 10, 11, 21, 130; Gallipoli veterans 43; moved to Performing Arts Centre 143; need for 2; original position 9–10; a reminder of sacrifices made 10, 134–5; unveiled by ‘Pompey’ Elliot 9, 134, 135; who to include 130–1; see also In Memoriam Roll

Hain, Eric: Gallipoli 44; health problems 44; Light Horseman 39, 44 Hall, Alfred S. 10, 11, 19, 21, 27, 38, 39, 40, 42, 46, 59, 105, 114, 115; acquires ‘The Gun’ 136; on aim of school (1915) 44; ANZAC Day address 139, 141–2;

159

Hooke, Garnsey 131

Kennedy, Thomas: no known grave 32

horses at the Front: buried with rider 97; ‘Sandy’ only horse to return 58; sent to Middle East 58; veterinary officer Symonds 58, 64; see also Light Horsemen

Kerr, Alan 83 Kerr, (Dr) Captain Eric 83

‘Hospital Egg Day’ 74

Kerr DSO, Dr Frank Robison 15; France 21, 49; Gallery of Achievement 21; Rhodes Scholar, 1913 21, 49; sportsman 21

Hughston, Annie 75, 115

Kerr, Ottilie 83–4

Hutton, Roderick 113

killed in action: causes of death 14, 32–3, see also no known grave

‘Hymn of Thanksgiving for the Great Peace’ (student composition) 133 In Memoriam roll 82, 124, 125; list of fallen 61, 68, 70, 87; plaque 124, 125, 131; total fallen 113 Indian Lancers 81–2 influenza epidemic 33, 35, 45, 62, 85, 106–7, 117, 130, 199 James, Corporal Alfred 13, 35

McKenzie, Sergeant Donald 128–9

‘Lest We Forget’: poem by Drinkwater 135; Spectemur links to Aboriginal welfare 144,

McKenzie, Gordon 76

Life Governor: Rev. Garnet (‘Padre’) 131

Jenkins, R. Earl 60 Jerusalem: CGS Light Horsemen 92–3 Johnson, Alice: donates High Jump Medal 52; tribute to son Ralph (‘Buff’) 52 Johnson, Fred 74, 85 Johnson, Private Ralph ‘Buff’: athletics champion 51; ‘boy soldier’ 42, 52; burial place ‘lost’ 51–2; dies of wounds 51–2; first CGS casualty at Fromelles 51–2; High Jump Medal commemorates 52; mother’s tribute to 52; prefect 51; taken prisoner 51 Jones, Alex: ‘A Call to Australia’ 67 Kennedy, Private Edward: Gallipoli 32, 40, 43, 47; no known grave 32; sniper 32 Kennedy, Captain Malcolm: Duntroon 94; footballer (VFL) 94; Gallipoli veteran 47, 93–4; killed in Belgium 33, 93–4; Light Horse 32–3, 93; memorial tablet (St Paul’s, Melbourne) 94; military funeral 94; and use of tanks 93; wounded at Lone Pine 33, 93

McCormick, Craig: donates new Australian flag 94; donates to ‘War Orphans Scholarship’ 95

Le Hamel 104–5

Lewis, Captain Benson 54

Jarrett, Frederick: Captain of School 105

McClelland, Hugh: ‘In Quietness Remembered’ (poem) 139

Law, John 67

Laurie, Henry: ‘Our Duty’ (poem) 9, 104

‘Letter to the Kaiser’ (student Sutton) 117

James, Sergeant Lyndon: funds Lyn James champion shot medal 35; killed at Gallipoli 35; London 67

Lyn James Medal (champion shot): Goodwin, Howard 35

McIntosh, Lieutenant Alexander: expatriate recruit 49; name missing from Roll of Honour 49; prefect 49; tennis champion 49

‘Kitchener Overseas Scholarship’ (UK) 108

Light Horsemen: Byrne, Austen 107; 4th Light Horse Brigade HQ, Gallipoli 32–3, 72; Hain, Eric 39, 44; take Jerusalem 92–3; Kennedy, Malcolm 32–3, 93; Pender, Lieutenant William 33, 37–8, 57–8, 81–2; veterans 72; Waters, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward 72; wounded at Gallipoli 32–3; see also horses at the Front Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery 82 Lind, Lieutenant-Colonel Edmund 141: Dux of School 112; Gallery of Achievement 112; Gallipoli 112–13, 141 Lister House 20, 137–8

Manders, Lieutenant George: dies of wounds, Mesopotamia 47, 48–9; enlists in British Army 48; former journalist 48, Gallipoli 48 Mappin, Private Tamillas (‘Tam’): Anglican Minister 84; Captain of School 84; example of ‘self-sacrifice’ 84; Military Medal, Ypres 84; stretcher-bearer 84; wounded 84

McKenzie, William (‘Captain Mac’): boxing trophies 103–4; Gallipoli 103; military chaplain 103; patriotic speech-maker 103; visits CGS 103–4; Western Front 103

Medical Corps see Australian Army Medical Corps

Mackay, Clive 23, 128

Melbourne: prepares for war 18

Mackey, Major David: Duntroon Military College 22–3; death 23; Military Cross, Somme 22–3

Melbourne University Rifles 14 ‘Memorial Hall’: ANZAC Day commemorations 144; opened 1958 143; replaced by Performing Arts Centre 10, 143; see also Honour Boards

Mackey, Stanley 102 McKinley family: Lieutenant Harry (‘Rob’) 69–70; three sons killed at Bullecourt 69 Mackintosh, Donald: enlists as ‘Paul Harris’ 83; no known grave 83 Mackintosh, Norman 108

Military Cemetery 51–2 Michael, Private Charles: on Gallipoli trenches 39–40; killed on Western Front 40, 47, 82

Macrow, William (‘Billy’) R. F.: Military Cross 34–5

Little, Vera 100

Magazine of the Camberwell Grammar School 10, 42, 135; ‘A Call to Australia’ (Jones) 67; ‘A Reverie’ (Wiseman) 60; accounts of good fortune 72; on Armistice 128; assesses year 1915 40; ‘Australia’s

Lone Pine: Australians wounded/killed 31, 33, 70, 93; battle 37; Memorial 28;

160

mentioned in despatches: Baillieu, Clive 112; Derham, Major-General Francis 102; Pender, Lieutenant William 58; Rodda, Captain Harold 57 Messines 72, 79, 106, 112

McMenamin, Frank (‘Mac’) 77: awards ‘Rhodes Ideal’ prize 21–2; retires 22; sportsmaster 21

Little, Flight Commander Robert (‘Rikki’) 111; Croix de Guerre 100; Distinguished Flying Cross 99; Distinguished Service Order 99; Gallery of Achievement 99; RAF air ace 99, 100; shot down, killed 98, 99, 100 Löhn, Richard Heinrich 97

Answer’ (Rigby) 58–9; on CGS response to war 130; casualty reports 14, 21, 51, 68; content July 1916 49; content December 1918 105; on Crellin 21; ‘Honours’ 73; hopes for peace 128, 143; ‘Life at Duntroon’ (Crellin) 22; ‘Our Peace Celebrations’ 114–15; ‘Promotions’ 73; ‘School Chums at War’ (Baker) 94–5; sent to the front line 81; ‘The Fall of Germany’ (Sutton) 132–3; The Old Boys’ column 49, 50, 74

31; Military Cross (Barber) 34; Turkish ‘listening tunnel’ 34

McWhae, Lieutenant John: killed at Ypres 71; Military Cross 71; Somme 71

Michael, Harry 74, 82, 85

McWhae, Kenneth 71–2

military cemeteries, Belgium: Messines Military Cemetery 51–2; Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery 82; Strand Military Cemetery 71, 72

Miles, Keith 131–2

military cemeteries, France: Beauchamp Military Cemetery 51–2; Harbonnieres

161

Murdoch, Lieutenant Alan: Military Cross 106; wounded in action 106–107

Military Cemetery 110; Hazebrouck Communal Cemetery 92, 97; Pas de Calais British Military Cemetery 100; see also Villers-Bretonneux

Murdoch, Lieutenant Ivon 15, 30; discharged in US 106; health problems 106–107; Military Cross and Bar 105–106

military censor: Headmaster Hall 17, 19, 44, 67, 129

Murdoch, Keith: ‘business pursuits’ 42; Dux of the School 41, 42, 45; Gallery of Achievement 41; ‘Gallipoli Letter’ 42–3, 45, 45, 47; influence of school 41–2; principle of ‘individualism’ 41; war correspondent 41, 42, 45, 106

Military Cross 15; Barber, Captain Charles 34; Dench, Captain Harold 110; Derham, Captain Alfred 30; Mackey, Major David 22–3; Macrow, Lieutenant William 34–5; McWhae, Lieutenant John 71; Murdoch, Lieutenant Alan 106; Rodda, Captain Harold 107–108; Stobie, Captain Graeme 13–14

Murdoch, Walter 42

Military Cross and Bar: Murdoch, Lieutenant Ivon 105, 106 military honours (decorations): see Croix de Guerre; Distinguished Conduct Medal; Distinguished Flying Cross; Distinguished Service Order; Military Cross; Military Cross and Bar; Victory Medals military service, compulsory 12, 17–18, 79

Old Boys column (Magazine) 49, 50, 74

Millward, Corporal Edgar (‘Ted’): academic success 70; killed at Bullecourt 47, 70; 71; no known grave 70; sportsman 70; wounded at Gallipoli 70

‘Old Boys’ notes (1917) 80 Opie, Lieutenant R. 20

Monash, General John 107: Commander Australia Corps, Western Front 104; Le Hamel 105; on recapture of Villers-Bretonneux 97; tactics reduce death toll 113; use of tanks 104 Mont Albert Road campus: benefactor Angliss 142; ‘black day’ for school (October 1917) 84; ‘Captain Mac’ visits 103–4; first veteran on staff (Southwell) 134; during ‘Great Strike’ 79; Old Boys’ affection for 78; Prize Night (1914) 20, 21–2, 40; returned servicemen visit school 80; Roystead 138; temporary staff during ‘flu’ epidemic 130; student strike-breakers (1917) 79–80; war-based debates 67–8, 92; ‘War Orphans Scholarship’ 87, 94, 95, 97; see also Highton Convalescent Home for Soldiers; Memorial Hall Moon, Allan 85, 86 Mouquet Farm, Battle of 57

no known grave: Anderson, Walter (‘Hughie’) 69, 70; Brinsden, Gilbert 85; Brunn, Eric 97; Gallipoli 20–1, 28, 32, 53; Johnson, Ralph ‘Buff’ 51–2; Kennedy, Edward 32; Kennedy, Thomas 32; Mackintosh, Donald 83; Millward, Edgar (‘Ted’) 70; Quarterman, Guy 28, 31, 32; Tuckfield, Herbert 69; Walker, Oscar 20–1; Wood, Douglas 53

Australian Red Cross Society 116

Pender, Lieutenant William Stanhope: Egyptian Expeditionary Force 58; Indian Lancers 81–2; Light Horse 33, 37–8, 57–8, 81–2; mentioned in despatches 58

Red Cross Auxiliary Home see Highton Convalescent Home

Performing Arts Centre 10, 143

referenda on conscription 35–6, 61, 66, 79, 80, 147

Pettett, Private William (‘Claude’) 96

‘Remount Officer’ Dickenson 101–102

poetry, ‘Australia’s Call’ (Chadwick) 36; ‘Australia’s Answer’ (Rigby) 58–9; ‘In Quietness Remembered’ (McClelland) 139; ‘Lest We Forget’ (Drinkwater) 135; ‘Our Duty’ (Laurie) 9, 104; ‘Our Honour Board (Drinkwater) 135; ‘Our War’’ (Small, prize-winner) 9, 24–6; prizes for 36; ‘The Battle’ (Ballard) 142; ‘The Fall of Germany’ (Sutton) 132–3; ‘The Gun’ (Hamilton) 137; ‘The Poster’ (anon) 35; ‘The Sea’ (Small) 26; ‘Thoughts of the Night’ (Robarts) 117; ‘To Our Old Boys Killed In This War’ (Bolton) 116–17; ‘untitled’ (Wallace, on Gallipoli) 29, 39

repatriation 35, 57, 60–1, 63–4, 71–2, 74, 116, 134

Polygon Wood 82–3, 84 Pozieres 47–8, 54–5, 56, 59, 61, 70, 72, 73–4, 77 prefects 21, 24, 36, 38, 49, 55, 70, 75, 76, 94, 97, 102, 116, 129, 133, 134, 135

‘Our Duty’ (poem, Henry B. Laurie, 1918) 9, 104

Prior, Leslie (‘boy soldier’) 52–3

‘Our Peace celebrations’ (Magazine) 114–15

Prize Night, wartime (1914) 20, 21–2, 40

‘Our War’ (poem, Ronald Small, 1915): poetry prize winner 9, 24–6

Quarterman, Guy: drops age to join up 31; Gallipoli 40, 43, 47; Lone Pine Memorial 28, 31; no known grave 28, 31, 32

Palestine and Jerusalem: Reflections of an NCO in the Australian Imperial Force at the end of the First World War (Allan Fisher) 101, 141

‘Private Omerod’ 43, 48

peace, negotiations fail (1916) 65; see also Armistice

recruits: age 11, 52–3; backgrounds 11–14; casualties 11, 14, 15, 32, 47, 54–5, 59, 95, 113; causes of death 14, 32–3; conscription referenda 35–6, 61, 66, 79, 80, 147; hearing problems from guns 67; height requirements 13; homesick 67; oldest serving (Waters) 72; ‘shell-shock’ 50–1, 56; ‘Soldiers Pay Book for use on Active Service’ 46, 78; theatres of war 11–12; war, the ‘Great Game’ 10, 11, 135, 139–40; youngest casualty 11, 52–3; see also enlistment; Light Horsemen; no known grave

Pemble, Private William 62, 69

‘Red Cross and Patriotic Fund’ 122

Pas de Calais British Military Cemetery 100 Passchendaele 79, 85, 99, 109, 112 ‘Patriotic Fetes’ 112, 113–14, 115, 122; ‘American gift afternoon’ 20, 38–9; first 19–20; fund motor ambulance 20; without raffles 114

162

Repatriation Department 35, 106 Repatriation scheme 86, 134 returned (wounded) 32, 56, 74, 84, 86, 106, 134; visit school 80; see also Highton Convalescent Home ‘Rhodes Ideal’ prize’: awarded by McMenamin 21–2; Bernard Baker 94, 1908 Rodda 56; 1910 Thomasson 109–10; 1914 Crellin 21–2 Rigby, Harold: ‘Australia’s Answer’ (poem) 58–9 Robarts, Oswald: ‘Thoughts of the Night’ (poem) 117 Robinson, Sapper Robert 11, 85–6 Rodda, Captain Harold 15; Captain of Football 56; death 38; France 56, 73; Gallipoli 38, 56; ‘good luck’ 38, 56, 57, 107–8; Military Cross 107–8; OCGA President 38; ‘Rhodes Ideal’ prize, 1908 56 Roll of Honour 36, 61, 87, 126–7, 129, 139–40, 145; design 131; funding 124; 130; Gallipoli veterans 43; names missing 49; names removed from 43; unveiled 134–5; see also In Memoriam plaque 124, 125, 131 Roystead 138 Russia: Revolution, 1917 65–6, 78–9; withdraws from war 65–6 Saint John’s Anglican Church see Burke Road Campus Saint Mark’s Church: ANZAC Day service 141–2, 143, 144, 145 Saunders, Herbert 76 Schofield, Rev. J. A. 138, 141

163

copies sent to front line 81; links ‘Lest We Forget’ to Aboriginal welfare 144

scholarship, ‘War Orphans Scholarship’ 87, 94 School Army Cadet Unit see cadet corps

Speech Night, first post-war 117

school captains see Baker, Bernard; Burke, Alan; Byrne, Austen; Dickenson, Cuthbert; Campbell; Ethel, Will; Fitcher, Roy; Jarrett, Frederick; Mappin, ‘Tam’; Thomasson, Leslie

Spiller, Captain Walter: Gallipoli veteran 73; wounded twice on Western Front 73

School Choir 76 School Concerts: inaugural (1898) 76, resumed post-war 75–6, 129, 134

Sports Day 20, 51, 52, 85, 131 sportsmaster (McMenamin) 21 staff: first veteran appointed (Southwell) 134; temporary (during ‘flu epidemic’) 130 Stafford, Captain John (School Army Cadet Unit) 145

School Council 36, 50, 102, 105, 142, 144 School Song 61, 76, 117, 134

Stobie, Captain Graeme 15; Military Cross (France) 13–14

scholarship, ‘Kitchener Overseas Scholarship’ (UK) 108

Strand Military Cemetery 71, 72

Searle, Headmaster: bike racks issue 24; former soldier 24

students of German extraction 97

self-sacrifice: British tradition of 84, 136, 139

Sutherland, William 85

student strike-breakers (1917) 79–80 Sutton, John: killed in motor-cycle accident 133; ‘Letter to the Kaiser’ 117; ‘The Fall of Germany’ (poem) 132–3

Shaw, Reverend Garnet (‘Padre’), Dux of School 131 ‘shell-shock’ 50–1; shame attached to 56

for village school 123; Esles killed 50, 9877-1; military cemetery 88, 109, 132; Monash on recapture 97; Thomasson killed 88, 132

39th Battalion: association with Cadet Unit 96 Thomas, Lieutenant Henry (‘Harry’) 15; killed in action 11, 68–9, 70; school boarder 69; Thomasson, Corporal Leslie, Captain of School 88; killed at Villers-Bretonneux 88, 132; ‘Rhodes Ideal’ prize, 1910 109–10

Walker, Captain Oscar (British Army) 24, 40, 43; killed at Gallipoli 20–1, 47; no known grave 20–1 Wallace, Lauder: poems on Gallipoli (untitled) 29, 39

‘Thoughts of the Night’ (poem, Robarts) 117

wallets with school crest 119, 119; presented to Old Boy recruits 44

‘To Our Old Boys Killed In This War’ (poem, Bolton) 116–17

war casualties see casualties of war

Treacy, Gunner Reginald 67

war cemeteries see military cemeteries

Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 92

war correspondents 27, 29; Keith Murdoch 41, 42, 45, 106

‘trench fever’ 130–1

war decorations see Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC); Distinguished Service Order (DSO); Military Cross (MC); Victory Medals

‘trench foot’ 51 trench warfare: France 47–8, 56; Gallipoli 39–40; ‘shell-shock’ 50–1, 56 Trinity College (school) 20

War Funds raised 20, 40, 44, 59–60, 87, 94, 103, 136; see also patriotic fetes

Tucker, R. O. 108 Tuckfield, Private Frederick 33, 69

‘War Orphans Scholarship’ 87, 94

Tuckfield, Herbert, no known grave 69

Siegfried (Hindenburg) Line 79, 108, 112

Symonds, Major Stanley: Boer War 58; veterinary officer 58, 64; World War I 58

signing up see enlistment

tanks 93, 104

‘Untitled’ (poem, Wallace) 29, 39

Small, Ronald 36; academic and sporting achievements 24; cadet unit 24; ‘Cinematograph Entertainment’ 38–9; Dux of School 9, 24; poem ‘Our War’ (prize-winner, 1915) 9, 24–6; poem ‘The Sea’ 26; prefect 24

Taylor A. B. 67

Vaughan, Eric: killed at Flanders 71; Strand Military Cemetery 72

war, a ‘great Game’ 10, 11, 135, 139–40

Taylor, W. 50 ‘The Battle’ (poem, Ballard) 142

Vaughan, Warren (Light Horseman) 71

‘The Fall of Germany’ (poem, Sutton) 132–3

Smart, Sergeant Henry 84

‘The Gun’ (poem, Hamilton) 137

Smellie, R. M. 60

‘The Gun’ (war trophy) 16–17, 18, 19, 60, 113–14, 122; becomes ‘play equipment’ 137–8; commemorative significance 138; final resting place unknown 138; presented by Pompey Elliott 122, 135–7

veterans: demobilised 80, 85, 129, 130; first appointed to CGS staff (Southwell) 134; gassed 33, 50, 102, 107; invited to ANZAC Day service 141–2; Light Horsemen 72; longest-surviving (Robinson) 11, 85–6; oldest Old Boy serving (Waters) 72; repatriation 35, 57, 60–1, 63–4, 71–2, 74, 116, 134; reunions, France 131; Robinson, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward 86; send news from the front 131

Waters, Lieutenant-Colonel Edward: commands First Anzac Entrenching Battalion 72; death in Melbourne 72; Light Horse veteran 72; ‘lucky escape’ (1917) 72; oldest Old Boy serving 72

‘Short Form of Will’ (cadet corps) 46, 78

snipers 32, 82–3, 97, 110 ‘Soldiers Pay Book for use on Active Service’ 46, 78 Somme, Battle of: Dench, Captain Harold 110; Mackey MC, Major David 22–3; McWhae, Lieutenant John 71 Sorby, Lieutenant Joseph 96 Southwell, B. C. S.: first veteran on staff 134 Spectemur: on Anzac Day service 143–4;

The Nek, Battle of 37 ‘The Poster’ (poem, anon) 35 ‘The Sea’ (poem, Small) 26 ‘There Should be Reprisals in War’ (school debate, 1918) 92 3rd Pioneer Battalion 98

164

War Savings Certificates 114

United States enters war 66, 86, 92

war trophies: allocated to Victoria 136; Commonwealth Trophies Committee 136; see also ‘The Gun’

University and Schools Cadet Corps 80

veterinary officer: Major Stanley Symonds 58, 64 Victory Medals 113 Villers-Bretonneux: Australian casualties 50, 88, 98, 109, 132, 136; CGS plaque

war-based debates 67–8, 92

Waters, William: discharged 73; re-enlists in 32nd Battalion 73; service medals ‘forfeited’ 73; 16th Battalion engineer 72 Watt, Charles 98 Watt, Lance Corporal Oscar 98 WD Chapman Memorial Oration 140 Western Front: Australians of German descent 97; Australian Corps 85; 93, 104, 112,;background of recruits 11–12; casualties 9, 38, 46–9, 51–5,

165

69, 70, 71, 108–9; Citizen Militia 12; decorated while on service 105, 106; Eales wounded twice 98; Fielding’s ‘gunner group’ 50; former occupations 12–14; Gallipoli veterans 47, 70, 71, 93; home leave 85, 112; homesickness 67; news from demobilised veterans 13;, oldest serving (Waters) 72, returned (wounded) 32, 56, 74, 80, 84, 86, 106, 134; serving in both world wars 32, 109, 112–13; serving with British Army 48–9, 112; shell-shock 50–1, 56; Siegfried (Hindenburg) Line 79, 108, 109, 112; training in Egypt 24, 26; War Orphans Scholarship program 87, 94; see also boy soldiers; enlistment Wheelton Centre 145 White Australia Policy debate 68 Whitehead, Major William: drills cadet units 27; 108–9; ‘military funeral’ 27 Wiedemann, Francis 68

33, 38, 60–1; repatriated 60–1; Western Front 31; wounded 31 Wood, Frank 53 Wood, Herbert: Dux of School 80; machine gunner 85; wounded (demobilised) 80, 85 Wood, Tom, bugler 31–2 World War I (‘Great War’): Allied prospects of victory 86; Auburn mounted riflemen 18; beginnings 16–28; beginning of the end 108; ‘black day’ (4th October 1917) 84; British Empire involved 18; cadets prepare for 19, 28; Eastern Front 86; Melbourne prepares for 18; outbreak 18; to be ‘over by Christmas’ 20; peace negotiations fail (1916) 65; remembering 11–12; repatriation 57, 60–1, 63–4, 71–2, 74, 116, 134; Russia withdraws from 65–6; Treaty of Brest-Litovsk 92; United States enters 66, 86, 92; Victory Medals 113; ‘Was it worth it’? 147

Wiedemann, Ruby 68

Wright, John: designs Honour Board 9; Old Boy architect 9; President OCGA 9

William Angliss Building 143

Wright, Lieutenant Hewlett 56

wills, ‘Short Form of Will’ 46, 78

youngest Grammarian casualty 11, 52–3

Wilson, Alec 116

Ypres 71, 79, 83, 84

Wiedemann, Private Oscar 68

Wiseman, William: ‘A Reverie (Magazine, 1960) 60 Wood, Private Charles 32 Wood, Christina 53–4, 147 Wood, Douglas (‘boy soldier’): ‘Douglas Wood’ memorial prize (for students of French) 54; enlists (aged 14) 52; killed at Fromelles 52–3, 65, 68; no known grave 53; stretcher-bearer 53; youngest Grammarian to fall 52–3 Wood, Edwin: bugler 31–2; Gallipoli 31,

166

About the Author Dr David S. Bird is an independent historian based in Melbourne. He was born in Tasmania and studied History and Classics at the Universities of Tasmania, Cape Town and Melbourne.

Dr Bird has written, published and spoken extensively on aspects of Australian and British history throughout Australia and the UK. He has taught Latin at Camberwell Grammar School since 1997, combining this with the dual roles of School Historian and Archivist since 2013. ‘Sustaining the Glorious Empire’ is his seventh book.