Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

P_BADCOE.pdf

BAKER.pdf

MUNN.pdf

WATTS.pdf

GEORGE.pdf

AE2 at sea travelling at speed on the surface

Rowan Boys Jack standing Joe seated. Probably taken at Abbassia towards the end of their Provo training (Circa mid-1916)

John Talbot Wright, aged 32, a motor mechanic and former chauffeur, was arrested on 11 September 1920 by Constable Cecil Elliott after a sensational car chase through city streets. Wright had stolen a brand-new luxury car, a Studebaker limousine belonging to Albert Cosman Jones, managing director of a company called Australian Motor Services Limited. Jones told the press that he had parked the car in the street outside his flat in Bayswater Road, Rushcutters Bay. He was in conversation with a friend inside the flat when he heard the car being started. Rushing from the apartment, he found Constable Elliott on point duty nearby. Together they commandeered a passing car and gave chase to the limousine, Constable Elliott on the footboard firing his revolver at intervals. Eventually, just outside the Captain Cook Hotel in Paddington, the pursuing car drew abreast of the stolen car and Elliott jumped across to the footboard of the limousine, threatening to shoot the driver if he did not stop.1 Wright’s photograph shows him wearing a Returned from Active Service badge. When he came before the court on Monday 13 September, his solicitor pleaded in his client’s defence that Wright was a returned soldier who had enlisted in 1915 and been wounded in action and ‘badly buried as a result of a shell burst’, and that he was ‘a complete nervous wreck when he arrived home’. The solicitor had a letter from a medical specialist stating that Wright had a ‘morbid mental bearing’.2 The solicitor did not mention that Wright had enlisted under the assumed name Jack Russell, Russell being his mother’s maiden name. As Jack Russell he had embarked for the front on 30 September 1915 with the 4th Reinforcements of the 17th Battalion on HMAT Argyllshire. His service dossier shows that he saw active service in Egypt and on the Western Front, that he spent quite a bit of time in military detention for various offences, and that he was hospitalised on a number of occasions for mostly unspecified ailments, but it has nothing specific to say about his being wounded in action. In any event, when Wright appeared before the committal court in August neither the magistrate nor the police prosecutor was sympathetic to the solicitor’s shell-shock plea, the prosecutor asking: ‘If everyone came before the court with the excuse of shell-shock where would we be?’3 Constable Elliott’s actions, on the other hand, were much acclaimed. He was himself a returned soldier, only 22 years old and a policeman for just seven months. As one journalist put it: ‘Before Elliott joined the force he was engaged in the most exciting of all chases – for Germans in France’.4 1.The National Advocate (Bathurst), 13 September 1920, p1. 2.Evening News, 13 September 1920, p6. 3.Ibid. 4.The National Advocate, op cit.

Spurling__William_Alfred_-_1915-1917.pdf

Malaya-Diary_111_LAA_Bty_with_cover.pdf

O_Brien_Diary_full.compressed.pdf

REVISED_SARAWAK_TABLET.pdf

Butler_letter__Advertiser_26.6.1915__p16_.pdf

Butler_letter__Advertiser_26.6.1915__p16_.pdf

C_REYNELL.pdf

C_REYNELL.pdf

A_WALKER.pdf

H_GOODING.pdf

H_TUTT.pdf

O_HAYNES.pdf

O_WOODWARD.pdf

F_DAVIS.pdf

R_BROWN.pdf

Lucy_Brown_2014_Lionel_Colin_MATTHEWS.wma

Amelia_Chandra_2010_Lawrence_Carthage_WEATHERS.wmv

_NAA-WW1__LH_MORTIMER_SN-16610.pdf

_NAA-WW1__LH_MORTIMER_SN-16610.pdf

Reference image only to provide position detail for those named. This image is not for sale. Group portrait of the men of the 6th and 8th Battalions making their way under shell fire from the trenches near Railway Wood, in the Ypres Sector. Identified are: 442 Sergeant (Sgt) Robert Alexander McLean from Beeac, Victoria (1); unidentified (2); 1639 Sgt Percy Gye Flemington, Victoria (3); 1423 Private (Pte) Henry John Streets from Portsmouth, UK (4); 4444 Pte Thomas Alexander Brown from Golden Square, Victoria (5); 5208 Pte Eric Clinton Teague from Bendigo, Victoria (6); 3800 Sgt Arthur Ronald Holloway from Chiltern, Victoria (7); 4615 Pte Matthew Trewhella from Bendigo (8); unidentified (9); unidentified (10); 131 Pte E M Hughes, Royal Garrison Artillery (RGA) (11); unidentified (12); 5088 Pte H J Floate, RGA (13); unidentified (14); unidentified (15); unidentified (16); 5246 Lance Corporal (L Cpl) James Callil Ferry from Carlton, Victoria (17); unidentified (18); L Cpl Benjamin Crosby from Richmond, Victoria [killed in action in Belgium 8 July 1916] (19); 2936 Corporal (Sgt) John Thomas Pinchen MM from South Melbourne, Victoria(20); 5454 Pte David Styles from Hamilton, Victoria (21); 7150 L Cpl Harold James Gray from Parkville, Victoria (22); 3115 Sgt Bernard Gordon Murphy from West Melbourne (23); 5107 Pte Herbert Edward Hellyer from Cavendish, Victoria (24); unidentified (25); 6728 L Cpl Reginald Miller Cullen from Temora, NSW (26); Lieutenant John Gibson Pitt from Surrey, UK (27); 5443 L Cpl Samuel Redmayne from Alexandra, Victoria (28); Captain Alexander George Campbell DSO from Sandringham, Victoria (29); 3831 Sgt Leslie Gordon Kittle MM from Shepparton, Victoria (30); 2017 Pte David Owen MM from North Melbourne (31); 1111 Sgt Jack John Jorgenson from Hawthorn, Victoria (32); 2423 Pte Arthur Leslie Beachcroft from Moonee Ponds, Victoria (33); Pte Trevalla [possibly 2166 Pte John Rowe Travers from Werribee, Victoria (34); 354 Sgt Allan Couper Robertson from Leongatha, Victoria (35); unidentified (36); 1839 Pte William John Thomas from Geelong, Victoria (37); 2448 Pte Albert James Radley from Dunkeld, Victoria (38); 4306 Pte Blain Stanley Skinner from Albert Park, Victoria (59).