People profiles
Trooper John Hutton Bisdee VC
A03685
Date of birth: 28 September 1869
Place of birth: Hutton Park, Melton Mowbray, TAS
Date of death:14 January 1930
Place of death: Melton Mowbray, TAS
John Bisdee of the 1st Tasmanian Imperial Bushmen, was in an eight-man mounted patrol ambushed by the Boers near Warm Bad, Transvaal, on 1 September 1900. Almost all of the party were wounded, including an officer whose horse had bolted. Bisdee put the officer on his own horse and, despite having been wounded himself, ran alongside under fire until he too could mount up and get away.
Bisdee served as a light horse officer in the First World War. By 1918 he was a lieutenant colonel in the ANZAC Provost Corps. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1919. Bisdee eventually returned to farming in Tasmania, where he died.
