'The uncle we never knew'

More than 75 years after her older brother disappeared while gathering intelligence during the Second World War, Marcelle Price’s family gathered at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra to attend a Last Post Ceremony commemorating his service and sacrifice.

For Marcelle, who turned 100 this year, it was a particularly special moment to know that her beloved brother, Ivor Whittaker, was being remembered at the Memorial. 

In September 1941, Ivor was on a reconnaissance flight that went missing over the Mediterranean. He was declared missing, presumed dead, but his body was never found.

The news was a devastating blow for the family, who continued to hold out hope that he would be found alive. “It must have been devastating when Ivor went off to war,” Marcelle’s daughter Jocelyn Henry said after the ceremony. “It was a very close family … [and]  they were very proud of him, but I remember them saying for a long time it was very hard not knowing what had happened to him.”

Jocelyn never met her uncle, but she grew up hearing stories about him from her mother and her grandparents. “One of my brothers referred to him as the uncle we never knew,” she said. “But I think all of us felt that he’d been quite a role model for us.”

Ivor Whittaker was born on 14 August 1910 in Brunswick, Victoria, to Robert Charles and Muriel Whittaker. He had two younger sisters – Shirley, who was born when he was four years old, and Marcelle, who was born when he was seven – and was educated at Scotch College and Melbourne University.

“Everything he turned his hand to he did very well,” Jocelyn said.  “He was a prefect, school house captain, school pianist, captain of rowing and the football team, and was dux of mathematics.”

He was also a noted skier, representing Victoria and becoming a founding member and president of the University Ski Club. In 1931 he won the prestigious Silver K trophy in Switzerland. In line with his passion for skiing, Whittaker was an expert accordion player, performing a range of Swiss and Austrian skiing songs at ski lodges in the evenings.

“He was very sociable,” Jocelyn said. “He played his squeezebox, as they called it, and being able to play by ear he would have been in demand to play the piano.”

Whittaker began his military career with the Scotch College Cadet Corps and joined the Melbourne University Rifles while studying commerce. He even served as a guest officer in an English regiment on Salisbury Plain during an overseas visit.

By the age of 25, he was secretary of the family business, Whittaker Clothing, and had visited clothes manufacturers as far away as New York and London to study their practices.

His sister Shirley, who was a promising tennis player, died in June 1939 after suffering a long illness.

When war broke out in Europe a few months later, Whittaker was one of the first to join up, enlisting in the Second Australian Imperial Force in October 1939. He was given the enlistment number VX24 and was appointed as an intelligence officer with the 17th Infantry Brigade, part of the 6th Division.

After attending Staff and Command School in Sydney throughout December, Captain Whittaker became engaged to his sweetheart Margaret Symons before joining his unit at Puckapunyal in Victoria in February 1940.

The 17th Infantry Brigade left Australia on 14 April 1940, arriving in Kantara, a town on the western side of the Suez Canal, in May. He gave lectures on map reading during the trip and was later injured in a head-on car crash in Libya while working as an intelligence officer for the 17th Brigade. He was reportedly taking information to a general who was captured just a few hours later.

Following his recovery, Whittaker was promoted to temporary major and seconded to the 1st Australian Corps Intelligence Section. It was during this time that he was attached to the Royal Air Force’s Middle East Command Headquarters as the army’s Air Intelligence Liaison Officer.

The following year he was on a reconnaissance flight in a Blenheim bomber when it went missing over the Mediterranean. Whittaker was declared missing, presumed dead, on 12 September 1941, but his body was never found, and today he is commemorated at the Alamein Memorial in Egypt.   

In his will, he requested that a sum of money be used to build a skiers’ retreat at Mt Buller in country Victoria. Named the Ivor Whittaker Memorial Lodge in his honour, it is run by the Ski Club of Victoria and is affectionately known as “the Whitt”. Today, visitors to the lodge are still greeted by a poem written by his friend John Armstrong in his memory.

Kick the snow off your boots as you enter,

For this is no ordinary shack,

It is built in the name of a skier who knew how to carry his pack,

With the highest ideals of the sportsman, he’s gone to the ultimate crest,

Kick the snow off your boots as you enter,

By example this lodge has been blessed.

 For the family, it was a particularly special tribute after a time of great uncertainty.

“I remember my mother saying the just not knowing was very hard to take,” Jocelyn said.

“He was missing, presumed dead, and I know that was very open-ended and very uncertain …  We didn’t really know what had happened to Ivor …  [and] I don’t know at what point they accepted that he wasn’t in a prisoner of war camp.

“I think a lot of people who came back from the war didn’t talk a lot, but we did talk a little bit. I guess like most families, you wish you’d asked more questions when you had the chance to… [but] we talked about him and his friends, [and] I guess over the years I’ve found out a bit more.”

Jocelyn's mother, Marcelle, had hoped to make the trip to Canberrra for the Last Post Ceremony commemorating his life, but couldn’t due to health reasons. Instead, her son read the story to her at her nursing home in Melbourne; she couldn’t have been more proud.

“Somebody commented on this occasion that [the Last Post Ceremony] was the funeral that perhaps he’d never had,” Henry said.

“This man with so much promise and so much opportunity [went] away to war … and one of the things that really hit me during the service was … just to hear the age. That was a very poignant moment for me. Ivor was 31, and then in those moments, I just thought of all the things that lay ahead of him … that never would be.”