Australian military Birdwood connections
As part of a wider project to digitise First World War collections, the Memorial is seeking contact with relatives of the persons listed below in connection with the large correspondence within the Field Marshal William Riddell Birdwood collection 3DRL/3376.
This blog relates to Australian military personnel who wrote to Birdwood. The general theme of the correspondence was to commend him on his leadership of the Anzacs. If you have any further information about these people, or their descendants, the Memorial would love to talk to you. Please contact Charis May via PubandDig@awm.gov.au
Other blogs relating to Birdwood correspondence can be found here : Australian military Birdwood connections and Unidentified Birdwood connections
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Edmond Courtney CB VD
Colonel Courtney (1870-1919) came from a strong military family. As well as acquiring a law degree, Courtney served in Victorian units, in particular the Victorian Rifles prior to the First World War. When war broke out, he was given command of the newly formed 14th Battalion and landed with his troops on Gallipoli on the 26th of April. He led his battalion to establish a strong position which was then named Courtney’s Post. He was not at Gallipoli long when ill health caused him to seek treatment and then repatriated home to Australia in March 1916. Soon after taking up the position of Chief Clerk in the War Services Homes Section in 1919, he suffered a brain haemorrhage and died. He does not appear to have married.
Lieutenant Colonel Walter Percy Farr DSO
Colonel Farr lived at 12 Carrara Road in Vaucluse and died November 1940. While serving under General Harry Chauvel, he was instructed to intercept Mustafa Kemal near Alleppo. He achieved this objective and Kemal reluctantly surrendered to Farr. At the time of his death, he was serving at Eastern Command Headquarters. He had one daughter Miss (Captain) Kathleen Ionie Farr who served with the Australian Women’s Army Service during the Second World War. Her service number was VF508263 and her Next of Kin was F Bowden.
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Francis Fitzgerald DSO
Colonel Fitzgerald was born 1880 in Orange and died at Heidelberg, Victoria in 1962. Prior to the First World War, he served with the New South Wales Irish Rifles Regiment. He received the DSO as commander of 20th Battalion at Gallipoli and an MID as commander of the 24th Battalion at Bapaume. His First World War file mentions his wife, Mrs J Fitzgerald, 109 Alfred St. Milson's Point. The last known address was in 1939 when he was living at 158 Adelaide Terrace Perth.
Sergeant Charles George Freestone
Sergeant Freestone was from the Goondiwindi area and used the Goondiwindi Royal Hotel as his address of contact. He appears to have had numerous siblings – mainly sisters, and a nephew, C Heusler.
Sir Edward Thomas Henry Hutton KCB KCMG
Sir Edward Hutton was a British military commander who was the commandant of the New South Wales military forces from 1893 to 1896. After time in Canada and South Africa, he returned to Australia in 1901 with the task of transforming the six colonial forces into a united Australian army and to hold the position of its first commander. He retired from service prior to the First World War and was too ill to return to service for the conflict and passed away in 1923. He had a wife, but no children.
Major General George Jameson Johnston CB, CBE, VD
General Johnston was a veteran of the Boer War and commanded 2nd Divisional Artillery in the Landing at Gallipoli – Johnston’s Jolly was named after him. He was Administrator of German New Guinea from 1917 to 1920. After leaving the army, he was the governing director of a furniture company in Fitzroy, Melbourne call Johnston’s Pty Ltd. He loved hunting and horse racing, and died in 1949. He was survived by two sons and a daughter.
Lieutenant General James Gordon Legge CB CMG
James Legge served as a divisional commander and senior officer during the First World War. Born in London on 15 August 1863, he moved with his family to Sydney in 1878. Legge was a high school teacher before moving into the legal profession in 1890. In 1891 he was admitted to the New South Wales bar. In 1914, Legge raised the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force, and the second AIF contingent and reinforcements before being given command of the 1st Division in May 1915.
Legge died at Oakleigh, Melbourne, on 18 September 1947, 16 days after his wife, and was buried in Cheltenham cemetery. He was survived by two sons, the elder of whom, Stanley Ferguson Legge, became a major general. His eldest son George Ferguson Legge was killed in action in France in October 1918.
Lieutenant General Sir James Whiteside McCay KCMG KBE CB VD
Sir James McCay (1864-1930) was a soldier, politician and lawyer originally from Ballynure, Antrim, Ireland. He was the eldest of ten children to Rev. Andrew Ross Boyd McCay, a Presbyterian minister, and his wife Lily Ann Esther Waring, née Brown. Adam Cairns McCay and Delamore William McCay were two of his brothers. He commanded the 2nd Infantry Brigade at Gallipoli, and after recovering from a badly wounded leg he received at Krithia, he commanded the 5th Division before taking a post as commander of the AIF depots in the UK.
He married Julia Mary O'Meara on 8 April 1896. She was the daughter of the Catholic police magistrate at Kyneton and they had two daughters. McCay died 1 October 1930 and is buried in the Box Hill cemetery. His daughters survived him: Beatrix Waring, LL.M., married (Sir) George Reid, Q.C., attorney-general of Victoria in 1967-73; Margaret Mary, M.A., became a teaching nun and the Reverend Mother McCay.
Brigadier General Newton James Moore KCMG
Moore was born on 17 May 1870 at Fremantle, son of James Moore, auctioneer and later mayor of Bunbury, and Elizabeth Dawson, schoolteacher. In 1898 at Bunbury he married Isabel Lowrie and they had three daughters and one son. Moore was the eighth premier of Western Australia had a long political career and connections with the military. During the war he commanded UK depots used by the A.I.F. and from the rank of Lieutenant Colonel to Major General. In later life he was the President of the British Empire Steel Corporation and the director of other major companies. He died in England on 28 October 1936 and was buried in Warnham parish church, Sussex. Newton Moore Senior High School in Bunbury is named after him.
General John Paton CB CMG
General Paton was a merchant and soldier who was born November 1867 in Newcastle, NSW. He was the son of John, a master mariner, and his wife Elizabeth. During the First World War, he commanded the 25th Battalion at Gallipoli, 7th Brigade, 17th Brigade from May to July 1917, and twice (temporarily) commanded the 2nd Division. After the war, he returned to managing R. Hall & Son import merchants and was president of the Newcastle Chamber of Commerce from 1920 to 1923. He married Margaret Mary Donnelly in Armidale in April 1897 and was survived by one son when he passed away in November 1943.
Joseph L Preston (?)
While the writing is a little difficult to read, Joseph Preston appears to be the most likely name. It was written in March 1916 what looks like New Lambton, NSW. In his letter he mentions that he is now out of the AIF but would be like to serve again under Birdwood’s command. There are no service records that correspond to this name.
Sir Nevill Maskelyne Smythe VC KCB
Sir Nevill Smythe (1868-1941) was a senior officer in the British Army. He served in the army from 1888 till 1924, serving in the Mahdist War (Sudan), Second Boer War and the First World War. He commanded the 1st Australian Infantry Brigade in Gallipoli from May 1915 and was one of the last officers to leave the peninsula. He continued to lead Australian forces on the Western Front until January 1918.
After his retirement from the army, he moved to Australia and lived on a farm in Balmoral Victoria where he is buried. One of his sons Darce enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy, rising to the rank of commodore. Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of the Scout Movement, was his first cousin.
Major General John Lawrence Whitham CMG DSO
General Whitham (1881-1952) was born in India, and immigrated to Hobart, Tasmania with his family as a young child in 1886. After serving in South Africa with a Tasmanian unit, he embarked on a permanent military career in 1910. He commanded a company from the 12th Battalion at Gallipoli, and then was appointed deputy assistant adjutant and quartermaster general for the 2nd Australian Division in France. In 1917, he was given command of the 52nd Battalion which was formed partly from his old unit, the 12th Battalion, before briefly commanding the 49th Battalion. He then transferred to the Senior Officer’s School at Aldershot, England as an instructor, where he saw out the rest of the war. He returned to Australia in 1921 with his new wife, Olive - they do not appear to have had children. He remained active during the interwar years, and commanded the Volunteer Defence Corps in Victoria during the Second World War.