The boy Colonel : Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Marks, the youngest battalion commander in the AIF / Will Davies. The boy Colonel

Collection type Library
Author Davies, Will, author.;
Call Number 355.0092 D257b
Document type Monograph
Year 2013.
Pagination xiii, 415 pages, 8 unnumberd pages of plates : illustrations, portraits, maps ; 24 cm.
Publisher Vintage Random House Australia,
Note "Vintage Books" logo at foot of title page. Includes bibliographic references pages 403-409. Known as The Boy Colonel, Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Marks, was the youngest battalion commander in the AIF and highly regarded not only as a future military commander, but as a business and community leader. It was a blustery day on the 25th January 1920 at Palm Beach to the north of Sydney and the surf was wild. Two attempts had already been made to save a young woman caught in an undertow and dragged out when a young man; skinny, gangly and frail and known to be a poor swimmer, threw off his coat an d shoes and raced into the surf. As his fiancée and young nephew watched, the sea closed over him and he disappeared. His body was never recovered. This was the sad and tragic fate of a gallant, highly decorated and promising young man named Douglas Gr ay Marks. And it was a great loss to a nation whose manhood had been decimated and where the pain of the war remained evident and raw. Douglas Marks was born in 1895 and educated at Fort Street High School. He had, like so many enthusiastic and patriot ic young men, basic military training when he turned up at the drill hall in Rozelle two days after the declaration of war. Before embarking in November 1914, he had received his commission as a Second Lieutenant in the AIF. After a period of training in Egypt, he embarked for the Gallipoli peninsula and landed on the second day. Spending a great deal of time in the dangerous frontline trenches at Quinn's Post where he was wounded, he remained on Gallipoli until the evacuation in December of that year. Just twenty years old, he was seen as an inspirational young officer, promoted to captain and given acting command of his battalion. Marks then travelled back to Egypt, saw the re-organisation of his beloved 13th battalion and the raising of its siste r battalion, the 45th. Sailing from Alexandria, he crossed the Mediterranean to Marseilles and took the train to the
Place made North Sydney, N.S.W. :

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