Private Maitland Madge

Maitland Madge was born on 17 March 1895. His mother, Ella, was an Aboriginal woman, and his father, Richard, was an immigrant from Devon, England, who was in control of Breeza Plains Station in outback Queensland. To avoid being removed from his mother, Richard Madge applied for and was granted Maitland’s exemption from the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897. He enrolled his son was at Kelvin Grove Boys School, Queensland.

In August 1915, at the age of 21, Madge enlisted in the AIF and was posted to the 15th Battalion, 4th Brigade. In August 1916 he distinguished himself carrying messages between company and battalion headquarters at Pozières. Telephone lines were continually blown up by the heavy artillery fire on the battlefield, and so runners were the only reliable means of communication. There was an extremely high casualty rate among messengers at Pozières, and along with fellow runner Sydney May was eventually awarded the Military Medal:

They showed an utter disregard of their own safety and an admirable contempt for danger, and it was entirely owing to their self-sacrifice that the operations were so well supported by our own artillery and that Battalion and Brigade Headquarters were so closely in touch with progress of operations.

He was wounded in action at Pozières on 11 August 1916 and spent four months recovering in hospital. Though periodically hospitalised with illness, he continued to serve his battalion until the final year of the war, when he was again wounded in action on 4 July 1918.

At war’s end, Madge returned to Australia and discharged from the army in May 1919.

Madge was working as a security guard when the Second World War broke out in 1939, whereupon he enlisted once more in the AIF, despite being more than 45 years old. As with his enlistment during the First World War, he listed his cousin Violet as his next of kin. Serving with the 2/26th Battalion, Madge was in Singapore when the island fell to the Japanese on 15 February 1942, and he became one of the thousands of Allied troops interned at Changi prisoner-of-war camp. Although he survived two years at the camp, records show that he died there as a result of illness on 7 June 1944. He is buried at Kranji War Cemetery in Singapore.

Private Maitland Madge is located on the Roll of Honour panel 43, Second World War.