Charles Sullivan, teacher at Coburg High School

Studio portrait of 15195 Staff Sergeant (SSgt) Charles Frederic Sullivan, 14th Australian General Hospital, Australian Army Medical Corps of Flemington, Victoria. A school teacher prior to enlisting, he embarked from Melbourne aboard HMAT Karoola (A63) on 19 August 1916. While stationed with his unit at Port Said, Egypt, he contracted pneumonia and died of the disease at Gaza, Palestine on 15 November 1918, aged 37. He is buried in the Gaza War Cemetery, Israel. Image P05248.132. Courtesy Australian War Memorial. 

Thirty-four year old Charles Sullivan had been married for six years when he enlisted in February 1916. He and his wife Ellen lived in Flemington but his work as a teacher had taken him to various Victorian schools, including Enoch's Point and Big River before he entered the Training College in Carlton and studied at Melbourne University, gaining his Bachelor of Science degree. He worked briefly at the Training College in Carlton, at Williamstown High School and Coburg High School, where he was a temporary assistant for a month before he went on leave with the AIF.

From Charles Sullivan's WW1 dossier outlining his academic qualifications.

We are told in the Education Department's Record of War Service (see below) that after graduation he was offered a position in the Forestry Department but decided to enlist and was placed in the ‘bacteriological branch of hospital work’ based at Cairo then Port Said. 

He served in Cairo with the 14 AGH until 31 October 1918 when he contracted pneumonia. 

Group portrait of members of No 14 Australian General Hospital. See alternate images for positions of those named in this caption. Those identified by numbers: include 15195 SSgt Charles Frederick Sullivan (died of disease in Palestine on 15 November 1918 as Lieutenant Pathologist). Image A01350. Image courtesy AWM. 

Charles Sullivan is the soldier marked in the second row.

Charles Sullivan, a man who showed such promise, died at Gaza on 15 November 1918 and was buried at Gaza Military Cemetery, Palestine. He had been suffering from malaria as well as pneumonia. He had been at Coburg High School for a short time only, probably not long enough to make an impression on his pupils. 

Ellen Sullivan received three packages containing her late husband's belongings and they reveal something of the man and his interests. I don't think I've ever found such a long list, but then Sullivan was based at the one hospital for the whole of his time in Egypt, unlike men at the Front who would have had to travel light.

You can find out more about Sullivan, and other family members, on Lenore Frost's website, the Empire Called and I Answered.