1917 Studio portrait of 38512 Gunner Charles Alfred Kedge, 14th Field
Artillery Brigade of Coburg, Victoria. A school teacher prior to enlisting, he
embarked from Melbourne aboard SS Indarra on 26 November 1917. On 16 September
1918, he was killed in action during operations near Fricourt, Somme, France,
aged 23. He is buried in the Cerisy-Gailly French National Cemetery, France.
Image courtesy AWM. Image P05248.070.
Charles Kedge was not
really a Coburg man. He was born and educated in Bendigo and began his working
life there as a junior teacher at the Violet Street School. He was sixteen and
showed promise, so four years later, in February 1915, he came down to Melbourne
to train at the Teachers’ College.
It was at about this time
that his brother Frederick, aged 18, joined the Navy. Frederick was a career naval
man and served in both world wars before retiring in 1943 at the rank of Commander.
He married in New South Wales in 1925 and died there in 1972, so he wasn’t a Coburg
man either.
Their parents – Charles Elliott Kedge,
an ironmoulder and Adelaide Catherine (nee Simpson) – moved to Coburg in 1915 with their youngest son
Reginald. They lived in Linda Street, Moreland until 1919, just on the southern
edge of the suburb, then moved a few streets further south to Canberra Street,
Brunswick, where they remained for the rest of their lives.
What motivated the Kedge
parents to move to Coburg is unclear, but perhaps the fact that their son Charles was at
the Teachers’ College and Reginald had just won a scholarship to attend
secondary school were factors in their decision. For Reginald it was a move for
life. He died in Coburg in 1969.
Apart from visits to the
family at Linda Street, Charles Alfred had little to do with Coburg. It appears he
lived close to the Teachers College and not long after he successfully
completed his first year in December 1916 he went into camp at Seymour. He embarked on November
1917, was in camp in Egypt for some weeks before going to Officers’ School in
Woolwich, England. He arrived in France in July 1918 and was alloted to the 114
Howitzer Battery Field Artillery and was killed not long after, on 16 September
1918.
From Charles Kedge's Teacher Career Record, Victorian Education Department teacher number 17123. (Digital copies of these records are available via Ancestry, but you need the teacher number to locate them. The numbers can be found in the online collection of the Public Record Office of Victoria.)
The circumstances of his
death are outlined in the Red Cross Missing and Wounded Files, available online
through the Australian War Memorial. An eye witness said Charles and three others died
about 8.30 on the night of the 16th. They were sleeping in a shell
hole at Brusle near Peronne (in Picardy, France) and were killed by an aeroplane bomb.
(Mapcarta, https://mapcarta.com/N3772039634, accessed 29 September 2019)
Charles Alfred Kedge is remembered on the Bendigo
Roll of Honour and the Coburg Lake Memorial Avenue of Trees (tree 64).
Coburg Lake, Memorial Avenue of Trees, February 2005. Image courtesy Bruce Garrett.
