Digger Smith’s brother gets into trouble

Some uv the yarns yeh 'ear is true,
An' some is rather umptydoo

418 Driver Frederick Harcourt Smyth of the First Divisional Train enlisted on 20 August 1914, making him one of the first Coburg men to enlist. He was a 36 year old bushman and bachelor whose mother Jane lived at 37 Hudson Street, Coburg (although by the end of the war she had moved to Murrumbeena). He arrived in Egypt in November 1915 then went on to serve on the Western Front for two years. In November 1918 he returned to Australia on Special 1914 leave.

This watercolour by Arthur Streeton depicts the 1st AIF Divisional Train in the L'Hallue Valley in France with a section of horse lines, a row of general service wagons, and soldiers formed up near the road.

Image courtesy AWM. Image ART03512.

The family did not have a long-standing connection to Coburg. Frederick and his siblings were born in the Victorian goldfields towns of Sandhurst (now Bendigo) and Ballarat in the 1870s and 1880s. In the early years of the twentieth century, Frederick and his widowed mother Jane moved to the Hawthorn area of Melbourne. From 1914 to 1924 they lived in Coburg, but soon after his return from the war, Frederick Smyth moved to Oakleigh where he worked as a storeman. His mother died at Murrumbeena in 1920 aged 71 and Frederick died at Sunbury in 1927 aged 50.

Frederick Smyth’s life and war were unexceptional. The same cannot be said for his youngest brother Harrie Gordon Smyth, born in Ballarat in May 1886. By 1908, when he was in his early 20s, Harrie started to appear in the criminal records of New South Wales. Between March 1908 and March 1909, he had six convictions for stealing, false pretences, embezzlement, forgery and uttering and spent most of the year in Bathurst Gaol. More convictions were recorded in NSW in 1910. Then he moved to Tasmania where he was convicted of obtaining money by false pretences in 1912. 

Tents in the military camp at Kiama, NSW in 1916. The camp was the training ground for new recruits.

Image courtesy AWM. Image P01699.004

When the war came along, Harrie Smyth enlisted in the 1^st AIF under the name Arthur Charles Berry, and claimed to have been born in Norwood, Adelaide. This was in September 1916. Within a month he had stolen £32 from the Military Camp at Kiama in NSW.  He re-appeared in  March 1918, signing a statutary declaration saying he was Harrie Gordon Smyth, son of Jane Smyth of Oakleigh, Victoria. He spun a yarn to his CO saying he wanted to move down to Victoria, which was where he claimed his family had moved to, and convinced the CO that he ‘wanted to make good and blot out the trouble into which he got.’ He left for the war on 5 June 1918, arrived in Liverpool, England on 11 August 1918. He saw no action, because within a week of arrival he had deserted and was never seen again. The consumate chameleon.

And this is where we leave Coburg's Digger Smiths and return to exploring the impact of the war on the Melbourne suburb of Coburg.

Digger Smith dies at Pozieres

A million brave ole mothers 'oo 'ave known
Deep sorrer since them days before the war.

Broadmeadows c 14 December 1915. Studio portrait of two soldiers, one of whom is probably of 4293 Private (Pte) Albert Richmond Smith (right), 7th Battalion, of Pascoe Vale, Vic.

Image courtesy AWM. Image DA13012.

I stumbled on 4293 Private Albert Richmond Smith’s connection to Coburg through the Mapping Our Anzacs website, although he does not appear on the Coburg Town Hall Roll of Honour and I have not come across his name on any other local honour boards. At the time of his enlistment on 27 July 1915 his parents were living at ‘Strathlinden’, Bolingbroke Road, Pascoe Vale via Coburg, although they had mostly been connected with the Milawa area near Wangaratta. Albert had attended Bonegilla State School and as his occupation was given as farm labourer, it is likely that he remained in the area but came down to the city to enlist.

He embarked aboard HMAT Demosthenes on 29 December 1915 with the 13^th Reinforcements of the 7^th Infantry Battalion. He arrived in France on 4 April 1916 and just over three months later, on 23 July, was severely wounded at Pozieres and evacuated to England. He is included in the 7^th Battalion’s War Diary AWM Item 23/24/17, RCDIG1005139) for that period as part of a huge casualty list sustained over several days of intense fighting. He had been wounded in the face and shoulder and suffered a severed artery in his neck. His wounds were grave, but he lingered for a month before dying of a secondary haemhorrage on 29 August 1916. He was buried at St Paul’s Church in Rusthall, Tunbridge Wells. You can see a photograph of his grave on the WarGraves Photographic Project website.

Digger Smith survives the war

I've 'eard the cheers for ev'ry fightin' lad

34168 Driver Samuel George Smith served with the 6^th Battery of the 2^nd Field Artillery Brigade. He enlisted in December 1916, embarked on the HMAT Ascanius in May 1917, arrived on the Western Front in November 1917 and returned to Australia in June 1919. Unlike so many others, he wasn’t injured and was never sick. In fact, his service record is virtually empty of detail, yet we know that he was in Belgium and France for well over twelve months. Unusual indeed.

Morialme, Belgium. 24 December 1918. Group portrait of the 6th Battery of the 2nd Australian Field Artillery Brigade. 34168 Dvr S. G. Smith is in the photo.

Image courtesy AWM. Image E03973.

An outdoors group portrait of unidentified members of the 6th Battery of the 2nd Australian Field Artillery Brigade in a snow covered field. Most of the soldiers are wearing heavy coats and many are coated with snow. Taken in Belgium on Australia Day 1919.

Image courtesy AWM. Image E04232.

Samuel Smith was a 36 year old married labourer when he enlisted. His parents had married in Tamworth, New South Wales in 1879 and he and his siblings were all born in New South Wales. By 1913 he had made his way to Victoria where he married Mary Ann Cuthbert and settled in Coburg where they lived until the mid-1920s. By the 1930s they were living in Oakleigh. Samuel died at Caulfield in 1967 aged 86. His wife died the following year.

Digger Smith and the conscription debate

'E's been once wounded, somewhere in the leg..."

6906 Private Lawrence Joseph Smith enlisted on 18 July 1918 and served with the 22^nd Infantry Battalion. His parents were William Smith, an overseer, and Letitia Josephine McLoughlin. He’d been born in Coburg, lived with his parents and siblings in Coke Street (later Cope Street), returned to the area after the war, married and settled in Pascoe Vale South where he lived the rest of his life. 

Lawrence Smith, who called himself Larry, was wounded in the thigh on 19 May 1918 at Ville-sur-Ancre, which effectively ended his war.  

The ruins of Ville-sur-Ancre. The village was captured by the 6th Australian Infantry Brigade on 19 May 1918. 

Image courtesy AWM. Image E02821.

On his return to Australia, Smith resumed his earlier work as a postman and during World War Two again enlisted, serving at the Postal Unit in South Melbourne. He applied for a War Service Home Loan in 1925 with which he built his home in Fontaine Street, Pascoe Vale South. He lived there for the rest of his life.

A staunch Catholic, Larry Smith wrote a letter to a local politician in 1977 in which he made reference to a decision by Coburg Council in 1919 that reflects on the conscription debates of 1916/1917. It also makes clear that the Catholic/Protestant divide did more than separate school children into Protestant kids and Catholic kids chanting jibes at one another on their way to their respective schools. 

Here in Coburg we can see an example of such feeling spilling over into decisions about the naming of streets, even in a subdivision where the land was owned originally by Father Charles O’Hea, bequeathed to the Catholic Church on his death in 1903 and subdivided under the supervision of Archbishop Mannix in 1918.

Smith wrote:

Roosevelt Street was first called Mannix Street … after Dr Mannix had given the Coburg citizens five acres (quarry land) but for naught, his name was wiped off and Roosevelt substituted in the Motion of Cr W.E. Cash who claimed we had a disloyal man’s name on a street, that was gratitude. (Coburg Historical Society Collection)

 1913 portrait of Archbishop Danniel Mannix, taken around the time he became Archbishop of Melbourne. Photographer unknown.

Image courtesy SLV. Image H2011.20/78. 

At the time, the Catholic Press had plenty to say on the matter:

The residents of old Pentridge, now Coburg, where the penal establishment of Melbourne is situated, are getting uppish. At the meeting of the public works committee of the Coburg Council last week, the surveyor read a list of names of proposed new streets in a subdivision of what is known as the Deanery Estate. He read out ‘Mercier Street’, remarking ‘That is evidently after Cardinal Mercier’. Next came ‘Mannix Street’ which the surveyor was proceeding to remark was named after ­­_____ , when Councillor Dwerryhouse jumped up. ‘I protest against that,’ he said. ‘We want no Mannix Street in Coburg.’ ‘About Mercier Street?’ queried the surveyor. ‘Oh, that’s all right,’ shouted several councillors. ‘He’s a very different man.’ It was unanimously decided that the name ‘Mannix’ for the street should be deleted... After all, no genuine patriot would want to associate his name with a town called after the Grand Duke of Saxe-Coburg. ‘Dwerryhouse St.’ Great Norfolk! What a name it would make. The Catholic Press (NSW), 12 December 1918, p.22 (also reported in the Argus, 6 December 1918, p.8 and a number of NSW papers)

Click here to see Archbishop Daniel Mannix talking about his anti-conscription stance during World War One. Mannix was a huge influence on the way Catholics voted in the referenda of 1916 and 1917. 

The conscription debate almost tore communities apart. It was emotional and hard fought, as can be seen in the following posters.

Anti-conscription leaflet entitled ‘The Blood Vote.’ Written by W.R. Winspear, and drawn by Claude Marquet. St Andrews Place, Sydney.

Image courtesy AWM. Image RC00337.

1917. Black and white pro conscription poster. ‘The Anti’s Creed’, a litany of anti-Australian 'beliefs' alleged to be held by the anti-conscription supporters.

Image courtesy AWM. Image RC00317.

Black and white pro-conscription referendum leaflet targeting the female vote. An appeal by the Council of Women of Victoria.

Image courtesy AWM. Image RC00319.

Digger Smith is wounded at The Battle of Menin Road

Sez’e, ‘Yeh want to, an’ yeh ought to go. Wot’s stoppi’n’ yeh?’

3465 Private John Edward Smith enlisted in the 11^th Reinforcements of the 6^th Infantry Battalion and was transferred to the 7^th Infantry Battalion in September 1916. He was an 18 year old Coburg baker, who was halfway through his apprenticeship with local businessman Thomas Passfield.

As an apprentice, John Smith had to get his employer’s permission to enlist, as can be seen in the following letter found in his service record.

John Edward Smith was the son of contractor John Andrew Smith and his wife Margaret Mary Quirk who lived in Alice Street, Coburg. He enlisted in July 1915 and served on the Western Front where he was wounded in the right wrist and the thorax on 20 September 1917 at Zilllebeke Bund near Ypres in Belgium. Known as the Battle of Menin Road, Smith was wounded on the first day of fighting.

The 14th Battalion of Australian Infantry resting at Zillebeke in the Ypres Sector, after having completed a strenuous period of fighting in the Third Battle of Ypres. Note the packs and rifles in the foreground.

Image courtesy AWM. Image E00959.

Soldiers running to take shelter from a heavy shellburst at Glencorse Wood in the Ypres salient.

Image courtesy AWM. Image E00737.

The 7^th Battalion’s Unit Diary (available online at the Australian War Memorial website) indicates that 3 officers and 29 other ranks were killed during the battle. 2 officers and 11 other ranks died of wounds. 5 officers and 155 other ranks were wounded and 2 men were missing. One of the officers killed was VC winner Frederick Harold Tubb. John Edward Smith was among the wounded and was evacuated to the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Millbank, London. He survived his wounds, returned to Australia where he continued to live in the northern suburbs of Melbourne and died in 1964 while living in the Merlynston area.

Battle of Menin Road, by H. Septimus Power. This image shows troops in a trench moving forward into battle zone during the Battle of Menin Road, Third Ypres, Western Front, 1917 on 20 September 1917.

Image courtesy AWM. ART03327.

Digger Smith is invalided home

Crowds uv these lads I've known, but then,
They 'ave got somethin' from this war,
Somethin' they never 'ad before,
   That makes 'em better men.

2856 Private Robert Charles Smith. 

Image courtesy AWM. Image DA10696.

When Robert Charles Smith first enlisted in July 1915, he said that he had spent 18 months serving on the John Murray, a training ship that had been commissioned by the Victorian Government in 1910 with the aim of training juvenile offenders for a life in the navy or the merchant navy. Presumably, then, Robert Smith had fallen foul of the law at a young age. He was one of 411 boys who passed through the ship between 1910 and 1918. Frank Purcell writes that

The John Murray was dogged by misadventure and controversy. Allegations of 'unnatural practices' brought an odium on the ship which a Police Magistrate's Inquiry in 1911 and a Royal Commission in 1915 were not able to dispel entirely. What was meant to be an institution for the formative training of juvenile offenders soon became a political and financial embarrassment. Established to train seamen for the navy and the merchant service, discipline was harsh and desertion rife. (Frank Purcell, The Prison on the bay: The story of the Victorian training ship John Murray, F. Purcell, Melbourne, 1997.)

Image courtesy State Library of Victoria. Image H99.220/3820.

Robert Smith was 13 when he went onto the ship in December 1910. His parents had signed him up for a period of twelve months, but in January Robert was assaulted by an instructor who had ‘caught hold of him and pulled him down’. He screamed, drawing the attention of other boys who helped him get away and reported the matter to the Captain. The man was later dismissed, but Robert’s father Henry was not happy and when Robert came home on leave in June 1911, he did not allow the boy to return. Instead, Robert went back to school where he was apprehended (Henry Smith claimed it was kidnapping) and returned to the ship. The police did nothing, so Henry Smith went to Labor politician George Prendergast who raised the matter in Parliament, thus sparking an inquiry at which Robert and his father Henry both gave evidence, as can be seen in the following article in the Argus, 22 November 1911.

Robert Charles Smith was born in Coburg in 1898, the son of Henry Smith and Florence Elizabeth Smith. The family did not remain in Coburg, however, and at the time of his enlistment they were living in South Yarra. However, Robert did not lose his ties with the area entirely and on discharge lived firstly in Carlton then Brunswick and finally in Melbourne itself, so he always lived in the vicinity of Coburg, so I’ve included his story here.

After enlistment in July 1915, 2856 Private Robert Charles Smith sailed to Europe with the 9^th Reinforcements of the 14th Infantry Battalion. He arrived in France in January 1916 where he experienced a great deal of illness – dysentry, debility, influenza and cardiac problems and was returned to Australia in 1917. He persisted, though, and re-enlisted in March 1918, by which time he was married. He was accepted as a driver in the Transport Unit, but was only allowed to served in Australia. Even then, poor health plagued him and after two spells in hospital he was discharged. He enlisted once more in January 1919 and served until May 1919 when his services were no longer required. 

Digger Smith at Fromelles

"Me blackest day!  Wot am I sayin' now?
   That was the day the parson came to tell
The news about our Syd. . . .

339 Corporal Percival Kerrison Smith of A Company, 29^th Battalion, enlisted on 5 July 1915. The son of Arthur Edward Smith and the late Mary Ann Teresa Hunt, he lived with his father, an accountant, and his sisters Lina and Vera at 24 Rodda Street, Coburg. Another sister, Florence, had married and moved away, although after her husband Frederick Larter enlisted in March 1916, she moved back home for the duration of the war.

Percival’s father Arthur Smith was from an established Coburg family. His grandfather, John Francis Smith, and grandmother, Henrietta Pettitt, both arrived from England in the mid 1850s. They married at Williamstown in 1857 and settled in what was then known as Pentridge in 1861, where John Francis worked as a warder at the Pentridge Stockade. They raised their five children in Coburg and died there in the first years of the twentieth century. Arthur, their third child, lived in the area all his life, most of it at 24 Rodda Street. He had brought up his children alone since the early death of his wife in 1897 aged only 38. Percival (known as  PK to his friends in the 29^th Battalion) was his only son.

On 10 November 1915, Percival Smith sailed for the war in Europe on board the Ascanius. He arrived in Egypt on 7 December 1915 where the members of the 29^th Battalion began their training.

The 29th Battalion marching up to its allotted position in the desert trenches. These troops belonged to the new divisions formed to take the place of the 1st and 2nd Australian divisions and the New Zealand division ordered to France.

Image courtesy AWM. Image G01495.

On 23 June 1916 PK Smith disembarked at Marseilles and less than a month later (on the 19/20 July 1916) he was declared ‘missing in action’ in the Fleurbaix sector during the Battle of Fromelles. Seven Smiths died that day. They were only a small number of the five and a half thousand casualties in what was the first Australian battle on the Western Front. PK’s body was never recovered, but after a Court of Inquiry was held in August 1916, he was officially declared ‘killed in action’.

A close friend, Jack Caird, gave evidence that although he had not seen PK killed, ‘several of those who did told me he was blown to pieces by a shell.’ Word of this must have got through to his father, as indicated by the following note found in PK’s service record.

15 Private Jack Caird was also a member of the 29^th Battalion. At the time of his enlistment he was an 18 year old brass moulder who lived with his widowed mother in Sydney Road, Coburg. He and PK had sailed together on the Ascanius. Jack was wounded on the same day that PK was killed, but he survived the war.

There were other Coburg men on board: Thomas Joseph Lynch, Frederick John Sherlock, William Charles Thomson, Alfred Williams (all in A Company), George Barrie and Frederick Fletcher (in B Company) and John Arthur Mether (in D Company). All of them returned from the war, although George Barrie had a leg amputated.

It was the task of Rev Newton of Coburg’s Holy Trinity Church to break the news of PK’s death to Arthur Smith. Although the following letter from Chaplain Beveridge is written about PK Smith, it is a reminder that many, many young men died and many ministers of religion had the unenviable task of breaking the news to the families. In this case, as in many others where no body was found, the task must have been doubly difficult.

Percival Kerrison Smith has no known grave and is remembered at the VC Corner Australian Cemetery and Memorial, Fromelles, France.

This is the site of the first Australian attack in France, the only all-Australian cemetery in France. The cemetery has no headstones, however recorded on the screen walls are the names of 1,299 Australians who died in the Battle of Fromelles in July 1916 and have no known grave.

Image courtesy Mark Abercromby.

PK’s family continued to live at 24 Rodda Street, Coburg. After the war, his sister Florence and her returned serviceman husband Frederick Larter went to live in the Hawthorn area where they remained. His sister Lina married fruit grower Francis Bassett in 1918 and moved to Doreen near Whittlesea where she lived until her death in 1983 aged 91.

The link with Coburg continued, however. PK’s father Arthur and unmarried sister Veronica (known as Vera) continued to live at 24 Rodda Street, he until his death in 1946 and she until her death in 1980. This means that this particular Smith family had a 120 year connection with Coburg and a 70 year connection with 24 Rodda Street, a house that has now been demolished to make way for a housing development.

Click here to see Heritage Database place details relating Rodda Street, 23 May 2013.