Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Frederick Proctor was born in Canterbury Street, St Arnaud on February 4, 1888.  He was the ninth child and fifth son of Thomas Proctor and his first wife, Mary Jemima Proctor (née Cross).  Among the family Fred’s nickname was ‘Corny’. As a lad and young man Fred worked on his father’s farm ‘Ulverstone’ at Kooreh.  He began to be a paid employee, according to the farm ledgers, in 1903 when aged 14 for a yearly wage of £18/4/0.  In 1905 his wages were £26/0/0; in 1906, £39/0/0; in 1907, £52/0/0; in 1914, £65/0/0.  By 1922, when Fred married, he was earning £104/0/0 a year. 

Fred enlisted in the A.I.F. (7th Battalion) on August 3, 1915 at the age of 27.  On March 6, 1916 Fred left Carapooee by train – there would have been a gathering of family members and Kooreh locals to wave Fred off – bound for Spencer Street Station, arriving at 11 p.m.  By 1.30 a.m. the next morning he was at the Broadmeadows A.I.F. Training Camp and at midday on the Tuesday he was on the troop transport ship His Majesty’s Australian Transport Wiltshire heading out of Melbourne; he would not return for three years.  Thus seven months elapsed between Fred enlisting and embarking for the Middle East.  On being discharged from the Armed Services in April 1919 he returned to live and work at ‘Ulverstone’ where he remained until he married Lillian Newton at ‘Bonnie Doon, 3 Sherwood Road, Ivanhoe on July 29, 1922 – Lillian had been employed at “Bonnie Doon” for some years as a Ladies’ Companion to Mrs Henry Sebire – and they spent the next forty-two years on their farm, ‘Bonnie Doon’ at St Arnaud East where they raised their three children, Hazel (born January 19, 1925), Thomas (born June 27, 1927) and Alan (born February 23, 1932) and where Fred died on November 25, 1964, aged 76.  Lillian Proctor (‘Gran’) lived until September 11, 1985, dying at the age of 90.  Fred and ‘Lil’ are buried together in the St Arnaud cemetery.

Frederick Proctor's War Diaries

There are four diaries chronicling Fred Proctor’s movements and experiences during the Great War.  The first three diaries appear to have been standard issue:  three small blue-covered books measuring only 4 cm. x 5 cm.  The fourth is larger, measuring 8 cm. x 13.5 cm.  The entries were made in pencil.

 The first entry was for Monday, March 6, 1916, the day on which Fred left Kooreh for Broadmeadows Camp, and the last was for Monday, July 16, 1917.  Therefore, the diaries cover a period of sixteen months and chronicle his movements from Melbourne to Perth, Colombo, the Suez Canal, Tel-el-Kebir, Cairo, Ismalia, Serapeum, Alexandria, through the Mediterranean to Marseilles, then north through France to Le Havre and to Belgium and then to his period of hospitalisation and rehabilitation in Birmingham and Croydon and finally back to Belgium.  If Fred compiled subsequent diaries covering the later years of his time in Europe, these have not survived.

Reading through these diaries as I have transcribed them proves confusing at times since I have duplicated Fred’s entries exactly and have not altered the spelling or the punctuation.  Indeed, he rarely used commas or full stops in his entries.  Nor have I edited any of the letters, preferring to transcribe these exactly as written by Fred.