Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Ethelbert Lawrence was born in the village of Kinlochmoidart in the highlands of Western  Scotland in 1890, the son of the Reverend Joseph Glenn Lawrance and Eliza Beatrice (nee Earnshaw) .  At the time of his enlistment he was working as a Stockman in the Cloncurry area of Queensland, his parents were in Leicestershire, England.

Lawrence, at the time of his enlistment was 1.78M tall, had blue eyes and brown hair and was of fair complexion.  Like many stockman he was slight in build weighing only 62kg on enlistment. He stated that he had served a Four Year apprenticeship with the shipping firm Crawford and Rowatt, so it is possible that he had arrived in Australia as a merchant seaman.

After completing an examination of his riding skills at the Townsville Police Barracks Lawrance enlisted in the 5th Light Horse Regiment at the Exhibition Grounds, Brisbane on 21st September 1914 and was allotted regimental number 80.

He clearly demonstrated maturity and in November he was promoted Acting Lance Corporal before the Regiment entrained to Sydney in early December to embark on HMAT A34 Persic in Sydney . December 1914.

The Persic, after stopping in Albany to form a convoy left Australia for the Middle East, arriving on 1st of February, and the regiment immediately entrained for Cairo., where they began training for operations.  In early May, because of the heavy losses of Infantry at Gallipoli, the 2nd Light Horse Brigade, including the 5th LH, dismounted and embarked for Gallipoli as Infantry. The Light Horse landed on Gallipoli on the 20th of May, and on that first day suffered its first battle casualties.  The regiment moved into the line and throughout the month of June lost 30 men killed in action including 26 on the 28th of the month when the regiment attacked a feature known as the “Balkan Gun pits”.   A further 80+ members were wounded, many seriously.  In all one in three of the men who embarked for Gallipoli the previous month were killed or injured, Lawrance was one of the lucky ones.

Despite being reprimanded for “Neglect of Duty” in July, Lawrance was promoted to Corporal in early August before being evacuated from the Peninsular with Dysentery on the 12th of the month. After initial treatment in Cairo he was transferred the United Kingdom to convalesce in Cardiff Wales. Before leaving the United Kingdom, he was fined One Shilling for being deficient in his kit, a harsh call on a man evacuated sick from a battlefield only months before.

Lawrance returned to the regiment  at the Maadi Camp in Egypt in February 1916. He was promoted to the Rank of Lance Sergeant, with acting rank of Sergeant, in April, and later confirmed as a Sergeant in August.  The 5th LH had remained on Gallipoli until the evacuation in December and Lawrence rejoined whilst the unit was reconstituting as a mounted regiment.

Lawrence remained with the 5th throughout the remainder of the war, taking part in operations  against the Turks at Dueidar, Gaza, Beersheeba and Jerusalem.  Other than time in Hospital for minor ailments his luck held until the 31st of March 1918 when during the final day of the raid on Amman,he was struck in the face by “friendly fire” and evacuated to Hospital. He did not rejoin the regiment until July, when he was posted to a Officer Training Course at Zeitoun Training Camp in Egypt.

On the 17th of February 1919 Lawrence was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant, and in June 1919 to the rank of Lieutenant.

After leave in the United Kingdom, Ethelbert Lawrence returned to Australia on HM Transport Nestor disembarking in Brisbane on 1 December 1919, his commission as an officer in the AIF terminated on 16th of January 1920.

In the early 1960s, Lawrance, applied for the “Gallipoli Medallion”, at the time he resided at “Hightop” on the Balmoral Road at Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland in Queensland.