Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Lyle Comyns Reeves. My father was Lyle Comyns Reeves. He was born on 15th October 1891 in Bong Bong Street, Bowral. This was possibly the Station Master's residence. His father, Robert Reeves, relieving station master, was 26, and his mother, Kate Carr Comyns, was 25. Lyle was their second child, but Everard had died seven months before. Lyle was registered as Lyle Comyns Reeves, but he left off the "s". Was that because it was easier to say, or because he had heard his mother's story of the origin of the name and found that the supposed ancestor was John Comyn? I suspect it was the former. By July 1893 when Olga was born they were living at Bellambi, and on 19th February 1895 Robert was transferred to Yass Junction, where they lived in the station master's residence above the station. Lyle started school at Yass, and at the Yass Pastoral and Agricultural Association Show in the spring of 1899 he won first prize for writing for boys under 12. He would have turned eight that spring. All his life he was able to do page after page of neat, even writing; he used to practice doing pothooks etc., on scraps of paper or in the margins of newspapers and tried to get us to do it too, but none of us ever stuck to it. On 14th January 1900 Robert was transferred to Dapto ; and on the 24th July 1902 he went to Orange as Traffic Inspector. In 1906 or 1907 Lyle was playing in the Orange Superior Public School Football Team and in 1908 he spent six months in the Senior School Cadets. On 1st August 1908 Robert was transferred to Hornsby , where they lived first in Rosemead Road , and later in Peats Ferry Road (Pacific Highway). Apparently Lyle wanted to be a draughtsman when he left school, but at that time that meant he had first to become apprenticed to, or work for, a carpenter, and that was not good enough for Kate, and she would not allow it!!!! So he joined the New South Wales Government Railways!!!!! I don't know what Lyle did between leaving school in Orange and joining the Railways on 13th April 1910 as a Junior Porter at the rate of 2/6 per day, but ten weeks after that he became an apprentice clerk at 30 pounds per annum. Unfortunately, he failed his colour test, (he was colour blind) therefore he was debarred from train working, and was approved to be employed in a clerical capacity only. He soon passed his senior shorthand and typing exams, and by his 21st birthday in October 1912 his wage had risen to 130 pounds p.a. and he was a fully-fledged clerk. He probably also learned to use the telegraph machine that I seem to remember always hearing in an inner room of railway stations, tapping out Morse code all on its own, for when war was declared in August 1914 and he joined the Army, he became a signaller. Lyle enlisted on 11th August 1914, and became No. 986 in the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force , which sailed under sealed orders almost immediately on Wednesday 19th August on the HMAT Berrima , which had been originally a P. & O. liner. They went via Moreton Bay and the Barrier Reef, arriving at Palm Island on Monday 24th August 1914. They stayed there for ten days, and were kept busy each day with marches, target practice, scouting, skirmishing, first aid, erecting shelters, signalling etc., and on Wednesday, 2nd September, they set off again, calling briefly at Port Moresby, then sailing east, then north, up through St George's Channel and around Cape Gazelle into Blanche Bay on the eastern end of New Britain, arriving there on 11th September 1914. New Britain is an island at the eastern end of New Guinea. It is a long, narrow, mountainous country, nearly 600 km from end to end, but only 80 km across at its widest point. The very day the Australians arrived, a small force captured the German wireless station at Bita Paka, (one of their reasons for going), and next day the infantry entered Rabaul without opposition. In due course all the German wireless stations were destroyed and all the German colonies in the Pacific capitulated, there was some fighting and some men were killed. Rabaul, on Blanche Bay, had been the seat of the German Government of New Guinea from 1910 to 1914. In 1910 the Germans moved there from Herbertshohe (Kokopo), and made it into a very beautiful town. The word means "mangrove" in the local dialect, the site being right in the middle of a mangrove swamp. Blanche Bay is simply the flooded crater of an enormously large volcano, over 3km wide, and there is a string of volcanic cones around the bay. To-day's map has changed since then: in 1937, a very disastrous upheaval took place, when Vulcan, a low-lying island in the harbour suddenly erupted, and when it finally stopped after 27 hours, the low flat island was a massive mountain joined to the mainland. I was eight then, and remember the paper being full of pictures which I had to cut out and paste on to the pages of a section of a telephone book to make a scrap-book! That's when I learned that Lyle had been there during the war ; he talked about Rabaul and Mount Mother and Namanula. Mount Mother was another volcano, along with North Daughter and South Daughter. Namanula was a small settlement consisting of the Government House, the Hospital, the Printing Works and the homes of several of the principal residents, situated on a ridge of hills about 600 feet above sea level, 2 miles east of Rabaul, between Rabaul and Mount Mother. A few miles beyond these hills was the open sea, so at Namanula there was an almost continuous sea breeze, which minimised the danger from fever. In the Government House grounds the Australian forces erected a wireless station from parts of the German station captured at Bita Paka. As Lyle was one of eighteen signallers in the A.N.M.E.F. , he no doubt spent a lot of time at Namanula. Perhaps he was also introduced to printing there. After the war Robert and Kate Reeves called their new home at Wollstonecraft after this place, Namanula. In January 1915, the main part of the force returned to Sydney, most of them being men who had been stricken with fever. The rest, including Lyle, left on the Navua on 10th February, reaching Sydney on 18th February 1915. They were discharged on 4th March1915 and had to re-enlist if they wanted to go to Europe, as most of them did. First came a few weeks leave and then, on 1st June 1915, Lyle re-enlisted. Before re-enlisting Lyle wrote a book about the exploits of the AN&MEF. Titled “Australian’s in Action in New Guinea”. Printed by W C Penfold and Co. in 1915. (Copies are in the State Library of NSW and the Australian War Memorial collection.) He spent some time in camp at Casula, and eventually he was posted to the 20th Battalion, 5th Brigade, 2nd Division of the Australian Imperial Force. He seems to have spent the rest of 1915 at the Depot at Liverpool, was often Acting Sergeant, doing some embarkation work, and on 12th November 1915 joined D Company of the 20th Battalion as Acting Sergeant. On 11th March 1916 they embarked on the HMAT. Scotian and sailed for Egypt. They had only a short time in Egypt at Tel el Kebir and left Alexandria on the Scotian on 9th May 1916, disembarking in Marseilles on 12th May. There they marched from the wharf through the city to the troop train that would take them to the British Zone 130 miles north of Paris, up the Rhone Valley in the springtime, with orchards in bloom and the Alps in the distance, beauty perhaps unnoticed in the crowded trains. At every stop they were welcomed by the French. To their disappointment, however, they by-passed Paris and made for Calais, thence heading inland again, detraining at various points near or in small villages in French Flanders. The large country town and railway-junction in the area was Hazebrouck. From the train, they marched to their billets, officers usually in rooms in village houses or farmhouses, while other ranks had blankets in barns. They had reached their Base Depot by 5th June 1916. This was 12 miles or so behind the front line, yet was close enough to hear continually the sound of guns and see the distant flicker of gun flashes. This was where they did what training they managed to get, and when possible, companies were withdrawn hither from the front line at intervals to recover, while others replaced them. This so-called "nursery sector" was south-east of Armentieres, a manufacturing town with a population of 30 000. The 1st, 2nd and 4th Australian Divisions formed 1 Anzac Corps. By 19th July the 2nd Division were waiting in reserve near Albert to support and relieve the 1st who were attacking Pozieres. By the 27th July 1916 the 2nd Division had taken over the whole front at Pozieres replacing the 1st Division. In 11 days to the 6th August the 5th Brigade under General Holmes (who had been in charge of the A.N M.E.F. in Rabaul) had engaged in 4 heavy attacks and the General asked that they be relieved, but the bombardment began again and they had to take part for anther day. The bombardment they suffered there was probably among the heaviest ever suffered by any troops. They were more exhausted than the 1st Division had been, and they had lost more than any other Australian Division in one tour. By 7th August they had been relieved by the 4th Division. There was much fierce fighting here until the end of August by which time 23 000 Australians had been lost. In September 1916 1 Anzac Corps moved to the Ypres salient, but on 9th October it was back to the Somme battlefield. This was autumn, and the autumn rains turned the battlefield into a quagmire; a journey of 6 miles could take 9-12 hours, and the men became utterly exhausted. They had to take great care to avoid losing toes or feet through frostbite. Lyle told us he and his mates suffered badly from chilblains. It could take a team of 6 or 8 stretcher-bearers up to 10 hours to get a wounded man to the field ambulance. A postcard from Lyle dated 3rd November 1916 says: "Very wet weather lately; raining nearly every day and bitterly cold winds with it. Rather lucky getting good dry billets, usually barns or sheds. Still healthy." These billets were of course only when they were not in the trenches. His health did deteriorate however, for he had a few trips to the field ambulance and to hospital for rheumatism and myalgia. At times there was 3 feet of water in the trenches, while other trenches were no more than ditches. Rats were a problem they had to get used to, likewise lice and other parasites, and they had to go days without even changing their clothes. The winter of 1916-17 was the bitterest of the war; it was also a break between the two Battles of the Somme. “From mid-January to mid-February colder brighter weather froze the land and water hard and banished the mud." But by March 1917, with the mud back, the battle began again in full force. In April at Bullecourt it snowed. In May all Australian Divisions were involved in the capture of Bullecourt, after which 1 Anzac Corps was withdrawn for its longest spell yet. In June and July the 2nd Division were at Messines, and then advanced gradually towards the Warneton Line. In this vicinity was the village of Commines, and it was from here in 1066 that Robert de Commines accompanied William Duke of Normandy to England, and stayed there, becoming the ancestor of the Scottish Comyn family said to be our ancestors. I wonder did Lyle know that. On 31st July 1917 the third battle of Ypres began, but the rain also began again and they had to wait two weeks before it stopped. From 29th November to 10th December 1917 Lyle was on leave in Paris. He bought a book of postcards and wrote dates and brief comments on those of the places he visited. On the last Sunday they went to the Eiffel Tower, but it was very misty and they did not have time to climb it anyway. They seem to have visited all the important places. On 14th December he was back at Le Havre and had three days in hospital. On 1st January 1918 all five Australian Divisions became the Australia Corps, and they spent the rest of the winter near Messines. On 29th January 1918 he had leave to England. After much fighting in April the 5th Brigade of the 2nd Division arrived at Villers-Bretonneux and the Germans were ousted from there. In May, June and July they carried out all sorts of small attacks, but on 8th August a grand offensive began on the Germans between the Somme and the Roye Road. However on 9th August Lyle was wounded in action and spent the next three months in hospital at Etaples. He must have been badly hurt to have spent that length of time there. He had a piece of shell fragment left in his lip for the rest of his life. He rejoined his unit on 8th November 1918, three days before Armistice Day. On 23rd November 1918 he became ER/Sgt. and from 19th December 1918 to 9th January 1919 he had leave to Paris. From the beginning of 1919 the people of Charleroi in Hainaut, Belgium, offered the hospitality of their homes to the Australian soldiers. Lyle was very fortunate to go to the home of M. and Mme Tazat and for just over three months he became a part of their family: he had a home away from home. Lyle became a "big brother" to nine-year-old Lucienne. To complete that story, we had always heard about Lucienne, and we had a letter written by her in 1935 with a photo when she married Gustave Foulon. We often talked of the Tazat family during World War 2, and in 1945 when the war ended in Europe; Lyle suggested that, as I was a keen French student, I should write a letter to the old address. This I did and we were all delighted to receive a reply by return mail. The family had had to walk to the south of France when the Germans came, but they came back and were living in the same house! In 1988 Jim and I went overseas and visited Lucienne and Gustave, spending three days with them. Lucienne gave me a bundle of cards and letters tied up with a green ribbon which fell to pieces when I tried to undo it: all the letters and cards written by Lyle to her and her parents in 1919-20. She kept one. She also gave me an opal brooch sent to Mme. Tazat by Kate Reeves as a thank you for their care of Lyle, and the letter written by Kate, which accompanied it. Lyle finally left Belgium, arriving in Paris at 8am on Sunday 4th May 1919. They stayed at the Hotel Windsor, 26 Rue de Petrograd, and spent their time sightseeing. It rained on 16th May, but was fine the next day and they expected to be in Le Havre on 18th May. From there the ship took them to Southampton, and by Sunday 25th May they had arrived at Sutton Veny Camp on Salisbury Plain. Lyle was still at Sutton Veny on 13th June, but by 24th June was on leave in London. He visited the London Zoo and also went to Bath. On Tuesday 1st July it was raining and he was at Llandudno in Wales, from where he climbed Mount Snowdon. By 13th July he had finished his leave and was back at Sutton Veny awaiting ship to return to Australia. He expected to be leaving on Sunday 6th September to go to Devonport and sail for home on the "Euripides" via The Cape of Good Hope. On 10th September they were in the Atlantic, 100 kms from the African coast and hoped to see the Island of Tenerife next day. The previous day there had been a very heavy fog all morning and the ship's foghorn had been going every minute. There were over 2000 men on board. On 29th September they were in Durban . By 19th October they were in Melbourne on two days' leave, and he arrived home at Hornsby on Friday 24th October 1919. First there was a "Welcome Home Party”. Then he had a holiday, touring northern NSW by train and car, visiting Grafton, Lismore and also Brisbane over the border to see his sister, Olga. After his holiday he must have returned to his clerical position on the railways for a while, but he resigned from there on Friday 11th March 1921. Sometime between 11th March 1921 and October 1921 Lyle went to Wyong and set up his printing works. He began to publish the weekly paper, "The Wyong Advocate". Unfortunately none of the libraries seem to have any copies of the paper. There had been other papers at Wyong before this: in 1913 W. Rumble was publishing "The Wyong District Record" , and in 1917 Edward Rye was producing "The Wyong Herald". The entries for each year's Sands' Directory had to be in by the first week of October the previous year, and in the 1922 Directory was this entry: Wyong Advocate The only paper published in this prosperous and progressive district of which the chief industries are orcharding, dairying, timbergetting and sawmilling. Fishing and Tourist Resort Published every Thursday at 10 a.m. L C Reeves, Proprietor. 'Phones Wyong 17 & 15. There was also this entry: Wyong and Lakes District Advocate. L C Reeves, Proprietor. In the 1925 Sands' Directory Lyle was secretary of the Wyong Race Club and of the Wyong Agricultural Association. He also joined the Masonic Lodge. He lived at the Arcadia Guest House in Warner Avenue, and later at the Grand Hotel (?). The printing works were in Alison Road down past the blacksmith's. In July 1925, Lyle became engaged to Marjorie May Dawe, second daughter of Mrs. Gertrude Victoria Dawe, local undertaker, and the late Josiah Dawe. The wedding date was postponed because Lyle wanted to buy a new linotype machine, so their engagement lasted three years and on 23rd June 1928 they were married in St James Church of England in Wyong. At first they lived in a house in Alison Road next to the Court House, and then moved across the road to "Epping". Lyle and Marjorie had three children: Robin Louise born 17th April 1929, John Lyle born 17th October 1930 and Deniss Michael born 7th July 1933. At this time Lyle had a shop in Alison Road opposite the Police Station, as well as the printing works. He had toys and a lending library (all I remember). One day it burned down. I remember standing at the front gate with Auntie Bib and watching the smoke billowing up over the hill. Then he moved to the shop on the corner of Alison Road and Main Street, quite large (to me) and he was in Sands' Directory as a Stationer (1932-1933). I know there were toys and books there and some china. This building was the old Breckenridge General Store and when destroyed by fire in 1980 had been the oldest existing building in Wyong. Some time in 1934 we moved to a new weatherboard house Mr. Fisher had built in Hely Street, painted bright red. (I thought it was bright, anyway.) It was only a short walk from there to the railway line where there was a sidetrack, where engines used to stand sometimes. One day the red engine from the Newcastle Express, "The Strawberry", was there and Lyle took John over to look at it. I don't remember Lyle ever reading us stories, but he always quoted proverbs. He must have known every one there is. Something else he also impressed upon me: "There are no such words as 'can't' or 'won't'." About the end of 1935 or early 1936 Lyle sold the business and we moved to Sydney. It was depression time and he was losing money. People couldn’t pay their bills. From as early as I could understand, I knew that money was scarce. We lived at 32 Leichardt Street, Leichardt, for about 18 months, and after months (I think) out of work Lyle got a job as cost clerk in the office of the Water Board at Malabar. He was a wizard with figures and could do all sorts of sums in his head. (Later when he was a Warrant Officer (W.O.) in World War 2 his colleagues called him the Wizard of Oz.) If I ever complained that I had nothing to do, he would tell me to get a piece of paper and a pencil and write down some numbers for a really long division or multiplication sum. He would write the answer on another piece of paper for me to check when I had finished. In October 1937 we moved to 392 Maroubra Road, Maroubra Bay, much closer to his work. One of the employees was either a cook with an interest in gardening or a gardener with an interest in cooking. I think he cooked a mid-day meal for the staff, and also grew vegetables there. At any rate Lyle became interested in gardening and began to transform our fairly large and very sandy yard into a really good garden. The soil was almost pure sand so he had a hard job. Uncle George (Pritchard) used to come out for weekends in his Baby Austin car, and they would go over towards Malabar on the sandhill heathland and collect bags of leaf mould from the bush: bags and bags of it! Deniss remembers going with them sometimes, probably so he could ride in the "dicky seat " of the car. (Cars were very few and far between in those days!) But one time he says it was not quite such an exciting adventure, as Dad was hit near the eye by a piece of springy fencing wire. Deniss says he remembers being childishly concerned that his eye might drop out! Dad did have a very sore, very red eye for some days afterwards. Lyle bought a Yates' Garden Guide, Mother saved tins of various sizes, and Lyle measured out fertilisers and marked tins with measurements. With a hammer and nail he put holes in the bottom of some large tins (jam or preserved fruit) and, with a bucket of water that was how he watered the garden! Of course all the plants were grown from seed. He thought it was wonderful when, at Christmas, Uncle George and Auntie Bea gave him a watering can! That was a great improvement! I don't remember if we ever got a hose at Maroubra. I don't think so. A trellis was made for beans and sweet peas from tomato stakes, nails and string. We had beans and peas, lettuce, tomatoes, (ordinary and egg), beetroot, radishes (White Icicle and French Breakfast), spinach and probably other things, yes, Kohl Rabi (!) and even peanuts! There were three tiny round gardens of gherkins, but they were very disappointing, not making any progress until after the guinea pigs got out and ate them right down to the ground! Then they grew madly and we had a wonderful crop. Mother had to pickle them, (the gherkins), and the guinea pigs were forgiven. There were flowers too, wonderful displays of nemesias and sweet peas and schizanthus and eschscholzias. (That spelling is right; the seedbeds were labelled so we learned to spell them.) On 5th April 1940 Lyle re-enlisted, (he put his age down six years by changing the year of his birth from 1891 to 1897), but he was too old for overseas service and medically was "Fit for class 2", whatever that meant, so he was assigned to the Army Records Office, where he worked till July 1946, being promoted to Lieutenant in January 1943. During World War 2 all sorts of things were hard to get. As we children became old enough we used to play cards (Rummy) after tea (before we got a little wireless), but then Lyle became interested in Chinese Checkers: he made a checker board out of a piece of wood some 1/2 inch thick, he drilled all the holes, painted it with poster colours, and Mother and he spent some time looking in shops for the right coloured marbles. We all learned to play, but we could never beat Lyle. He worked out the quickest possible way to get all the marbles from one side to the other, and although we could see how he did it, we could never manage to do the same thing, but we still tried. Another game he made for us was a Trade Route game. On a large sheet of drafting paper he drew a map of the world (by squaring both the paper and the map in the atlas), painted it, and then drew in six routes from Sydney to London: those we had to learn for school plus some extras. They all had the same number of spaces and equivalent commands. We learned the names of lots of places we would not otherwise have known, like Vladivostok and Reykjavik, (and that led to talk of Iceland and volcanoes). We played that game for some time. About August 1943, after Mater (Kate) died, we moved to "Namanula" at Wollstonecraft, as Granddad didn't want to move and we had to find a new house anyway. With his share of his mother's will as a deposit, Lyle and Marjorie got a bank loan and bought "Namanula". It wasn't big enough for all of us, but we managed. We three children slept on the unenclosed front verandah. No one would even consider doing such a thing these days! After the war Lyle was transferred to the Water Board Engineers' Office at North Sydney. At Wollstonecraft the block on which the house was built was on the side of a fairly steep gully, so our backyard sloped rather steeply down over rocks to a flat area at the bottom, and as Lyle didn't want to interfere in Granddad's garden around the house, he cleared and re-made the steps down to the bottom and down there he grew gladioli, all named and tagged! The gas stove was very old, and soon gave up. Because the new one needed a cupboard to rest on, Lyle drew up some very detailed plans and decided to modernise the whole kitchen. it took a long time as he only had weekends, but he built cupboards under and above the sink, under the stove, under the window seat, and right around to the fridge. Then he painted them in cream and green, sanding the doors down until they were perfect. In 1955 or 1956 Lyle had a coronary occlusion. He must have retired soon after that as he turned 65 in October 1956, and he took Mother for a trip by train to Orange and Bathurst for several days. Deniss bought him a camera, but before he could regain his interest in photography, he began to have trouble with his back, and when the doctor ultimately x-rayed it, he discovered he had cancer of the prostate gland and it had spread elsewhere, including his spine. Mother nursed him at home until he died on 17th March 1958. He was cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium and his ashes were scattered to the four winds from the top of North Head, at Sydney Harbour.