Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

My Grand Father, Cecil Roy (Dick) Westwood was born in the Union Street Hospital in Hobart, Tasmania on 3rd May 1894. He was the grand son of a convict and lived in Hobart until around his 10th birthday when his father and mother and 5 of his 8 siblings moved to South Australia. 

They settled in Unley (5 Salisbury Street, North Unley) where his father Arthur Westwood is listed as "builder" and attended the Unley school.  Cecil was listed as a bricklayer when the war broke out and he enlisted in the AIF in August of 1914 from Unley, age 19.  His initial training was conducted at the military barracks in Adelaide on the banks of the Torrens River. Cecil was assigned to the 10th Battalion of the 3rd Brigade, 78th Infantry. His service number was 57.

Cecil Roy, along with the 10th Battalion sailed from Port Adelaide on the troop ship "Ascanius" in November 1914, berthing briefly at Albany W.A. to embark the rest of the Battalions and proceeded to Egypt.  The 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th Battalions which made up the 3rd Brigade was the covering force for the Anzac landing on the 25th of April 1915 and one can only assume that Cecil Roy landed at dawn (or soon after) on that fateful day.  He was promoted to Corporal at Gallipoli in May 1915 to replace fallen soldiers and was later promoted to Sergeant in September of the same year such was their casualty rate.

Cecil Roy was evacuated on 3 occasions to Hospital ships anchored off the beach head for "trench foot" and/or dysentry issues.  He was an active soldier at the Gallipoli front when the brilliantly executed evacuation occured in December of 1915 and was repatriated with his brothers in arms to Egypt.

In March of 1916, Cecil Roy Westwood, along with the Australian Battalions sailed for France for insertion on the Western Front.  From 1916 until 1918 the 10th Battalion took part in the unrelenting bitter trench warfare.  The Battalion's first major action in France was at Pozieres in the Somme Valley in July 1916. After Pozierres the Battalion fought at Ypres in Flanders before returning to the Somme for the winter.  In 1917 the battalion returned to Belgium to take part in the major British offensive of that year, the Third Battle of Ypres.  In March and of 1918, Cecil and the 10th Battalion helped stop the German spring offensive and was then involved in the allies counter strike.

Cecil's military record list 3 repatriations to England to remedy illnesses and maladies and on more than one occasion a "social illness". It also lists a "court marshall" in 1916 for an unlisted offence however he remained as a sergeant.  In 1917 he was taken "on strength" to serve at the ANZAC Training School to train Australian replacements for troops at the front and returned to the 10th Battalion early in 1918.

Much of the 10th Battalion were removed from Europe prior to the official Armistice and Sergeant Cecil Roy Westwood returned to South Australia with the remnants of the 10th Battalion arriving at Port Adelaide on the 8th of October 1918.

Cecil was discharged from the Army in 1919 and resumed his life as a builder.  His service records list 1,417 days service, 1,340 days served overseas. In 1922 Cecil married his sweatheart Marjory Alice May Scott in the Adelaide suburb of Goodwood and had a son in 1923, (my father Cecil David Westwood). He had a further 2 sons and lived his life at Unley.

Cecil Roy Westwood passed away in Adelaide on 21st December 1951 and is buried in the Armed Forces (ANZAC) section of West Terrace Cemetery.

I wish I had known him (RIP)