On a quiet Sunday in Killarney during the First World War, my father, Roy Desbois Morgan (1907-2003), was spending the day playing with his dog. He was two months short of his eighth birthday. The date was 9 May 1915. While my father threw sticks for his pet to chase, or let it drink from the billycan of milk that he carried home for the family from a nearby dairy, his elder brother Eric, 14 years his senior, was over 14,000 kilometres away from his family’s house on the Darling Downs.
On that day, Eric boarded HMTS Melville in Alexandria, Egypt, for the Dardanelles. However, his “Casualty Form – Active Service” reveals that he returned to Alexandria three weeks later, on 31 May 1915, still aboard the Melville. Curiously, it appears he, with at least one other soldier (James Callan, also a Queenslander), did not disembark for service at Gallipoli – a somewhat surprising event at first glance, as his record is silent on why he stayed on board to return to Alexandria. However, on further consideration, given that he held the rank of Farrier leads to the belief that he was onboard to tend horses that were destined for the peninsula, but were not landed. In fact, it appears that very few of the 6,100 horses dispatched on various ships to Gallipoli ever made it to the beach – the terrain did not lend itself to fighting from horseback. Although Eric’s civilian calling listed on his service record is “Clerk”, for three years after leaving school at the age of fourteen, in the year of my father’s birth, he worked as an apprentice blacksmith in Mackay.
Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914. Australia began voluntary recruiting six days later. Eric was one of the first to volunteer – on 21 August in Brisbane. With service number 95, he was posted as a farrier to the 5th Company Army Service Corps, 1st Light Horse Brigade Train. With negligible military training, thirty-three days after enlisting, he was one of the few from his unit to board HMAT Anglo Egyptian for the voyage to Egypt; the majority boarded HMAT Omrah. After stopping in Melbourne for further embarkations, the Anglo Egyptian (and the Omrah) became part of the first convoy that assembled in and sailed from King George’s Sound near Albany, Western Australia on 1 November 1914. His reasons for joining are unknown, but the chance for great adventures in foreign parts may have been equally as strongly felt as any obligations for serving King George V and the British Empire.
Eric may not have experienced the dust, blood and horror of Gallipoli, but two years in the trenches in France and Belgium awaited him. He disembarked in Marseilles on 12 June 1916 and posted to the 12th Machine Gun Company three months later. With thousands of other soldiers, he endured the bombardments, rifle and machine gun fire, the cold, the rain, the hail, the mud, the slush and the perils associated with periods of leave. By mid-1918, he had served as a machine gunner for two years. During this time, he was gassed and twice wounded. The first in October 1917, being the more serious, required his hospitalisation, initially in the 2nd Canadian Stationary Hospital in Outreau on the English Channel before being transferred to the 1st Eastern General (Military) Hospital in Cambridge, England; he had been shot in the right thigh. The second wound he “ignored” and stayed on duty. However, on this occasion his actions, as corporal in charge of his machine gun section, for remaining on duty, directing fire, and later guiding his men through a tactical withdrawal under fire for their survival resulted in his being awarded the Military Medal for bravery at Villers-Bretonneux in May 1918. A few weeks later, he was selected for an officers’ training course at No. 5 Officers’ Cadet Training Battalion, Trinity College, Cambridge University. Following his graduation in January 1919 and three months leave, he spent the next six months in London receiving commercial training on full pay.
In common with others who came home relatively unscathed, he more than likely thought that he had survived only “by the skin of his teeth”. Subsequent to his return to Australia on 15 December 1919 on HMAT Nestor, as a 2nd Lieutenant, he remained in the Regimental Reserve – the militia – while working as a Federal Public Servant for much of the inter-war years. By the time of his retirement from the army in 1944, he had attained the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. His substantive rank from 11 Dec 1939 was Captain. From March 1941, when he was promoted to Lt Colonel (Temp) to its disbandment in 1944, he was the commanding officer of the 17th (militia) Battalion (the North Sydney Regiment), the command of which he retained when the battalion became part of the 2nd AIF. For some time during this period, the battalion was based at Frenchs Forest, on the northern outskirts of Sydney, during which it had responsibility for Sydney’s north shore defences.
It appears that Eric was a successful commander. The battalion’s morale was very high, particularly before some inter-personnel disruption following the posting of regular soldiers to the battalion in late 1943. Its training standards were highly regarded by senior inspecting officers, as well as by battalion commanders in New Guinea who had 17 Battalion trained troops in their ranks. They impressed with their skill, fitness and particularly discipline.
Nonetheless, with the need for reinforcements in various units abroad, the Army decided to disband the battalion from June 1944. It had always been the wish of its members to move to New Guinea as a unit, but that was not to be. Eric, with some of his officers, was transferred to General Reinforcements (AIF), despite his expressed keenness to be sent overseas once more. However, by this time he was over 50 years of age. Lasting effects from his wounds and gassing during WW1 were possibly detrimental to his continued mobility and fitness, despite his completing long training marches over difficult terrain west of Sydney on many occasions with his troops. Most significantly, however, Eric did not have the training and particularly not the combat experience as an officer to command a battalion in a war zone. In contrast to his life’s adventures, in retirement Eric spent his time as an avid home builder, landscaper and gardener. Breeding orchids was his speciality, with such success that he was periodically exporting his blooms by air to Hawaii during the 1950s.
Geoffrey R Morgan (Nephew)
(Written Mar 2016; updated Jan 2025)
