Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

From Scotch College World War I Honours and Awards

Service record and post-war life

Stanley Wilson (aka Younger) enlisted on 10 February 1915 under the pseudonym Stan Younger, with the regimental number 292, ‘for family reasons’, though his real name was eventually discovered and acknowledged in 1919 (see statutory declaration below). He enlisted in Melbourne as a 21-year-old bank clerk. He was allotted to the 22nd Battalion. He apparently served on Gallipoli, probably from September 1915. Stanley was promoted to Corporal on 1 May 1915, though in August 1915 he was reduced to the ranks for some reason and although his service record is a bit contradictory, it suggests he probably did not recover the rank of Corporal until June 1916.

In March 1916 Stanley travelled to France with his battalion. By the end of July 1916 he had risen to Company Quartermaster-Sergeant. He was hospitalised for two weeks in December that year with diarrhoea and haemorrhoids. In March 1918 Stanley fell ill with pneumonia and was hospitalised in England. He was not fully fit again until July 1918. He was reprimanded for overstaying his leave one day in September. Stanly did not rejoin the 22nd Battalion until the beginning of November 1918. He returned to Australia in March 1919.

In June 1919, Stanley was awarded a Meritorious Service Medal for ‘valuable services rendered with the Armies in France and Flanders.’ The recommendation, reproduced below, praised Stanly for being ‘a good leader’ who had done work ‘of the utmost value’ to his Commanding Officer. He had been ‘an inspiration to all ranks’ on the many route marches, and ‘shown great forethought’ in his work at the end of each march, thus contributing to the health and comfort of his men. In short, he had for four years ‘rendered exceptionally valuable service to the Unit [the 22nd Battalion].’

Stanley returned to working at the National Bank in 1919. He joined the RAAF in 1921, receiving his commission in 1929, and left in 1935. In World War II Stanley enlisted in the army, serving from 1941 to 1944, when he was demobilised as a lance sergeant. His roles included being a sergeant in the Australian Army Pay Corps at the Murchison and Myrtleford prisoner of war camps. Stanley died at Mildura in 1959. He had married Vera Pretoria Jameson in 1920. They divorced in 1933, in which year he married Ivey May McCormack (d. 1963). Stanley’s son Jack Stanley Wilson (1922-2015) attended Scotch from 1930 to 1932 and, while his father served in World War II, he did so too, enlisting underage in the AIF in 1940 aged 17 and serving until 1945 as a gunner.