Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Son of William and Minnie KILGOUR

Mr. Arthur McPhail Kilgour, of Cameron Street, Bexley, died on the 18th instant, at the .Randwick Military Hospital. He is survived by his wife and two children. The late Mr. Kilgour was a member of the First Field Ambulance,  Second Battalion, A.I.F. The funeral service took place at the Woronora Crematorium on Monday.

The following text is a partial extract from the Museums of History NSW and is authorised for non-commercial use.

Arthur McPhail Kilgour enlisted in the First Australian Imperial Force in October 1915, at the age of 19 years and eight months. Being under 21 meant he should have required his parents’ permission. However, he falsified his age on his attestation papers, giving it as 22 years and eight months. Perhaps his parents did not endorse their eldest son going to war but felt the decision was his to make and so did not inform the authorities.

Kilgour attended church regularly and did not drink. He had recently become engaged to Bexley girl Olive Winifred Smith, and he had a promising job as a workman at the Sydney branch of the Royal Mint earning a good wage of 6 shillings a day (the same as his prospective army pay). We do not know why he decided to enlist for overseas service, but Sydney Mint staff records reveal that between 8 August and 31 December 1914, he had been released from his Mint duties for ‘Naval Service’. While the nature and extent of this service is unknown, Kilgour was most likely one of the hundreds of naval reservists who rallied to the Rushcutters Bay naval depot on 6 August 1914 and was subsequently rostered on garrison duties. There is no record of his having served abroad with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force that departed Sydney for New Guinea on 19 August 1914.

Kilgour sailed for Alexandria with the Army Medical Corps (AMC), General Reinforcements, on 29 March 1916. From the AMC nominal roll, we know that he was in company with tailors, hotel keepers, doctors, chauffeurs, salesmen and farmers – an interesting cross-section of Australia’s volunteer army. The average age of his group was 26, and while the dominant religious denomination was his own – Church of England – he also rubbed shoulders with Baptists, Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Methodists and Jewish soldiers.

From Alexandria he sailed with this khaki melting-pot to England and then to France, arriving near the front lines in late July. For the next two years, from 26 July 1916 until 16 November 1918, he kept a war diary, recording his expectations and experiences in a mostly matter-of-fact way. The diary charts Kilgour’s journey from naive enthusiasm for the war to stolid endurance. By June 1917 he had sent four instalments of the diary home to his fiancée, Olive.

When Kilgour first arrived at the front, he was disappointed to have ‘arrived just too late for this last big push’. The ‘big push’ he had just missed was the Battle of Pozieres, a killing ground that claimed more than 10,000 Australian casualties in a matter of weeks. Yet he was ‘eager to go up and see what this game is like’.

Kilgour was assigned to the 1st Australian Field Ambulance Brigade (Fld Amb) as a stretcher-bearer in early August and was at the front line within days. The role of stretcher-bearer was vitally important to the chain of evacuation on the battlefield. Their job was to move casualties during and after the fighting to hastily constructed aid posts metres from the fighting or casualty-clearing stations further away from the line. The faster a wounded soldier could reach an aid post, the more chance there was of saving life or limb. The work of stretcher-bearers was dangerous and confronting, but the men carried it out with enormous determination and compassion.

Kilgour’s naivety about war was soon checked as he confronted a violent, confused and chaotic environment where men were blown to atoms by indiscriminate artillery barrages. 

© State of New South Wales through Museums of History NSW