Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Victor, the youngest of the Stobaus brothers, was 19 years and one month old when he enlisted in July 1915, at almost exactly the same time as Robert, having previously been rejected as unfit because of a defective chest. He had about nine months to go of an apprenticeship as a book clicker, a highly skilled job which involved cutting the uppers for shoes and boots and was thus named because of the characteristic noise of the machinery involved. It looks as if his aunt Catherine Murray had done a good job of raising him after the death of his father when Victor was two and his mother when he was five. He named Catherine as his next of kin and, like Robert, gave his religion as Roman Catholic. Attached to the 4th Light Horse, he embarked on the HMAT Palermo at the end of October. At first stationed in Egypt, he was transferred to France in March 1916. By July his rank was that of Driver. He had several short periods in hospital, but does not appear to have been injured. In 1917 he had a period of leave in England from which he returned two days late. For this he was "admonished" and lost three days' pay.Victor returned to Australia on the Runic in April 1919, considerably ahead of Robert. In 1921 he married Beryl Pegg whose brother Athol was the husband of Margaret (Maggie), the younger of Victor's two sisters. Despite her grief at the loss of her nephew Ralph, Catherine Murray, who had had to conduct a legal fight to win the responsibility of caring for her dead sister's children, must have felt a sense of satisfaction as the youngest of her charges reached this milestone.

Victor continued in the boot trade for the rest of his life, sometimes describing himself as a leather worker. For some 20 years he and Beryl lived in Brunswick. By the late 1940s they had moved to Cowes where he continued to work as a boot repairer. Victor Stobaus died in Cowes in 1966.

http://www.cchg.asn.au/greatwar.html