Albert STRATFORD MM

STRATFORD, Albert

Service Number: 290
Enlisted: 19 January 1915
Last Rank: Lance Corporal
Last Unit: 2nd Pioneer Battalion
Born: Nhill, Victoria, Australia, 21 January 1894
Home Town: Nhill, Hindmarsh, Victoria
Schooling: Not yet discovered
Occupation: Blacksmith
Died: Warragul, Victoria, Australia, 24 May 1976, aged 82 years, cause of death not yet discovered
Cemetery: Drouin Public Cemetery, Victoria
Memorials:
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World War 1 Service

19 Jan 1915: Enlisted AIF WW1, Private, 290, 21st Infantry Battalion
10 May 1915: Embarked Private, 290, 24th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Ulysses, Melbourne
10 May 1915: Involvement Private, 290, 24th Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '13' embarkation_place: Melbourne embarkation_ship: HMAT Ulysses embarkation_ship_number: A38 public_note: ''
4 Mar 1916: Transferred AIF WW1, Private, 2nd Pioneer Battalion
4 Oct 1917: Wounded Private, 290
23 Mar 1918: Promoted AIF WW1, Lance Corporal, 2nd Pioneer Battalion
5 Oct 1918: Wounded AIF WW1, Lance Corporal, 290, 2nd Pioneer Battalion, Montbrehain
6 May 1919: Discharged AIF WW1, 290, 2nd Pioneer Battalion, Wounded and then suffering influenza in an English hospital then sent home 6 May 1919
25 Feb 1920: Honoured Military Medal, Montbrehain

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Biography contributed by Julie Stratford

My grandpa, Albert, lived a long life typical of many Australian men of his time. He fought in a war, married, fathered 7 children, worked with his hands, met his 15 grandchildren and died at 82.

Of course there was much more to his life than just that. A country boy whose father had died while he was young, Albert suffered from war injuries and memories, was awarded a medal for bravery, survived Spanish ‘flu, worked hard, buried at least one child, spent a lot of time in hospitals, lived with chronic  pain, limped, smoked a pipe and lived a simple, working-class life.

Albert was born in Nhill, western Victoria, in January 1894. By the time that war broke out in Europe, Albert was 20 years old and working as a blacksmith. He responded to the calls for volunteers and signed up just before he turned 21. His mother, Lucy signed his papers, he passed his medical, and he headed to Broadmeadows to train with the 21st Battalion, a group of fit, strong country boys.

 

 On 9 May 1915, he sailed from Port Melbourne on the HMAT Ulysses for Egypt. It’s likely he and his fellow soldiers had heard nothing of the failed landing at Gallipoli only two weeks before. The ship’s journey towards Europe was filled with excited, bored and seasick young men. One of his mates on board was Alfred LeRoy, a young man from Whroo. (Albert eventually came home and marry Alfred’s sister, Lydia, my grandma.)

The 21st Battalion arrived in Egypt in June 1915. They trained in the desert, worked hard, played hard and wrote letters home to anxious mothers and girlfriends.

 

Albert and his battalion sailed for Gallipoli in August. Aiming to be a part of the “August offensive”, Albert’s ship was instead torpedoed by a German submarine near Lemnos. It sunk, they survived and waited for another ship. Their eventual arrival in September 1915 was one of the last by Australian troops at Gallipoli. The Australians and their allies had been decimated so Albert may have arrived knowing he was fighting a losing battle. Living in dirt trenches, stepping over graves and digging new ones, Albert must surely have been glad to have left Gallipoli a few months later. The ANZACs pulled out and sailed back to Egypt. Albert arrived in Alexandria in January 1916.

 

After a few months based in the Canal Zone, fighting to keep the Suez under British control, Albert and many of his mates were transferred to the 2nd Pioneer Battalion. They sailed for France and the trench warfare of the Western Front. Disembarking at Marseille, Albert began his years of living in French trenches, shooting at Germans, dodging bullets and cleaning up fields of dead soldiers.

 

Peppered throughout 1916 and 1917, Albert suffered disease and illness, was admitted to hospital twice and was also in trouble for not turning up for roll call and being absent without leave for a few hours here and there. He was usually fined a few day’s pay and sent back out to fight. It was in October 1917 that Albert received a gunshot wound that put him in hospital for a month. He returned to the trenches and 6 months later was promoted to Lance Corporal.

 

In the middle of the European summer in 1918, Albert was on leave in England when he caught the Spanish flu. Although this flu pandemic killed around 50 million people around the world, Albert stayed a few weeks in hospital then returned to the battlefields of France.

 

A few months later Albert was shot again, this time it was serious.  In October 1918 Albert’s battalion was involved in a major attack on Montbrehain in northern France. While his platoon was under attack from an enemy machine gun, Albert pushed forward and “kept up under heavy counter fire”.  In a battle that killed hundreds on both sides and took around 400 German prisoners, Albert was shot in the abdomen, puncturing his organs.

 

Family lore has it that he was left in the fields, lying overnight amongst the dead. He was found the next day, still alive, and sent to a French hospital. This was a month before the war ended. As the armistice was being negotiated, Albert was so ill he was transferred to the war hospital in Exeter, England. His abdomen had been pierced, his organs punctured, his hip seriously damaged. Telegrams were sent home to Lucy telling her that Albert had been hit. She was told he was seriously ill. The local paper in Nhill reported on Albert’s health along with the lists of killed or injured local men.

 

It took months before Albert was well enough to leave hospital. On 6 June 1919, almost four years to the day after sailing out from Port Melbourne, Albert was discharged from the hospital and sent home. He sailed on the hospital ship Karoola, arriving back in Melbourne in June 1919

 

He was recommended for a Military Medal for his efforts against that German machine gun in Montbrehain.

 

A few months after arriving home, Albert married Lydia LeRoy, his fellow soldier’s sister, in Richmond. He was 25, she was 24. Their first son was born the following year. Albert left the war behind, worked, moved, spent months at a time in the repatriation hospital, was forever injured and disabled.  My father was his youngest son. He was over 40 when Dad was born.

 

My cousins and brothers and I mostly remember a quiet, tall man with walking sticks and one large boot. I didn’t really know him but I do remember him. I remember that he refused to go to ANZAC day commemorations; didn’t want to march. He, like many men shattered by this “Great War” wanted it forgotten and gone.

 

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