Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Clive Haldenby Strover was just 18 when, on 26 February 1915, he enlisted in the AIF (with parental permission, according to his army record). His father was Walter Strover, a Carlton chemist who had opened a pharmacy on the south west corner of Curtain and Rathdowne Streets in 1889 at a time when that shopping strip was thriving. Over the next two decades he married and had a family of five children. Clive, born in 1897, was the only son. By 1912 Walter was prosperous enough to move his family a short distance south to the substantial house at 669 Rathdowne Street and his business to new custom-built premises at 671, erected on what had been the side garden of that house. A decorative glass panel above the doorway of what is now a hairdressing salon reminds us of its original purpose.

On his enlistment papers Clive gave his occupation as university student and claimed as relevant experience four years in the Senior Cadets. He embarked in June 1915 on the Euripedes and disembarked at Suez in July. Attached to the 6th Field Ambulance 2nd Division AIF, he served in Gallipoli but soon suffered the first of the bouts of illness which were to mar his war years. In November 1915 he was admitted to hospital at Anzac with pyrexia or fever and was soon transferred to a hospital in Malta. He returned to duty in April 1916 but a bare year later was again hospitalised.

By June 1917 Clive Strover was in England and from January 1918 he was granted 12 months leave of absence without pay to enable him to take up a law scholarship at Christ Church College, Oxford. An Essendon newspaper reported the award to "an old boy of St. Thomas Grammar School where he was one of their best students ... We understand that the scholarship is one of the Rhodes scholarships which were formerly granted to German students which the British government have determined to discontinue."1

By mid 1919 at the age of 22 Clive had married Florence May Cox, an Oxford school teacher. At this time he was on indefinite leave awaiting recall and in October 1919 he and his wife embarked for Australia on the Osterley. His discharge as medically unfit came in January 1920, almost exactly five years after his enthusiastic enlistment.

On his return Strover became a master at Geelong College, where he was active in the cadet corps, and remained there for some five years during which time a daughter and then a son were born to Florence and Clive. By about 1925 the Strover family was in India and remained for close to twenty years. Two more sons were born there. Clive became head of the English department as Ismalia College near Peshawar and the Khyber Pass. This institution had been set up by the British government just before World War 1 to encourage education among the border people and lessen the necessity for military action against invading tribesmen.2

When World War 2 broke out Clive Strover enlisted with the Indian army and served from 1939 to 1943 before returning to Australia with the rank of captain. The family lived in Deepdene and then Heidelberg and Clive continued his teaching career. We get another glimpse of him in 1948 when he succeeded in being accepted as a competitor in a new quiz program. At that time he was a lecturer at the Melbourne Technical College, now RMIT University. Florence died in 1961 and Clive, after entering a war veterans' home, in 1963.3

Notes and References:
1 The Essendon Gazette and Keilor, Bulla and Broadmeadows Reporter, 7 February 1918, p. 2
2 The West Australian, 29 July 1937, p. 5
3 The Argus, 24 August 1948, p. 5

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