Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Good morning staff and students. Today I would like to call your attention to the 903 names on the honour boards in our auditorium that connect us to Australia’s role in World War One and World War Two. The Honour Board to your left records the names of 354 students and teachers from our school who served in World War One. Sadly, 48 students and teachers died in service to our country.
On your right, our WW2 Honour Board, unveiled in 1946, includes 549 names of students and teachers from Sydney Technical High School who served in WW2. Again, we remember today those 45 students and teachers who paid with their lives in the service of our country. Sixty-four of these names appear on both boards because they fought in both World War I and World War II.
It has been our privilege as Year 9 World History students to research three names from our boards- to grow to know them and to share their worlds, and their stories with you today as fellow Techies. Today’s four stories of the Cornish family cross both Honour Boards and highlight the connections between those serving on war fronts and those left behind on the home front. These include the story of two brothers, two Techies, Lawrence, and Edmund Cornish. We will also remember the story of Edmund’s son, Edmund Junior, another student from Sydney Technical High School. Our fourth story is of the mother and grandmother of these Techies – Annie Cornish.
Lawrence Cornish
The first story from our World War One Honour Board is that of Lawrence Cornish – the son of George and Annie Cornish. Born on the 21st of December 1898 at Dulwich Hill in Sydney’s inner west, he attended Sydney Technical High School at our original Ultimo Campus. At Tech, Lawrence excelled in metalwork and woodwork. He was like many Techies in this auditorium; he worried about his future, longed for adventure, and wanted to find his place in the world. Lawrence finished school in 1914 and worked as a clerk in the city of Sydney.
Lawrence was looking, like many young men, for glory, adventure, or just copying his older brother, he enlisted in the Great War on the 3rd of June 1915, following his brother, who enlisted five days prior. Lawrence was part of a large number of men and young boys who enlisted for the war. He was placed in the 4th battalion, 6th reinforcement of the Australian Imperial Force.
Cornish entered the war with the rank of Private, leaving Sydney on 16 June 1915, onboard the HMAT Karoola landing in Egypt for training at Mena Camp in the shadow of the famous Giza pyramids about 16km from Cairo. Most soldiers had at least four months of training. Lawrence had four weeks. This training was unable to prepare him for what was to come. Lawrence landed at Anzac Beach where the battle of Lone Pine was underway.
Within the first 20 minutes of battle, things looked positive for Lawrence and the Australian soldiers who quickly took the Turkish trenches. However, Turkish reinforcements quickly overwhelmed them with superior numbers. This engagement continued over four days of intense hand-to-hand fighting, resulting in over 2,000 Australian casualties and 7,000 Turkish casualties.
Lawrence was one of these casualties. Lawrence was 16 years and eight months old. On 9 August 1915, Lawrence was shot and killed in action. Today, the Australian War Memorial names 188 boy/soldiers among the 61,000 names on the Roll of Honour. Boy soldiers -- too young to serve who fought and died in WW1.
Lawrence was one of these lost boys.
Edmund Cornish Senior
Lawrence’s older brother also fought in World War One. His name was Edmund Cornish. He too went to Sydney Technical High School and left in 1914 to become a clerk. Even though he enlisted approximately a month before his younger brother on the 29th of May 1915, his ship only departed Sydney for Gallipoli eleven days after Lawrence died. Like Lawrence, Edmund trained in Egypt and learned the strategies and tactics that would help to keep him safe throughout the war.
On the 23rd of October 1915, he landed on the shores of Gallipoli. He was evacuated due to illness on the 2nd of December 1915 only a couple of days before the full evacuation of allied forces from Gallipoli. Edmund was moved on to the Western Front and fought at Pozières, Mouquet Farm, Second Bullecourt, Menin Road, Polygon Wood and Broodseinde before joining the Australian Flying Corps on the 4th of March 1918. At Pozieres on the 7th of August 1916, Edmund received severe injuries to his left leg after being thrown down and buried by debris from a high explosive shell. He could not extend his leg or bear any weight on it, and it took him 11 weeks to recover from this injury.
Edmund’s leadership skills saw him rise quickly in rank. Between 1916 and 1917, he was promoted from private, to corporal, to Sergeant, to Second and First Lieutenant and finally to Captain. On the 21st of August 1917, he received a Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry and devotion for his role in leading an attack party that captured an enemy strongpoint taking 29 prisoners.
Later, although severely wounded, Edmund continued to command his men, and a year later was awarded a Bar to his Military Cross, the equivalent of receiving a second cross, for his role supervising no-man's-land under heavy shelling, proving his bravery once again. On the same evening, he skilfully stopped the retirement of a neighbouring unit which left the brigade's flank in a precarious condition. The confusion of war saw Edmund listed for some months as missing in action. However, on the 29th of November 1918, he was located at the General Hospital, London, suffering from gunshot wounds to his left arm, leg, and upper thigh. Edmund returned to Australia in 1919.
Unlike his brother Lawrence, Edmund survived the war and in 1920 Edmund married Jane Russell Fleming at North Sydney Presbyterian Church in a stylish military wedding. In 1925, the Cornish family welcomed the arrival of their son Edmund Cornish Jr. who would himself become a Techie and see war. In Edmund’s civilian life in Australia, he gave an interview with the Shepperton Advertiser, while on holiday in Victoria. Here he spoke about his love of engineering, aeroplanes, and how vital air travel was to both Australia’s economy and defence. This interview demonstrates Edmund’s vision for Australia’s future and his love of engineering which can be traced back to his time at Sydney Tech.
In 1929, while flying his plane near Goulburn, Edmond crashed and died at the scene. At his funeral, his aviator comrades passed over his funeral procession on the way to the cemetery --- circling his grave slowly as a tribute to their fallen comrade.
Today, we remember Captain Edmund Cornish, Military Cross with Bar, for his resilience in the face of hardship, his gallantry and leadership in battle, and his service to Australia.
Edmund Cornish Junior
We have heard about Edmund Cornish Sr, a Techie and a hero of World War 1, and his younger brother Lawrence who died in World War One. We now turn to Edmund’s son, Edmund Jr, our fellow Techie, who served his country in the Second World War. Edmund Jr attended Sydney Technical High School in 1937 where he was renowned as an excellent athlete. He excelled in swimming, water polo, football, and athletics, and was much admired among his cohort. He won all of the swimming events and most of the athletics events breaking many school records and moving on to the CHS team for Athletics and Swimming, where he also experienced much success.
Following in the footsteps of his uncle and his father, after graduation, he also entered military service. Edmund Jr joined the Royal Military College at Duntroon on 27th of February 1943 and trained in the Australian Staff Corps. He entered the Corp of Staff Cadets which worked to promote leadership, integrity, and service to Australia. The military curriculum he undertook at Duntroon aimed to provide the foundation necessary for senior leadership ranks within the Army. Edmund graduated on the 12th of December 1944. He enlisted the next day as a Lieutenant in the Australian Staff Corps and was responsible for training other soldiers.
Between November 1944 and the end of the war in August 1945, his Division was deployed to fight the Imperial Japanese 18th Army in northern New Guinea. He specifically fought in the Aitape–Wewak campaign, partaking in intense jungle warfare. The terrain was characterised by giant hardwoods, which towered well over a hundred feet into the sky. Among and beneath the trees thrived a fantastic tangle of vines, creepers, ferns, and brush, impenetrable even to the eye for more than a few feet. Exotic birds inhabited the upper regions. The insect world permeated the whole in extraordinary sizes and varieties: ants whose bite felt like a live cigarette against the flesh, improbable spiders, wasps up to 7 centimetres in length, scorpions, and centipedes, were all part of the jungle in which Edmund Jr found himself. It was this jungle that would ultimately lead to Edmund falling sick.
On 26 June 1945, Edmund experienced severe swelling to his face, eyelids, feet, ankles, toes, hands, and forearms. He knew something from the jungle had bitten him. Two days later Edmund found himself in an army hospital. He briefly rallied and his medical records report he enjoyed a meal of “fried fish and chips” but the next day on the 30th of June, the reaction returned and he succumbed to an infection from the jungle environment. Edmund Jr died of what was assumed to be an allergic reaction. He was buried in the Lae War Cemetery in Papua New Guinea, and his name is memorialized on the Australian War Memorial.
Annie Angela Cornish and Conclusion
The family history we have researched and told today would be incomplete without that of Annie Angela Cornish, the mother of Lawrence and Edmund Senior, and grandmother to the athletic Edmund Junior - our Tech brothers.
The struggle, grief, and anguish of her loss, whilst harder to locate within the historical archive, is nevertheless there when we read our sources thoroughly, and when we insist on reading against the grain and placing her story within the context of women’s experiences on the home front in Australia during World War One and World War Two.
Her story is both unique and universal, it represents the story of many mothers, wives, aunts, and sisters, who lost the men they loved in war. Annie Cornish loved her sons and she doted on her grandson. She cared for them deeply, she saw they were educated to the highest level. She valued Sydney Technical High School so much, she encouraged her grandson to also apply. Much like some of our mothers, she no doubt reminded her sons that “Manners Maketh Man.” And much like our parents, she wished for her boys to grow to pursue their goals and dreams.
Her sacrifice was acute. She was four years separated from her sons during their dispatch to Gallipoli.
The information she received regarding their wellbeing was sporadic through delayed letters from her boys through army dispatches received in “wounded in action reports”, in which she was to read about the injuries her sons had sustained. In the many days of silence, she would scour the newspaper listings for death reports, she would worry about a knock on her door which might report her son had died. We know she would have experienced this knock on the door with the death of Lawrence. He was sixteen. She had lost her child. She could not go to be with him. She was unable to travel overseas or visit his grave in Gallipoli.
By 1925, Annie would become a grandmother to newborn Edmund Cornish Jr.
When Edmund Junior went to war, the series of events was only too familiar to her. She had seen Lawrence and Edmund go through the same process almost 30 years prior. She would relive the trauma of their service. Just as she did for her sons, Annie would follow every step of Edmund Jr’s journey from his dispatch to Port Moresby to his eventual death. For Annie, and for many families, war disrupted the traditional mourning rituals that we associate with death.
Minimal public expression for this overwhelming and private grief was available.
Grief changes us fundamentally and stories help us to mend. The Ataturk Memorial at Ari Burnu on the Gallipoli peninsula is an attempt to soothe the grief of family such as Mrs Cornish. Engraved with the following words from Kemal Ataturk, the Commander of the Turkish 19th Division during the Gallipoli Campaign and the first President of the Turkish Republic from 1924 to 1938. It is a message to the mothers who lost sons and we hope that Annie Cornish found some comfort in these words.
They read: “Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives. You are now living in the soil of a friendly country, therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”
As we finish our presentation today, we greatly encourage you to reflect deeply on those names inscribed in gold on the Honour Boards in our auditorium.
Lest we forget.
Sahej Grewal, Stanley Lau, Rayson Leung, Paras Nayyar, Maxwell Lim and Abhinav RaviI – Year 9 World History