GOULD, Elwyn Samuel
| Service Number: | Officer |
|---|---|
| Enlisted: | 8 April 1915, Hindmarsh, South Australia |
| Last Rank: | Captain |
| Last Unit: | 27th Infantry Battalion |
| Born: | Bowden, South Australia, 13 July 1893 |
| Home Town: | Unley, Unley, South Australia |
| Schooling: | Not yet discovered |
| Occupation: | Architect |
| Died: | Killed In Action, Poelcappelle, Belgium, 9 October 1917, aged 24 years |
| Cemetery: |
Passchendaele, New British Cemetery XI. E. 16. |
| Memorials: | Adelaide National War Memorial, Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, Exeter Semaphore Uniting Church (fmly Wesleyan) Roll of Honour, Glenelg Moseley Street Uniting Church "Heroes of Two World Wars", Glenelg and District WW1 & WW2 Honour Board, Hindmarsh Way Memorial Methodist Church Honour Roll, Unley Town Hall WW1 Honour Board |
World War 1 Service
| 8 Apr 1915: | Enlisted AIF WW1, Hindmarsh, South Australia | |
|---|---|---|
| 16 Apr 1915: | Promoted AIF WW1, Second Lieutenant | |
| 31 May 1915: | Involvement AIF WW1, Second Lieutenant, 27th Infantry Battalion, Enlistment/Embarkation WW1 | |
| 31 May 1915: | Embarked AIF WW1, Second Lieutenant, 27th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Geelong, Adelaide | |
| 28 Aug 1915: | Promoted AIF WW1, Lieutenant, 27th Infantry Battalion | |
| 4 Sep 1915: | Involvement AIF WW1, Lieutenant, Officer, 27th Infantry Battalion, ANZAC / Gallipoli | |
| 11 Apr 1916: | Involvement AIF WW1, Lieutenant, 27th Infantry Battalion, Enlistment/Embarkation WW1 | |
| 11 Apr 1916: | Embarked AIF WW1, Lieutenant, 27th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Aeneas, Adelaide | |
| 23 Jul 1916: | Involvement AIF WW1, Lieutenant, 27th Infantry Battalion, Battle for Pozières | |
| 4 Jan 1917: | Promoted AIF WW1, Captain, 27th Infantry Battalion | |
| 22 Feb 1917: | Wounded AIF WW1, Captain, 27th Infantry Battalion, German Withdrawal to Hindenburg Line and Outpost Villages, GSW (head and leg) | |
| 31 Jul 1917: | Involvement AIF WW1, Captain, 27th Infantry Battalion, Third Ypres, Killed in Action 9 October 1917 at Passchendaele | |
| 9 Oct 1917: | Involvement AIF WW1, Captain, 27th Infantry Battalion, Battle of Poelcapelle, --- :awm_ww1_roll_of_honour_import: awm_service_number: awm_unit: 27 Battalion awm_rank: Captain awm_died_date: 1917-10-09 |
History
Biographical information by Dr Jan Lokan, South Australia, July 2010
Elwyn Samuel Gould (my uncle, whom I never knew) was the only son of Samuel and Julia Gould, born in Bowden (a suburb of Adelaide) in July 1893. He had six sisters, two older and four younger than himself - all of whom I knew. He progressed well at school and had almost finished qualifying as an architect at the time of enlistment in 1915 in the Australian Imperial Force.
Elwyn Gould served at Gallipoli but was invalided out with enteric fever, first to a hospital ship in Malta and later on three months' leave to Australia early in 1916. He returned to active service in France in 1916. He received serious gunshot wounds in France on 1 March 1917 and was sent to Wandsworth Hospital in London to recover. His recovery was successful and he returned to Europe in June 1917, rejoining his battalion in France in July. He was to live for only three more months.
The photographs are of Elwyn himself after he had enlisted in the AIF, including one with his mother, six sisters and his oldest sister's husband (taken by his father when Elwyn was in Australia on leave in 1916 - sadly, the last time his family saw him; my mother, aged 8, is at the front). His 27th Battalion badge and the name on the back of his 1914-15 campaign star are shown (these are in my brother's possession). The other photos include the card sent to the family in 1921, showing the original cross on his burial site in the New British Cemetery near Passchendaele. Today, the grave has a standard white memorial headstone, with his name carved on it. Also shown are his name listed on the war memorial in North Tce, Adelaide, and on his parents' gravestone.
The files are some of the more than 100 pages for Elwyn Gould now made available on the National Archives of Australia database of World War I records. I have selected the ones that tell the story of Elwyn's service and interactions of the AIF with the family about various events, in a way that I hope illustrates what it must have been like for the family back home when communications were much slower than they are today. It also shows the thoroughness of army records but the rather perfunctory way in which it was necessary for them to communicate when they had to attend to so many matters with so many people about so many events, some of them harrowing for the families to whom they had to be sent.
Submitted 19 March 2013 by MindVision Interactive
Biography
Elwyn Samuel GOULD was born the only son of Captain (later Major) Samuel Gould and Mrs Julia Gould, at Bowden in Adelaide on 13 July 1893. Samuel Gould was a militia officer and his son Elwyn had joined the Cadets at age14, progressing into the ranks of the Citizens Forces where he was commissioned prior to the outbreak of war.
Elwyn studied as an architect completing his studies immediately prior to the outbreak of war. He was commissioned to the AIF from the Citizens Forces enlisting on on 13 April 1915. He thus had no Service number allocated as was the practice at the time; only enlisted personnel were thus identified.
His parents by this time were living at 213 Wattle Street MALVERN SA .
Elwyn 's name is not listed on the embarkation roll for his initial deployment for reasons unknown. This anomaly will be brought to the attention of the AWM.
The 27th Battalion landed at Gallipoli in September 1915 with the rest of the Second Division. Enteric fever was emerging as an issue as a result of hot weather and poor sanitation and it caused more casualties than enemy fire late in the campaign. Elwyn became one of those casualties. He was evacuated with enteric fever initially to Malta and later repatriated to Australia on the ship “Ulysses”
He returned to France from Australia and the UK (an entry that IS recorded in the Embarkation Roll) as part of the 12th Reinforcements for the 27th Battalion, on the HMAT Aeneas embarking on the 11th April 1916.
Elwyn re-joined the Battalion, by now a very different collection of faces and names to the one he had left behind at Gallipoli. The 27th Battalion took part in operations at Pozieres and Mouquet Farm in July - September 1916 sustaining heavy casualties in the process. A brief period in Belgium followed before a return to the Somme just south east of Pozieres and a dreadful winter during the course of which the Battalion was engaged around Flers, in early November. The troops in the field endured the coldest most severe winter in living memory.
1917 saw 2nd Division and the 7th Brigade of which the 27th was a part relocate further north near Arras to take part in the major British offensive of the same name. Elwyn had been promoted Captain on the 4th January vice Captain Elder.
He was not long in action before being seriously wounded by small arms fire near Frecourt on the 22nd February1917, recorded as GSW (interchangeably ‘Gunshot Wound’- the most common use of the abbreviation - or ‘General Shrapnel Wound’, the charactersitics of which were sometimes indistinguishable from a gunshot wound). His wounds required evacuation to the United Kingdom and admission at the 3rd London General Hospital, Wandsworth. It appears that he spent four months recuperating before temporary assignment to the 7th Training Battalion on the Salisbury Plain.
He deployed again to France on the 4th July 1917, and was taken back on strength by the 27th Battalion on the 13th of July.
The 27th Battalion was shortly afterwards committed to the Third Ypres campaign, beginning with Menin Road and Polygon Wood and culminating in the fighting at Passchendaele.
Elwyn Gould was killed on the 9th October 1917 in the preliminary stages of Passchendaele. The Battalion at the time was located near Broodseinde, to the south of Passchendaele.
It is notable that Elwyn’s story closely parallels that of Reginald Bruce Coulter (warmemorial.erato.vm.e2.com.au), from Gallipoli to Ypres.
1914/15 Star: 25449
British War Medal: 36704
Victory Medal: 36419
Commemorative Medallion: 357345
Biography contributed by Faithe Jones
Captain ELWYN SAMUEL GOULD, who was killed in action on the western front on October 9, was the only son of Major and Mrs. Samuel Gould, of Wattle-street, Malvern. Captain Gould. received his primary education, at the State schools. and while at Unley was awarded a scholarship tenable at the School of Art and Design, where, and at the School of Mines, he succèssfully continued his studies, with a view to taking up the profession of an architect. He was subsequently articled to Mr. Alfred Wells, and was admitted as an associate of the Institute of Architects in November, 1914. He began his military career in the Cadets at the age of 12, and graduated through all ranks from private to lieutenant. At the time of his appointment as second lieutenant in the Australlan Imperial Forces early in 1916, he held a commission in the 74th (Boothby) Infantry. He sailed for the front in May, 1915; served in Egypt (where he received his second star), and Gallipoli, and was invalided back to Australia owing to a severe attack of enteric. Leaving this State again with reinforcements for Egypt, he went to England as adjutant of the troopship, and was also for some time adjutant of a battalion at Salisbury Plain. Procceding to France early in December, 1916, he received his captaincy; was severely wounded at Warlencourt on February 27, 1917, and incapacitated for 16 weeks, taking over his company again in France on his 24th birthday, on July 13. Of striking physique, and a fine, manly character, Captain Gould was highly esteemed. He was able to win the confidence and regard of his men, of whom he was immensely proud. He was a member of the Malvern Methodist Church and Sunday school and of the I. O. of Rechabites. Many tributes of respect have been received by his parents.
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