Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Son of George and Mary RUSHFORTH, The Rectory, Morpeth, New South Wales.

The parents of Corporal Rushforth received word from the Defence Department on May 25 that he had been wounded. His last letter to them was dated April 15.  They have since learned from Egypt that he was wounded in action on Apri 26, but was supposed to have remained on duty.  They have also learned from a comrade who was with him on April 25 that he had been wounded and was believed to be in Egypt.  Up to the present time the Defence Department has not been able to give them any particulars of his whereabouts or his condition.

#861 RUSHFORTH Norman Mervyn              15th Battalion
 
Norman Rushforth was born in Stroud in the Upper Hunter Valley of NSW on 1st November 1888. His father, the Reverend Canon George Rushforth, was a clergyman in the Church of England and had probably emigrated to Australia with his wife, Mary, to take up a position within the parishes in the Hunter Valley. Norman attended school at Stroud then East Maitland Public and High School. Upon leaving school, Norman went to work as a bank clerk with the Bank of NSW in Maitland. He then transferred to the Bank of NSW in Murwillumbah. Around the end of 1913, Norman took up a selection of land at Hay Creek, Kingaroy
 
Norman presented himself for enlistment at the courthouse at Kingaroy on 20th September 1914. He stated his occupation as farmer of Hay Creek and age as 25 years and 10 months. He named his father of the Rectory Murrurundi as his next of kin. Norman was instructed to make his way to Enoggera Camp where his induction into the AIF was completed when he was taken in to “F” company of the 15th battalion.
 
The 15th Battalion was at that time being raised as the second battalion to be included in the 1st Division of the AIF from Queensland, although many of the recruits in “F” company came from the Northern Rivers district of NSW and Norman may have known many of them from his time in Murwillumbah. The 15thbattalion was commanded by Lieutenant Colonel “Bull” Cannan, a citizen soldier and solicitor from Chelmer in Brisbane. While in camp at Enoggera, Norman was appointed to the rank of lance corporal in October and then corporal in November.
 
After two months of training and organising in Brisbane, the 15th journeyed by several trains to the Broadmeadows Camp on the outskirts of Melbourne where they joined the other three battalions that comprised the 4th Brigade under the command of Brigadier John Monash, another citizen soldier who would go on to command the entire AIF in 1918.
 
The first contingent of Australian Troops from the three original brigades of the 1st Division had departed Australia almost a month previously before the 4th Brigade boarded transports at Port Melbourne on 22ndDecember 1914. The embarkation roll for the 15th Battalion shows Corporal Norman Rushworth, farmer, aged 26 years. As a corporal, Norman was being paid 9 shillings a day. The “Ceramic” arrived in Egypt in late January 1915 and on 3rd February, disembarked the 15th at the harbour in Alexandria. The battalion proceeded to the Aerodrome Camp in Cairo for training and brigade and divisional manoeuvres which continued until 11th April 1915.
 
On 12th April, the men of the 15th Battalion boarded trains for the short journey to Alexandria where they boarded two troop transports, the “Australind” and the “Seang Bee.”
The transports ferried the 15th to Mudros Harbour on the Greek Island of Lemnos where the men remained on board ship while practicing disembarkation drills with cutters and horseboats in preparation for the landings on the Gallipoli Peninsula. On the evening of the 24th April the transports sailed out of Mudros Harbour. The “Australind”, with the headquarters and two companies of the 15th Battalion on board, positioned itself off the shore at Cape Helles and the men on board crowded the rails to observe the landing of the British troops there during the morning of the 25th. The “Australind” then sailed up the west coast of the Gallipoli Peninsula to stand off at Anzac Cove where the “Seang Bee” was already at anchor. Soon after midnight on the 26th April, the 15th began to be ferried ashore under the cover of darkness.
 
By the morning of the 26th, all of the 15th Battalion was ashore and received orders from Brigade Command to move up a gulley (which would soon be named Shrapnel Gulley) to take up a position between the 1st and 2nd Brigades that had landed the day before. This position was quickly named Quinn’s Post after Captain Quinn of the 15th Battalion who commanded “B” Company.
 
The situation on the beach at Anzac Cove during the first week was chaotic. Drinking water was in extremely short supply, as was medical assistance. The two hospital ships assigned to the Anzac beachhead were woefully inadequate. The overall command staff remained on the battleship H.M.S. Elizabeth beyond the range of the Turkish guns and communication between the shore and command staff could only be achieved by a relays of semaphore messages during daylight or morse signal lamp at night. In the evening of the 25th, as the 15th Battalion were preparing to go ashore, the commanders on the ground were pressing General Sir Ian Hamilton to evacuate. The sparse entries in the 15th Battalion war diary are indicative of the fact that at the time, nobody was in effective control and nobody knew what was going on. Battalion and Brigade Commanders relied on their own initiative. Recording the names of casualties within a battalion had a low priority and in any case there was no opportunity to conduct a roll call, such was the perilous state in which the Queenslanders found themselves.
 
For George and Mary Rushforth in Murrundindi, the lack of written communication from their son, who was a prolific letter writer, became cause for concern as the weeks passed with no news. George finally wrote to the authorities in Melbourne to enquire as to the fate of his son. His early letters reveal that he and his wife feared the worst.
 
An unnamed Major at Brigade HQ “assumed” that Norman was wounded, slightly. This information was forwarded from Cairo by cable. Base Records had no further information to relate other than that contained in the cable, but in a well meaning but dangerous attempt to provide some comfort, replied with a standard phrase “in the absence of anything to the contrary, it is presumed that he is progressing favourably.” To be fair, Base Records in Melbourne were totally reliant on information from Cairo, which relied on letters and reports from Mudros which relied on written reports from the Anzac beachhead. With such a clumsy communication network, it is not surprising that information was not forthcoming or was plain wrong.
 
The Reverend Rushforth, and particularly his wife, were not satisfied with the replies provided and George wrote to a member of parliament who pressed his case. Unable to provide anything further to the Reverend’s many letters, all of which are preserved in Norman’s file in the national archives, base records suggested that he make enquiries through the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Service. Some of the Red Cross reports had Norman in hospital in Malta or Alexandria. Unfortunately, all of those reports were wrong. George Rushforth engaged a friend of his, who was living in Cairo, to make enquiries on his behalf and was delighted when his friend cabled in October 1915 to say that “Norman safe on Lemnos.” This was at the same time that an entry was made by brigade staff in Norman’s file on 14th October to state that Corporal Norman Rushworth was “wounded and missing.”
 
The matter was finally settled for the family when, after perusing prisoner of war records, a court of inquiry in Egypt on 28th April 1916, one year after the event, determined that Norman Rushforth had been killed in action on 26th April 1915. The family in Murrurundi were probably relieved to have the whole matter resolved. The Gallipoli battlefields were in enemy hands and would remain so until Grave Recovery Units returned to ANZAC in 1919 to begin the work of locating isolated graves.
 
Remarkably, the grave of Norman Rushforth was located beside the track up to Quinn’s Post from Shrapnel Gulley. He was buried beside another 15th Battalion man, Sydney Malcolm Bentzon. The remains of both were exhumed and reinterred in the Shrapnel Valley War Cemetery, just south of Anzac Cove. The Rushforths chose the following inscription for their son’s headstone: SON OF CANON AND MRS RUSHFORTH OF MURRURUNDI NSW.
 
Among Norman’s possessions returned to Murrurundi were three pieces of stone. Perhaps souvenirs from places of religious significance for Norman’s father.