Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

The son of Philip John Bickett Steele and Johanna Albertina nee Ekman, Fred Steele was born on 12 September 1885 and later educated at Melbourne Grammar School and the Geelong College. He was appointed a Lieutenant in the Australian Field Artillery in 1905, and subsequently passed into the British Army in England in 1907. He travelled with 2nd Battalion, Royal Fusiliers, to Jubbulpore, in India, in 1910, and returned to Australia on leave in 1913. On returning to England he transferred to the 4th Battalion, and was stationed in the Isle of Wight. He left England for France with his regiment on 23 August, 1914, the first day of the Battle of Mons, and was wounded a few weeks later. On his return to the front, Captain F W A Steele was killed at the First Ypres Battle on 29 October, 1914 and has no known grave. His younger brother, Lt Phillip John Rupert (Rupert) Steele, 4th FAB died on 8 January 1917 of wounds sustained in France on 15 November the previous year. Another brother, 2nd Lt Norman Leslie Steele, Australian Flying Corps (AFC), died while a prisoner of war in Hareira, Palestine on 20 April, 1917 of wounds sustained after his machine crashed behind Turkish lines. A third brother, Sgt Henry Cyril Augustus (Cyril) Steele, 4th FAB, had been discharged for urgent family reasons after the death of his brothers Fred and Phillip (Rupert) and was on his way home from England at the time Norman was killed.