Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Arrived in Australia aged 9 years

Son of Alexander and Mary Ann Armstrong of Bells Hill Farm, Bell near Dalby, QLD

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal

 
#1652 ARMSTRONG Robert               25th Battalion
 
Robert Armstrong was born into a large Baptist family in Motherwell, outside Glasgow. Robert attended school at Marg Street School at Motherwell. In 1908, the family emigrated to Queensland. The passenger manifest for the S.S. Omrah lists parents Alexander and Mary Ann, accompanied by eight children. Robert‘s age on the passenger list is given as 10.
 
The family landed at the immigration depot in Brisbane on 17th December 1908 and from there undertook the rail journey on the Western Line as far as Dalby, and then the regular service on the Bell branch line which had opened two years previously. Land was being opened up in the Bell district for farming and it was probably the prospect of good farming opportunities which attracted the Armstrong family. Alexander Armstrong took up a selection and named it Bells’ Hill Farm, after the well-known Bell’s Hill in the Pentland Hills of Scotland.
 
Robert journeyed by train to Brisbane to enlist on 2nd June 1915. This was soon after the first reports of the Gallipoli landings appeared in the press and it sparked a surge in enlistments. Robert had with him a note signed by his parents giving their permission for him to enlist as he was only 19 years old. Robert gave his occupation to the recruiting officer as farmer and stated his address as Bell’s Hill Farm, Bell via Dalby. He named his father as his next of kin.
 
Robert reported to Bell’s Paddock Camp at Enoggera where he began rudimentary training while being issued with his uniform. On 16th August, the 2nd draft of reinforcements for the 25th Battalion boarded a troop train at Alderley for the journey to Sydney where they boarded the “Shropshire” on 20th August for the crossing of the Indian Ocean to Egypt. Upon arrival in Egypt, the reinforcements moved to the AIF camp at Zeitoun. The battalion the reinforcements were to join, the 25th, had recently departed for the fighting at Gallipoli.
 
Robert and the other members of the 2nd reinforcements were finally united with the 25th on 12th October. After landing at Anzac in the dark, the reinforcements marched north up the beach for a distance of about a mile before striking inland up the dry water course of the Chailak Dere to a point on Rhododendron Ridge known as the Apex. The 25th had been in the trenches at the Apex for almost a month, rotating with other battalions of the 7th Brigade.
 
The trenches at the Apex clung to the high point of the ridge with a distance of less then 100 yards between the Turks and the Australians. The positions on the Anzac Front had become relatively quiet after the failed British and Australian offensives of August. The daily routine consisted of “standing-to” at dawn and dusk while working at trench improvements and carrying of water and supplies. The history of the 25th Battalion, “Black over Blue”, notes that the quiet was shattered on 27th October 1915 by a 20 minute bombardment by Turkish 75 mm guns and broomstick bombs of the Apex position. Four men were killed during the bombardment; two in the firing line and two in the reserves. Robert Armstrong was one of them. He had been on the peninsula for 15 days.
 
Robert’s body was carried down the water course from the Apex where he was buried in the Chailak Dere Cemetery #2 with a wooden cross marking his location. Six weeks later, the Gallipoli front was abandoned when the British forces withdrew. The graves at the foot of Rhododendron Ridge lay undisturbed for the next four years.
 
The Australian Grave Registration Units that arrived on the peninsula in late 1919 had difficulty identifying many of the temporary graves from 1915. The Chailak Dere cemeteries were consolidated into a new cemetery, Embarkation Pier. Robert Armstrong is commemorated on a special memorial stone which lists the names of twenty soldiers who are “believed to be buried in that cemetery”. The memorial bears the inscription THEIR GLORY SHALL NOT BE BLOTTED OUT.
 
Alexander Armstrong received a pension of two pounds a fortnight and his sons medals; the 1914/15 Star, The Empire Medal and the Victory Medal.