Victoria Cross

BORN
13 April 1891

DIED
27 January 1921

Corporal Maurice Vincent Buckley

Maurice Vincent Buckley (1891-1921), soldier, was born on 13 April 1891 at Hawthorn, Victoria, son of Timothy Buckley, brickmaker, and his wife Honora Mary Agnes, née Sexton. His father was a native of Cork, Ireland; his mother was Victorian-born. Educated at the Christian Brothers’ school, Abbotsford, he became a coach-trimmer and was working at Warrnambool when he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 18 December 1914. Next June he embarked for Egypt with reinforcements for the 13th Light Horse Regiment but by late September 1915 he had returned to Australia and was discharged.

Buckley re-enlisted in Sydney on 16 May 1916 under the name of Gerald Sexton; Gerald was the name of a deceased brother. He left for France in October with 13th Battalion reinforcements and joined his unit on the Somme in January 1917. That year he fought at Bullecourt, Polygon Wood, Ypres and Passchendaele and early in 1918 at Hébuterne and Villers-Bretonneux. He was promoted lance corporal in January and by June was a lance sergeant in charge of a Lewis-gun section. After being wounded at Hamel he resumed duty for the battle of 8 August in which he received the Distinguished Conduct Medal. While advancing from Hamel towards Morcourt his company was delayed by sudden machine-gun fire on four separate occasions; he quickly silenced each enemy post by using his Lewis-gun with great promptness and skill. Once, when the battalion was advancing through tall crops, a hidden gun fired into its ranks causing several casualties. Buckley stood up in full view of the enemy, calmly noted the position of the gun from the flashes and, firing from the hip, put it out of action. He was confirmed as sergeant on 28 August.

On 18 September the 13th Battalion took part in the attack on Le Verguier. Setting off behind the creeping barrage it cleared several enemy outposts, two of which fell to Buckley’s Lewis-gun. When a field-gun held up one company he rushed towards it, shot the crew and raced under machine-gun fire across open ground to put a trench-mortar out of action. He then fired into an enemy dug-out and captured thirty Germans. By the end of the day he had rushed at least six machine-gun positions, captured a field-gun and taken nearly 100 prisoners: he was awarded the Victoria Cross. The award was gazetted under the name Sexton, and Buckley then decided to reveal his identity; a second gazettal was made in his real name.

Buckley returned to Australia and was discharged in December 1919; next year he began work as a road-contractor in Gippsland. On 15 January 1921 he was injured when he tried to jump his horse over the railway gates at Boolarra. He died twelve days later in hospital at Fitzroy, and after a requiem mass in St Patrick’s Cathedral was buried in Brighton cemetery with full military honours. Ten Victoria Cross recipients were pallbearers. Buckley was unmarried. A friend described him as a ‘modest, unassuming young man, with a great fondness for horses and an open-air life’.

BORN
14 August 1892

DIED
28 February 1986

Lieutenant Rupert Vance Moon

Rupert Theo Vance Moon (1892-1986), soldier and businessman, was born on 14 August 1892 at Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, fourth child of English-born parents Arthur Moon, accountant and later bank inspector, and his wife Helen, née Dunning. Rupert was educated to junior public certificate level at Kyneton Grammar School before becoming a bank clerk at 16 with the National Bank of Australasia Ltd.

On 21 August 1914 Moon, having served in the Militia, enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force as a trumpeter. He embarked on 19 October at Melbourne with the 4th Light Horse Regiment, which sailed to Egypt with the 1st Division and was employed as infantry on Gallipoli from 24 May 1915 until evacuated to Egypt in December. Promoted to sergeant on 6 March 1916, he left for France where, on 9 September, he was commissioned as a second lieutenant and appointed a platoon commander in the 58th Battalion.
Promoted to lieutenant on 6 April 1917, Moon led his battalion in the successful breaching of the Hindenburg Line in the second battle of Bullecourt next month. Assisted by the British 7th Division, on 12 May it made the initial assault on a large dugout, a concrete machine-gun redoubt and a hostile trench. Moon personally led the assault during which he was wounded four times. Despite heavy enemy shelling his platoon achieved its objectives and trapped 186 Germans, including two officers. For this action he was awarded the Victoria Cross, the citation reading: ‘His bravery was magnificent and was largely instrumental in the successful issue against superior numbers, the safeguarding of the flank of the attack, and the capture of many prisoners and machine guns’. Considered by his brigade commander, H. E. Elliott, as too diffident for command, Moon had proved to be a brave and tenacious leader.

Moon readjusted to civilian life with difficulty. Having resigned from the National Bank in December 1919, he accepted numerous jobs before becoming livestock manager with the woolbrokers Dennys, Lascelles Ltd, Geelong, in 1928. On 17 December 1931 he married Susan Alison May Vincent at St George’s Presbyterian Church, Geelong. Rising in the company, Moon became general manager (1948-59) and a director (1962-75). He was also a director (1940-75) of Queensland Stations Pty Ltd and chairman (1961-67) of The Northern Assurance Co. Ltd.

In World War II Moon served as a captain in the Volunteer Defence Corps. Posted to the 6th Victorian Battalion (1942 and 1944-45), he was seconded to the South-West Group in 1943-44 for staff duties.

A racehorse owner, ‘Mick’ Moon was a life member and committee member of Moonee Valley Racing Club, and a life member of the Victorian Amateur Turf and the Naval and Military clubs. He was also a member of the Victoria Racing, the Melbourne and the Geelong clubs.

Possessed of great loyalty and integrity, Moon had a direct peppery approach that disguised his fondness for people, particularly the young. He had a retentive memory and a gallant, zestful approach to life. Survived by his wife and their son and daughter, he died at his Barwon Heads home on 28 February 1986 and was buried with Anglican rites at Mount Duneed cemetery. His portrait by W. B. McInnes is held by the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.

BORN
01 December 1880

DIED
07 January 1966

Captain Henry William (Harry) Murray

Harry Murray was born at Launceston, Tasmania, on 1 December 1880. As a youth he helped run the family farm. He was also interested in the military and joined a militia unit, the Australian Field Artillery, in Launceston.

Murray moved to Western Australia at the age of 19 or 20 where he worked as a mail courier on the goldfields. When he enlisted in the AIF as a private on 30 September 1914, he was employing timber-cutters for the railways in the south west of Western Australia. He landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 as a member of one of the 16th Battalion’s two machine-gun crews. Murray was wounded several times, spent June in hospital, was promoted to lance corporal on 13 May and received the Distinguished Conduct Medal for his bravery between 9-31 May. He was wounded again on 8 July and a month later experienced a remarkable series of promotions. On 13 August he was made a sergeant, commissioned second-lieutenant and transferred to the 13th Battalion.

By 1 March 1916 Murray had reached the rank of captain and soon after sailed for France with the 13th Battalion. On the Western Front Murray defied the statistics, participating in each of his unit’s major actions and surviving. He received the Distinguished Service Order for his role in the fighting at Mouquet Farm, where he was twice wounded. His wounds kept Murray from the front until October.

Four months later, on the night of 4-5 February, Murray led his company’s attack on Stormy Trench, near Gueudecourt. Over almost 24 hours they repelled counter-attacks, fought in merciless close quarter battles and suffered under intense shell-fire. Some 230 members of the Battalion were killed in the fight and Murray was awarded the Victoria Cross.

In March 1918 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and given command of the 4th machine gun battalion. He remained in this position until the end of the war. In April during the attack on Bullecourt Murray was awarded a bar to his Distinguished Service Order. In October 1918 Murray was awarded the French Croix de Guerre and in May 1919 was promoted to CMG.

With the fighting over, Murray toured England studying agricultural methods. His service in the AIF ended on 9 March 1920 and he settled on a grazing property at Muckadilla in Queensland. The following year he married Constance Cameron, but the marriage lasted just a few years and in 1925 he moved to New Zealand where he married Ellen Cameron. The couple returned to Queensland in 1928 and purchased another grazing property at Richmond.

Murray enlisted for service during the Second World War and commanded the 26th Battalion in north Queensland until August 1942. He retired from the army in early 1944. Regarded as a shy and modest man, he was described as the most distinguished fighting officer of the AIF. Murray died of a heart attack following a car accident on 7 January 1966.

BORN
23 July 1889

DIED
07 July 1968

Sergeant Stanley Robert McDougall

Stanley Robert McDougall (1889-1968), soldier and forester, was born on 23 July 1889 at Recherche, Tasmania, son of John Henry McDougall, sawmiller, and his wife Susannah, née Cate. Educated locally, he took up blacksmithing and served his time at this trade. He was an excellent horseman, an expert marksman, a competent bushman and an amateur boxer.

Illness prevented him from enlisting in the Australian Imperial Force until 31 August 1915 when he was posted to the 12th Reinforcements to the 15th Battalion. In Egypt, on 3 March 1916, he was drafted into the 47th Battalion and embarked for France in June. The battalion fought at Pozières Heights in August and in the battles of Messines and Broodseinde in 1917. Appointed lance corporal on 5 May 1917, McDougall was promoted corporal in September; he became temporary sergeant in November and was confirmed in that rank next January.

McDougall was awarded the Victoria Cross for his actions at Dernancourt on 28 March 1918. He was on watch at a post on the 47th’s right flank when he heard Germans approaching. When a Lewis-gun team was knocked out by an enemy bomb McDougall snatched up the gun, attacked two machine-gun teams and killed their crews. He turned one of the captured machine-guns on the enemy, killing several and routing one wave of their attack. Meanwhile about fifty Germans had crossed a section of railway which the Australians had held. McDougall turned his gun on them and when his ammunition was spent he seized a bayonet and charged, killing four men. He then used a Lewis-gun, killing many Germans and forcing the surrender of the remaining thirty-three.

Eight days later, in the same location, McDougall was awarded the Military Medal. During a heavy enemy attack he got a gun into position and enfiladed the Germans at close quarters. When the gun was hit he crawled some 300 yards (275 m) under fire to get a replacement; he then took command of the leaderless platoon for the rest of the action. He was posted to the 48th Battalion on 28 May. At Windsor Castle on 19 August he was invested with the Victoria Cross by King George V and shortly afterwards returned to Australia where he was discharged from the A.I.F. on 15 December 1918.

McDougall entered the Tasmanian Forestry Department and in the early 1930s became an inspector in charge of forests in the north-western part of the State. He several times performed outstanding organisational and rescue work during bushfires. He was living at Scottsdale before visiting London for the V.C. centenary in 1956. McDougall died on 7 July 1968 at Scottsdale, survived by his wife Martha, née Anderson-Harrison, whom he had married in 1926.

The uniform he wore and the Lewis-gun he used at Dernancourt are displayed in the Australian War Memorial Hall of Valour with his Victoria Cross and Military Medal. The memorial also has a portrait of him by Frank Crozier.

BORN
19 April 1890

DIED
18 August 1972

Lieutenant Edgar Thomas Towner

Edgar Thomas Towner (1890-1972), soldier and grazier, was born on 19 April 1890 at Glencoe station, near Blackall, Queensland, son of Tasmanian-born Edgar Thomas Towner, grazier, and his second wife Greta, née Herley, from Ireland. His parents were among the first settlers on the Barcoo River. Edgar was educated at home, at Blackall State School and at Rockhampton. In 1912 he took up his own selection which he optimistically named Valparaiso; before developing it, he enlisted on 4 January 1915 as a private in the Australian Imperial Force. By March 1916 he was on the battlefields of Belgium and France, a sergeant in the 25th Battalion. In the year that followed he was commissioned lieutenant and twice mentioned in dispatches for ‘devotion to duty and consistent good work’.

At Morlancourt, France, on 10-11 June 1918 he was awarded the Military Cross while fighting with the 2nd Machine-Gun Battalion. One of the first to reach his objective near the town of Albert, he quickly brought his section into action, thereby assisting troops from the 7th Infantry Brigade to advance and consolidate; he also made use of captured enemy machine-guns. On the morning of 11 June he capped his gallantry with a feat of daring in daylight, helping to re-establish a post under heavy attack ‘at great personal risk’. On 1 September he again distinguished himself at Péronne during the assault on Mont St Quentin. In the early stages of the advance Towner single-handedly captured an enemy machine-gun, then brought his men forward to produce ‘such effective fire that the Germans suffered heavy losses’. He later took twenty-five prisoners before capturing another machine-gun ‘which, in full view of the Germans, he mounted and fired so effectively that the enemy retired, thus enabling the Australians to advance’. Even when wounded, Towner continued to fight and to inspire his men. His bravery was rewarded with the Victoria Cross which was gazetted on 14 December 1918.
The hero returned to Australia in April 1919, but was unable to raise sufficient funds to stock his property. He gave up Valparaiso, went jackerooing and did itinerant work for three years from 1922. Entering into a partnership in Kaloola station (near Longreach) in 1925, Towner thenceforward made the pastures and lands of central Queensland the focus of his life and successfully built up Russleigh Pastoral Co., Isisford.

He took on the bush just as he had accepted the challenges of battle and stuck it out through hard times, preserving his stock as best he could. Towner made himself an expert on the frontier environments of western Queensland and Central Australia. In 1955 he crowned his lifelong geographical work with an address to the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia in Brisbane; his efforts were rewarded with the James Park Thomson gold medal and a fellowship of the society; next year his address was published as a booklet entitled Lake Eyre and its Tributaries.

Edgar Towner was a big man with an imposing personality. In military kit he was burly and tough-looking, but out of it he was shy and distant, engrossed in thought. Without wife or children, he was deemed a loner. A younger generation regarded him as eccentric: always to be seen wearing a suit and frequently disappearing into the outback for long periods of study or exploration. Towner died at Longreach on 18 August 1972 and was buried in the local cemetery with Anglican rites and full military honours.

BORN
07 August 1881

DIED
07 February 1968

Lieutenant Albert Chalmers Borella

Albert Chalmers Borella (1881-1968), soldier and farmer, was born on 7 August 1881 at Borung, Victoria, son of Louis Borella, farmer, and his wife Annie, née Chalmers, both native-born. His mother died when he was 4 and his father remarried. Educated at Borung and Wychitella state schools, he later farmed in the Borung and Echuca districts; he also served for eighteen months with a volunteer infantry regiment, the Victorian Rangers.

On 15 March he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force as a private and was posted to ‘B’ Company, 26th Battalion, on 24 May. After training in Egypt his unit landed at Gallipoli on 12 September and Borella, who was promoted corporal later that month, served there until November.

The 26th Battalion sailed for the Western Front in March 1916; Borella was wounded in the battle of Pozières Heights on 29 July and was evacuated for four months. He was promoted sergeant in January 1917, and in March was awarded the Military Medal for conspicuous bravery at Malt Trench, Warlencourt. Commissioned second lieutenant on 7 April, he was mentioned in dispatches soon afterwards and in August was sent to England for officer training and promoted lieutenant. In the early months of 1918 the 26th Battalion held the line at Dernancourt, where Borella was mainly engaged in patrolling and raids. He fought at Morlancourt and Hamel and on 17 July, for ‘most conspicuous bravery in attack’ at Villers-Bretonneux, was awarded the Victoria Cross. While leading his platoon in an assault on an enemy support-trench, he noticed a machine-gun firing through the Australian barrage; he ran out ahead of his men into the barrage, shot the gunners with his revolver and captured the gun. He then led a small party against the strongly held trench, bombed two dug-outs and took thirty prisoners. Only weeks after this incident he was invalided to Australia owing to wounds and illness.

In 1920-39 Borella farmed on a soldier-settlement block near Hamilton, Victoria. He was National Party candidate for Dundas in the 1924 Legislative Assembly election and was only narrowly defeated. He married Elsie Jane Love at Wesley Church, Hamilton, on 16 August 1928; from September 1939, when he changed his name by deed-poll, he and his family used the surname Chalmers-Borella. On the outbreak of World War II Borella was appointed lieutenant in the 12th Australian Garrison Battalion with which he served until 1941 when he was attached to the Prisoner of War Group at Rushworth. Promoted captain on 1 September 1942, he served with the 51st Garrison Company at Myrtleford until discharged in 1945. He then moved to Albury, New South Wales, joined the Commonwealth Department of Supply and Shipping, and was an inspector of dangerous cargoes until his retirement in 1956. Survived by his wife and two of his four sons, he died on 7 February 1968 and was buried with full military honours in the Presbyterian cemetery.

‘A big tough-looking bloke, the image we conjure up of the digger’, Borella was yet a humane, quietly spoken and unostentatious man, ever ready to assist a worthy cause. Streets in Albury and Canberra are named after him.

BORN
26 October 1863

DIED
19 September 1930

Brigadier General Neville Reginald Howse

Neville Howse was born on 26 October 1863 at Stogursey, Somerset, in England. He was educated at Fullard’s House School, Taunton, before studying medicine at London Hospital. Howse migrated to New South Wales, establishing his first practice in Newcastle before moving to Taree. After undertaking postgraduate work in England, Howse returned to Australia in 1897 and settled in Orange.

In January 1900 he was commissioned as a lieutenant in the New South Wales Medical Corps and sailed for South Africa. He was serving with a mounted infantry brigade at Vredefort where, on 24 July, he rescued a wounded man under heavy fire. For this he was awarded Australia’s first Victoria Cross. He was promoted to captain in October the same year.

Howse returned to Australia, but went back to South Africa as an honorary major in the Australian Medical Corps in February 1902, just as the war was ending. Howse was twice elected mayor of Orange and married Evelyn Pilcher in Bathurst in 1905. When the First World War began in 1914 he was appointed principal medical officer to the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force to German New Guinea, with the rank of lieutenant colonel. His medical knowledge and logistical skills ensured that there were no cases of serious illness and he returned to Australia in time to join the first AIF contingent as staff officer to the Surgeon General, director of medical services.

In December 1914 Howse was promoted to colonel and appointed assistant director of medical services, 1st Australian Division. At Gallipoli he took charge of evacuating wounded men from the beach in the campaign’s opening days. “Shells and bullets he completely disregarded”, wrote one officer, but “to the wounded he was gentleness itself.” Unafraid to speak his mind, at the Dardanelles commission in 1917 Howse described the arrangements for dealing with the wounded at the landing as inadequate to the point of “criminal negligence” on the part of the Imperial authorities. In September 1915 he was given command of ANZAC medical services and in November became director of the AIF’s medical services.

Based in London once the AIF moved to France, Howse made regular visits to France and retained control of the Australian Army Medical Corps in Egypt and Palestine. He consistently endeavoured to maintain the physical standards of the AIF and late in the war attributed its success in part to the efforts he and his staff made in ensuring the physical and moral fitness of Australian front-line soldiers.

Howse was knighted in 1917 and in 1920 made a brief return to private practice before resuming work with the army. He resigned in 1922 and was awarded the federal seat of Calare for the National Party. He held several ministerial portfolios, including defence and health. In 1930 he went to England for medical treatment but died of cancer on 19 September. He was survived by his wife and five children.