Alexander Fullford (Ford) Bechervaise

Alexander Fullford (Ford) Bechervaise

FROM GALLIPOLI TO THE SOMME 1916

The story of the two Bechervaise lads, Noel and Ford, is a fitting curtain-raiser for the Lost Diggers pictures because of what it tells us of a very different era in Australian history, a time of fealty to family, unswerving loyalty to a British sovereign and firm belief in God.

Both young men performed breathtaking acts of heroism, but their role in this awful conflict has largely disappeared from the official history. All the more reason that their status as Lost Diggers now be acknowledged and their story told.

In late September 1914, a young Geelong man by the name of Noel Edward Bechervaise enlisted ‘for King and Country’. He was one of the sons of a local accountant, Edward Bechervaise. Another younger son was Alexander Fullford Bechervaise, better known as Ford. He enlisted a few months after his brother on 11 January 1915, just a few weeks short of his twentieth birthday; a letter from his father appears on his military file giving him permission to enlist because he was not yet twenty-one. Both young men were destined to take over their father’s accountancy business if and when they returned after the war. But by the time this photograph of Ford Bechervaise was taken in mid-November 1916 when his unit visited the Thuillier studio in Vignacourt, a great deal had changed.

At the time Noel was charging up the beach and cliffs at Anzac Cove, Ford now assigned to reinforce the 5th Battalion in Gallipoli, had set sail from Australia. It would be many weeks before he learned of his brother’s fate.

By the time Australian troops evacuated from Gallipoli, Ford Bechervaise had impressed his commanders and by November 1915 he was a Corporal, then a Sergeant by March the following year. By December 1916, his father was proudly boasting to relatives that his 21-year-old son had been made an officer, promoted to Second Lieutenant. “He is only 21, a fine stamp of a youngster and was Geelong’s champion swimmer’.

Ford survived Gallipoli, his 5th Battalion soon arrived in France. We know from the battalion’s regimental diary that it visited Vignacourt for just a couple of weeks – training, resting and getting refitted with new clothes and other personal items – in mid November 1916.

At the end of March 1917, Ford was promoted to First Lieutenant. He later suffered a series of illnesses – scabies, septic knees and a ruptured ligament in his left ankle. They saw him in and out of hospital over several months. Then in mid-1918, the 5th Battalion was involved in the massive effort to hold back the German Spring offensive. For his actions during this offensive, Lieutenant Bechervaise was awarded a Military Cross.

Ford Bechervaise returned safely to Australia in early April 1919. He soon married and went to live on a property at Ferny Creek in Victoria. He and Vera had two daughters. He served as a Major in Darwin in World War ll. Also serving in that later was was Noel Haynes Bechervaise, one of Ford’s nephews, who was born in December 1916 and named after his uncle who had died at Gallipoli.

Alexander Fullford Bechervaise died in 1969. A keen swimmer in his youth – he might have represented Australia in the Olympics if war had not broken out – one of the cups he won has become a perpetual trophy for swimming at Mentone Girls Grammer School. Decades on, the wife of his grandnephew Neil Bechervaise, was principal when Ford’s daughters presented the trophy.