Angus Wilson

Angus Wilson

ONE OF THE PIONEERS

Pioneer battalions were seen as a less glamorous military unit because they were not primarily intended to be combat troops but to keep roads and supplies open to the front lines for the infantry troops they were there to support. But as 23 year old Private Angus Valentine Wilson soon found out when he joined up in June 1915, the diggers in the Pioneers often found themselves fighting for their lives on the front lines. Their job also required them to dig trenches and build roads and other fortifications in the open plains of the Somme, where the soldiers were easy targets for artillery and snipers.

Angus Valentine Wilson was already married with one child when he signed up; that son was named Donald – who at the time of writing, is still alive aged ninety-seven and has delightedly confirmed that this is his father in the picture as has Donald’s younger sister Joy Davies.

A milkman from Williamstown in Melbourne, Angus joined the 4th Pioneer Battalion when it was created in Egypt in March 1916. He was clearly a bit of a lad: Angus’ service file records him being punished in July 1916 for drunkenness, disobedience of orders and unspecified conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline. It appears they threw the book at him and docked him nearly a month’s pay. Joy Davies, one of Angus’ other two children (the other was Ivy Elizabeth), says: ‘That’d be right’. Dad was a bit of a larrikan. Everybody loved my father because he had such an outgoing personality.

Shortly after, in Junse 1916, the 4th Pioneers operated around Albert and during the Battle of Pozieres; in late August they were constructing trenches near Mouquet Farm.

Angus clearly so impressed his commanders during the battle that in November 1916 he was promoted to Lance Corporal. He was wounded in action near Ypres on 18 October 1917 when a German bomber dropped high explosives. Within weeks of his recovery, Corporal Angus Wilson was promoted to a Sergeant and by July 1918 he was being commented for his gallantry.

17/07/1918 – The Corps Commander congratulates Sergeant Wilson for courage, determination and resources when on 4/07/1918 he went out with a party under very heavy fire to reconnoiter and mark out a line for a communication trench.

Angus Wilson returned to Australia in July 1919 and not long afterwards he was informed that he had been accorded the Military Medal for another act of heroism.

4th Australian Pioneer Battalion, Sergeant Angus Wilson. On the night of September 18-19 near Le Vergier, Sergeant Wilson was in charge of a platoon on wiring work, forward of the front line position. His splendid example of cool determination was alone responsible for his success in getting his men onto the job through much harassing fire on the way out and while actually working, he organised and disposed of his party in a most efficient manner and succeeded in accomplishing a well executed piece of work under very hazardous and trying conditions.

Joy Davies remembers how her father rarely spoke about the ‘nasty side’ of the war until very late in life. But she says, ‘looking back in my childhood, I remember I could hear my father in the night screaming. He would be up the next day laughing and carrying on. He had a wonderful ability to be happy’.

Perhaps Angus figured that after what he had been through in the war, he was entitled to take a few risks because he kept on smoking until he died in his eighties.

Angus’ 97 year old son Donald also served in the army – in World War II. He has fond memories of he and his father travelling from Williamstown on the train to watch Collingwood play football at Victoria Park; the only hint of Angus’ heroic war service was his walking cane and a slight limp.