Individual Notes
Note for: Susan Charlotte Addison, 29 OCT 1846 - 26 DEC 1914
Index
Birth Note: Rue de Jacques
Individual Note: Godfather: J. Clifton
Godmothers: Mrs Leicester & Miss G.C. Vokes
Individual Notes
Note for: William Bonsall Corneau, 20 JAN 1823 - 29 JAN 1902
Index
Burial: Date: 29 JAN 1902
Individual Notes
Note for: Ann Glassop, - 1809
Index
Nickname: Elizabeth Heathorn
Individual Notes
Note for: James Raworth Kennedy, 1754 - 19 JUL 1826
Index
Individual Note: Arrived on the Soverign on 5 Nov 1795
Individual Notes
Note for: Charles Glentworth Addison, 30 JUN 1883 - 1 DEC 1923
Index
Occupation: Barrister
Event: Type: Embarkation
Date: 10 APR 1915
Place: Sydney, NSW
Burial: Date: 3 DEC 1923
Place: Ryde, NSW
Note: Field of Mars Cemetery, Ryde
Individual Note: Birth date : ? 21 Aug 1885 ?
Service Number: 1793
Rank/Calling: Private
Unit: 1 Field Ambulance - Reinforcements [1-13] (December 1914 - December 1915)
Ship Name: HMAT Argyllshire
Ship Number: A8
Date of Embarkation: 10/04/1915
Place of Embarkation: Sydney
Individual Notes
Note for: Raymond Carberry Addison, 23 AUG 1884 - 13 DEC 1967
Index
Occupation: Staff Officer, Bank of New South Wales
Individual Note: Birth date : ? 28 Mar 1887 ?
Individual Notes
Note for: Wilfred Emmott Addison, 28 MAR 1887 - 22 AUG 1915
Index
Occupation: Bank accountant / Clerk, Commercial Banking Corporation, Soldier
Event: Type: Current Address
Death Note: 2nd Lieutenant, 18th Battalion, AIF
Killed in Action at Hill 60, northern Anzac
Individual Note: He died nobly in action.
Second Lieutenant Wilfred Emmott Addison, 18th Battalion, was one who anticipated his own death. 'I daresay I shall be one of the first to fall', he is reputed to have said after he had been briefed on the impending attack on Hill 60 at the Suvla Bay end of the Anzac position on Gallipoli. Charles Bean, Australia's official historian, described Wilfred Addison’s behaviour on 22 August 1915. As the attack progressed in the ground towards the Turkish positions the 18th came under heavy fire and Addison was described as one:
who, with dying and wounded around him, and machine gun bullets tearing up the ground where he stood, steadied and waved forward the remnant of his platoon until he himself fell pierced with several bullets
[Charles Bean, The Story of Anzac,
Vol II, Sydney, 1924, p743]
Wilfred Addison was born in Yass on 28 March 1887. He was working as a bank accountant in Sydney when he joined the AIF on 23 December 1914. Along with his unit, the 18th Battalion, he landed on Gallipoli on 19 August 1915. Three days later he was dead. On the 18th he had written what was to be his last letter to his mother:
Just a line before picking up. I will think of you and pray for you all tonight ... Don't send too many things for me as I will probably never see them. Things have a marvellous way of disappearing unless we nail them down and sit on them.
[Letter, Second Lieutenant Wilfred Emmott Addison, 18th Battn,
at sea near Gallipoli, 18 August 1915,
to his mother, Mrs H Addison,
Sydney: AWM DRL, 9,
12/11/45]
Lieutenant Wilfred Emmott Addison, killed in action at Hill 60, Suvla Bay, Gallipoli, 22 August 1915. Reproduced with the permission of YDHS.
The attack on Hill 60 has been described as hastily conceived, poorly arranged, and undertaken with raw troops not up to dealing with what confronted them. The newly arrived 18th suffered severely. Half of them were made casualties, and half of these casualties, Wilfred Addison among them, were killed. Their sacrifice achieved little, if anything, in military terms. Charles Bean's description of Wilfred's death says nothing about the overall failure of the attack, his only criticism of its conduct being the lack of support which led to an Australian position having to be abandoned. His chief concern was to ensure that the family saw Wilfred's death as one that would reflect well on his memory:
He went into action next morning at daylight and was killed, his company "D" being chopped to bits and half his battalion lost. Yesterday, I went to the position and saw McDonald, A J, an old client of mine and Wilfred's Major. I also went over the ground fought over. There is a gully opening on to level ground for about 200 yards to the foot hills of a big mountain, the troops had to run across the open to seize the Turk's trenches and occupy them; this was done but owing to lack of support had to give up one line and only hold the first one which we do now and are snugly entrenched in. McDonald told me that on the order to advance WA led his Platoon 13 across the open and then jumped out of the first trench with his revolver drawn called out "Come on boys the next one" and backed up by his company who so far had lost only 3, ran across the next intervening space, but he had only gone a few yards when machine gunfire got him, the trench was taken, but, as I say, had to be given up and a retreat made to the first line. Both McDonald and the Colonel A E Chapman (of WR Beaver's Office) told me that Wilfred acted with the greatest bravery and if he had lived would have been mentioned in despatches - he certainly brought credit to us and must always be remembered as a highly courageous man. Tell Glent and Ettie [Wilfred's parents] how sorry I lam and I shall write them when I get more particulars. Percy is well his battalion having been in reserve.
['Hill 60', Chris Coulthard-Clark, Where Australians Fought, Sydney, 1998, p.110]
In 1916 Wilfred's mother, Harriet Addison, who founded the 18th Battalion's Comfort Fund in Sydney, tried to get for her son a posthumous promotion to the rank of Captain. She was motivated in this by the family's strong military tradition dating back to a Captain Addison who had fought in 1775 against the American insurgents at the Battle of Bunker Hill. Brigadier General William Holmes, who had commanded the 18th at Hill 60, wrote to her from France to say that this request was impossible to grant. Whatever he knew about the reality of the sad attack on Hill 60, Holmes placed Wilfred's death firmly in the context of bravery and sacrifice:
Your son gave good service and no one regretted his death more than I did except of course his own family. He died nobly and in a good cause bravely doing his duty and after all in which better way can one go. I sometimes wonder whether a splendid death like his is not more a matter for congratulation than of condolence, but of course it is hard for the loved ones left behind to see it in this light.
[Brigadier General William Holmes, General Officer Commanding, 5th Brigade, AIF,
France, 9 October 1916, to Mrs H Addison, Sydney: AWM 1DRL 9, 12/11/45]
Another account of Wilfred's death came from a Sergeant Roberts, clearly a member of the 18th Battalion, who survived Hill 60. Roberts sent a much more mixed message to the family. He is the only correspondent to indicate that the Hill 60 situation was a disaster and that those directing the war were, perhaps, throwing away the lives of ordinary soldiers. But Robert's, in the knowledge perhaps that he is addressing Wilfred's mother, nevertheless reinforces the sentiment, conveyed by others, that Wilfred Addison did not die in vain:
And as died another of Australia's heroes, because someone blundered, we, the pawns in this great game of war, must pay the price… What ever memories you cherish of your son add this one to them... He died nobly in action leading his men to victory for we took the trenches, though he was not there in life to see us, already passed from this world into the next.
[Letter, Sergeant Roberts, Estaples, France, undated to Mrs H Addison, Sydney: AWM 1DRL, 9, 12/I 1/45]