Great Scot April 2019 Great Scot_156_April_2019_Online | Page 14

Commemoration
LAST OF OUR FALLEN SONS
Scotch College’s last casualties of the Great War
PICTURED, FROM LEFT: WILLIAM ARTHUR PETERS, JOHN SYDNEY LYON, ALEXANDER CHARLES THOMPSON, DR ALEXANDER BRUCE BENNIE, ROGER JAMES CHOLMELEY, ROBERT RAY FERGUS.
Twelve Old Scotch Collegians and staff died
of war-related causes in the period 1919-1921,
and are thus officially recognised as war dead.
Unfortunately the many others who died of
war-related causes after 1921 do not have the
same official status.
WILLIAM ARTHUR (known as Bill)
PETERS (1912) was in the 1st XI in 1912. He
enlisted in 1915, and travelled to England with
an artillery brigade. After brief service in France
he was hospitalised in England with tuberculosis
and returned to Australia in 1916. He never
recovered from his illness and died in the Austin
Hospital at Heidelberg on 20 February 1919,
aged 22.
JOHN SYDNEY LYON (1888) enlisted in
1916 and served with the 57th Battalion at the
battles of Bullecourt and Ypres in 1917. John
died of influenza in France on 23 February 1919,
aged 46.
NORMAN MACKENZIE (also known as
Norman McKenzie; known as Harry; also
known as Henry) WOOD (1900) enlisted in
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Great Scot Number 156 – April 2019
the British Army in 1915. He was discharged
in January 1917 after being severely wounded.
He died of war-related illness at the Randwick
Military Hospital in Sydney on 30 March 1919,
aged 33.
ALEXANDER CHARLES THOMPSON
(1903) enlisted in 1916 and was a corporal in
the Australian Flying Corps. He was a skilled
electrical engineer, and was Mentioned in
Despatches. He was frequently in trouble
for disorderly conduct. Alexander died of
pneumonia on the voyage back to Australia on
3 April 1919 aged 30. His widow spent many
years in a mental hospital.
DR ALEXANDER BRUCE (known as
Alick; also known as Kiddy) BENNIE (1881)
was an outstanding scholar and footballer at
Scotch in the 1870s and 1880s. He played
for the Melbourne Football Club in that period
when he was known as ‘Kiddy’ because of his
youth. By the outbreak of war, he was a medical
practitioner, and he served as a medical officer
in Egypt and France. He contracted kidney
disease and had to return to Australia, where he
died in South Melbourne at the age of 55 from
war-related illness on 21 April 1919.
ROBERT HARE (known as Bob)
HAMMOND (1909) enlisted at 22 in 1915. He
served briefly on Gallipoli but was plagued
with ill-health throughout his service. The
main concern was heart trouble, said to have
originated on Gallipoli. He was discharged as
permanently unfit in August 1916. He died, aged
25, at the Caulfield Military Hospital on Anzac
Day 1919. His death was ascribed to pulmonary
tuberculosis and emphysema.
ROGER JAMES CHOLMELEY (Staff
1909-10) was the senior Classics master and a
leader in Cadets at Scotch from 1909 to 1910.
He enlisted in the United Kingdom in 1915. He
won a Military Cross as an intelligence officer
for going out on many patrols to check enemy
positions. While serving with British forces
against the Bolsheviks in North Russia on 16
August 1919, he was washed overboard from a