Great Scot December 2017 GreatScot_152_Dec_Online | Page 11

ABOVE: S ROSENTHAL, W N BEAVER, D L MAUGHAN, R B GRAHAM, T M HALL
in 1917 was killed in action. Only in 1925 was it
determined that a grave bearing his name did not
belong to him and that he has no known grave.
Another 21st Battalion lieutenant, HAROLD
WILLIAM HARPER (1903), was an Old Boy
killed on that fateful 4 October. He had been
a member of the Scotch 1st XI when it won
the cricket premiership in 1902. Operations on
varicose veins and hammer toes prevented him
from enlisting before 1916. By July 1917 he had
become a lieutenant and had reached the 21st
Battalion on the Western Front. On 4 October
Harold led his men in the capture of an enemy
position at Broodseinde Ridge, near Ypres. He
was in fine spirits and sheltering in a German
dugout when a shell went through its entrance,
killing him and his corporal instantly.
DAVID GLEN MACKAY (1905) had also
played 1st XI cricket for Scotch, in 1905. After
enlisting at Yarrawonga in January 1915 he
served as a sergeant with the 13th Light Horse
Regiment on Gallipoli. After serving with mounted
units in France in 1916, he was selected for officer
training and was sent as a lieutenant to the 39th
Battalion in June 1917. At Broodseinde Ridge
on 4 October a shell dealt him various wounds,
including a fractured jaw. This 29 year old died at
a casualty clearing station the following day.
ERNEST ROBERT FINDLAY (1903) also
died that day. He had travelled to Egypt with a
group of artillerymen under the command of
fellow Old Scotch Collegian Bill Knox (1904 – see
Great Scot, April 2017). Ernest served on Gallipoli
until he contracted dysentery and was evacuated
to England. In March 1916 Ernest joined the
British Army, which gave him a commission in
the Royal Field Artillery. By August 1917 he was
on the Western Front, where he did brave and
effective work as a forward observation officer.
On one occasion he was the only man unhurt
when a shell landed among a party of six with
whom he was moving positions. His luck was to
run out some seven weeks later, when he was
wounded on 4 October, and died the following
day. He was just 28 years old.
TALBOT PRESTON ROBERTSON (1915)
was still a Scotch boy while Ernest was on
Gallipoli. He enlisted at age 18 in October 1916.
Small and youthful, Talbot was allotted as a driver
to artillery reinforcements. He was punished for
various minor misdemeanours before reaching
France in August 1917. He had been at the
front barely a month when on 29 September a
shell fractured his thigh. He was operated on
at a casualty clearing station before going to a
hospital at Etaples, where he died on 7 October.
His few possessions, sent home after his death,
included a ‘College Medallion and Ribbon’.
Talbot’s gravestone carries the epitaph ‘How
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