Great Scot - The Scotch Family Magazine - Issue 149 December 2016 Great Scot - The Scotch Family magazine issue 149 | Page 12

ABOVE: TOP ROW: E M ARON, S O BENJAMIN, S G M CAMPBELL, F H CHRISTIE. BOTTOM ROW: J S MACNEIL, C P G MCLEAN, J H SNOWBALL, B C C THOMSON.

ABOVE: TOP ROW: H C FERGUSON, A R GRIST, C D B HOGG, T J HOOPER. BOTTOM ROW: A NAPPER, W M OLIVE, G O ROBERTSON, L J WOODRUFF

circumstances in Cairo on 22 August. His body
was found in the Nile River.
Lieutenant John Hearn Snowball (1904)
was killed serving with the British Army in France
on 15 September. His cousin, another Old Boy
named John Snowball (1914), was killed in 1918.
John Stewart MacNeil (1903) was a
23-year-old grazier when he enlisted in New
Zealand in 1915. Less than a year later, in
September 1916 he was killed as a Sergeant
in the Battle of Flers-Courcelette, the New
Zealanders’ first battle on the Western Front.
Sergeant Stanley George Mathieson
Campbell (1911) had been in Scotch College
premiership winning teams in football and cricket.
In September 1916, aged just 22, he was working
on improving a trench at Armentieres when he
received shell wounds to the abdomen and
arms. He died five days later. Among his last
visitors was his cousin and fellow Old Scotch
Collegian, Sergeant Albert Campbell (1911), who
had enlisted with Stanley and was in the same
company of the 29th Battalion.
At 45 years old, Private Jacob Alexander
(Alex) Linklater (1886) was more than twice
Stanley Campbell’s age when he died from
shrapnel wounds on a stretcher being carried
from the field at Ypres in October 1916. Twentyyear-old Carden Patrick Gose McLean (1909)

XI and the 1st XVIII, winning a premiership with
the latter. He was a 34-year-old actuary when
he enlisted in Sydney in 1915. He became an
artilleryman, serving at Gallipoli and the Western
Front. On 23 November 1916 Bombardier
Benjamin was drawing his section’s rations at
the supply depot in Montauban when mortally
wounded by the explosion of a German shell.
Thomas James Hooper (1912) was just
20 when he enlisted in July 1915. He served
through Pozieres in July and August, and several
of his vivid letters describing that ‘hot shop’
appeared in the Collegian. He was exhausted
by the experience, and the Collegian suggested
that the young sergeant’s ‘exposure to cold in the
trenches’ led to him falling very ill in November.
Thomas died of pleurisy on 27 November.
Arthur Napper (1909) was a bank clerk
on enlisting in 1915. He only reached his unit,
the 29th Battalion, on 29 September. Barely
two months later, on 3 December, he received
shrapnel wounds to the back and foot. The
26-year-old died five days later in hospital.
Alan Stephen Bishop (1914) was in the 1st
VIII crew in 1914. He was just 19 when he enlisted
in 1915. Nevertheless, by March 1916 he was a
Sergeant with the 60th Battalion in France. On 19
July he was wounded in the battle of Fromelles:
he was hit twice before going to ground in no
man’s land. He was close to being rescued some

10

was in his third battle when he was killed by a
sniper at Flers in France on 6 November. He has
no known grave.
Albert Frederick Henry Mishael (1908)
was also only 20 when he was killed just two days
after Carden. Albert enlisted as Albert Traynor at
the age of 18. Authorities later determined that
a pre-existing foot injury should have debarred
him from enlisting, but he managed to get to the
front at Ypres in September, only to be mortally
wounded less than two months later.
In 1912, Boyd Cunningham Campbell
Thomson (1912) was a Prefect and Editor of
The Scotch Collegian. Four years later he was a
Sergeant with the 23rd Battalion at Flers when
he was killed by an explosion. This gentle and
modest man was likened to J D Burns in his
literary gifts and his love for Scotch College,
evident in the way he ‘poured out his whole
genius’ into the pages of the Collegian.
After attending Scotch, Eus tace Mars
Ananadale Aron (1897) moved to England, and
studied at Cambridge University before enlisting in
1914. He served with the Royal Naval Division at
Gallipoli and on the Western Front, and was killed
in November 1916 in the last stages of the Battle
of the Somme.
Alan McKay (1914) was a scholarship boy
at Scotch when the war began. He enlisted in

1915 and joined the 46th Battalion in France in
July 1916. He was sent into the Battle of Pozieres,
where as a machine-gunner his ‘coolness’ and
efficiency under fire impressed his officers.
An unnamed captain had resolved to
recommend Alan for a commission, but the
young Old Boy was killed by a random shell that
landed in a support trench well behind the front.
Alan’s grave was lost, although effects bearing the
name McKay led officials to tell his father in 1924
that the 21-year-old Corporal was ‘believed to be’
the person buried under his name in Bancourt
British Cemetery in France.
Frank Henderson Christie (1893) was a
bank clerk when he enlisted in Western Australia
in May 1915. He served at Gallipoli and Pozieres
with the 11th Battalion. His mother received a
shock in February 1916 when a letter she sent to
Frank was erroneously returned marked ‘Killed’.
Eventually the war would take him, though, for on
22 November Corporal Christie succumbed to
wounds sustained 12 days earlier, which had cost
him his left leg. In the interim the 34-year-old sent
a last letter to his parents praising the work of the
hospital staff.
Stanley Octavius Benjamin (1896) had
what The Scotch Collegian called ‘a particularly
brilliant career’ at Scotch. He won numerous
academic prizes and was a member of the 1st

Great Scot Number 149 – December 2016

hours later when an explosion wounded him
again, this time in 10 places.
Despite losing an eye and sustaining a
fractured arm, Alan crawled to safety. He was
transferred to a hospital in Sheffield, England,
where he died five months later. Alan was given
an unusually fine funeral, attended by his mother
and other relatives as well as various dignitaries
and locals in a beautiful setting.
Hamilton Cleophane Ferguson (1907)
played football in the 1st XVIII at Scotch for
three years, and won a premiership with them
in 1906. He was playing football on Saturdays
near his farm at Cressy before enlisting in
September 1915. Allotted to the artillery, he was
killed instantly when a German shell burst on
the dugout in which he was sheltering on 31
December 1916.
Killed alongside the 27-year-old on that last
day of 1916 were four other men, including
another Old Boy. Charles De Burgh Hogg
(1914) was only 20 and, like Hamilton, had been a
fine athlete at school: indeed, he was a Victorian
school champion in hurdles, as well as a member
of the 1st VIII crew. He only finished school in
1914.
The sacrifice of this fine young athlete is
reminiscent of that of Archie in the film Gallipoli.
The number of fine athletes listed here also
recalls English war correspondent Ellis Ashmead-

Bartlett’s description of Australian troops at
Gallipoli as ‘a race of athletes’. That was an
exaggeration, but the above list lends it some
credibility as it applies to Scotch Collegians.
Although 1916, with its terrible fighting on the
Somme, is often considered the epitome of the
waste of war, the literature surrounding the 53 Old
Boys and staff who died in that year is remarkably
free of a sense of futility, desolation and horror.
There is much praise and pride in mates, school
and nation, but no open questioning – from
them or their people at home — about the value
of what they were doing. Neither is there any
acknowledgment of the shock that the realities
of modern warfare must have brought to many
of these young men as they strove to test their
manhood, and to do what they saw as their duty.
DR MARK JOHNSTON– HEAD OF HISTORY
More details about all other Scotch Collegians
killed in World War I can be found on the Scotch
website, under ‘WWI Commemorative website’
on the lower right of the home page.

www.scotch.vic.edu.au Great Scot

11