ABOVE: E F R BALDERSON, H COX, S B MCLAREN, R C EDMUNDS, G F PAUL
enlisted and was immediately commissioned as an officer in the 7th Battalion. He was at the Gallipoli Landing, but within a few days was shot in the ankle and evacuated. He returned to Gallipoli in October and was there at the evacuation. He was promoted to Captain early in 1916 and joined the 59th Battalion.
Accounts of his death vary, but it appears that he was initially wounded while well forward of the Australian lines, and that he refused help so as to protect others. All spoke highly of his self-effacing character. Like Gray, Davies and Lake, Aubrey Liddelow’ s body was never found: all are commemorated at the famous VC Corner Cemetery and Memorial.
Two Old Boys killed on 20 July shared the surname Cox. They were unrelated. Private Graham‘ Ned’ Cox( 1912) was a young man of only 21 at his death, and his story was told in the April 2016 Great Scot. The other Cox, Harold( 1891) had served in the Boer War and, as a 40-year-old with greying hair, on Gallipoli. While serving as a Lieutenant with the 31st Battalion at
Fleurbaix, a shell struck him in the shoulder and he died instantly.
Two days later, Sergeant Herbert Martyn( known as Martyn) Davies( 1908) died of head wounds received in France on 15 July 1916. A Gallipoli light horse veteran, at his death Martyn was in the 57th Battalion of the 15th Brigade, and the latter’ s commander, Brigadier Pompey Elliott, praised him for his courage in carrying wounded. Not unusually, there are uncertainties about Martyn’ s last days of service. Ernest James Forsyth( 1908) was in the same battalion when he was struck and killed by a shell casing on 23 July, in his first battle.
Seventeen Old Scotch Collegians were killed at Pozieres in July and August 1916, and were discussed in the September issue of Great Scot.
Geoffrey Ochiltree Robertson( 1913), a former Prefect and member of the 1st VIII crew, joined the Light Horse at 19 and was a Lieutenant by the time he was 20. At that age he was mortally wounded in the abdomen fighting Turks near Suez, reportedly while doing‘ splendid work’. He died four days later, on 13 August.
That day, another Old Boy died at Abbeville in France. At 39, Lieutenant Samuel Bruce( known as Bruce) McLaren( 1893) was nearly twice Geoffrey Robertson’ s age. On enlistment Bruce was Professor of Mathematics at University College, Reading, in England. He was one of the most brilliant students ever to leave Scotch. At Abbeville he was serving with a signals company of the British Army, when he recognised on 26 July that an ammunition dump was in danger of exploding amid enemy fire. Though struck in the head by a bullet he kept working, at first with volunteers and then on his own until the threatened bombs were cleared away. Though wounded again he tried, when being carried back by stretcher, to get off and walk so as not to be a burden. He died of his wounds on 13 August, a great loss to mathematics, science and humanity. Sergeant David Birrell Herd( 1909) of the
2nd Light Horse Regiment died in mysterious
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