Lieutenant Cecil Vernon Wickens of Blackwood

Cecil Wickens was a son of Walter Henry Wickens, and was born in Blackwood in 1889. Cecil attended Coromandel Valley and Sturt Street Public Schools and Adelaide High School, spending three years in the senior cadets. In 1906 at the age of 17, he started with the Australian Mutual Provident Society as a junior clerk. Before the war he was active in the Blackwood, Belair and Coromandel Boys’ Club, the Blackwood Football Club and the Coromandel 1st XI cricket team. He was also one of the great 'Big Three' ruckmen of the Sturt Football Club.

Cecil was one of the first to join up from the Blackwood district, enlisting on 19 August 1914, only 15 days after Great Britain declared war on Germany. He joined Ack Squadron of the 3rd Light Horse Regiment which formed at Morphettville and following his promotion to Lance Corporal on 13 October 1914, embarked for Egypt with the rest of the Regiment a week later.

The 3rd Light Horse initially deployed to Egypt and from 9 December 1914 until 9 May 1915 was engaged in training at Maadi and Heliopolis. On 12 May 1915 the Regiment, having left their horses behind in Egypt, landed at ANZAC. Within a week they were defending Pope's Hill against the massive Turkish assault of 18/19 May, and during the August offensive attacked from Quinn's Post. On 5 September 1915, Cecil was promoted to Sergeant and was simultaneously appointed as acting Regimental Sergeant Major. On 13 December 1915, the Regiment evacuated from Gallipoli and disembarked at Alexandria and returned to their previous camp at Heliopolis between Christmas and New Year's Eve, becoming part of the Western Frontier Force. In March 1916, Cecil was promoted simultaneously to Warrant Officer Classes Two then One to formalise his appointment as Regimental Sergeant Major. In May 1916, Cecil, along with many other members of the Regiment, took an opportunity to transfer to the newly formed 4th Australian Division Artillery, currently training in Egypt in preparation for deployment to France and Belgium. After a stint at the Artillery Training Depot, he embarked for the United Kingdom in early August 1916 where he joined the 21st Field Artillery Brigade.

Following completion of his training, Cecil joined the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade headquarters in France in April 1917, and was promoted in the field to Second Lieutenant on 8 October 1917. Less than a month later he was severely gassed, and had barely returned to duty in mid-December when he was transferred to a training depot in the United Kingdom where he spent the rest of the war, including a promotion to Lieutenant in August 1918. He returned to Australia in January 1919 and his appointment as an officer was terminated in April 1919.

After the war, Cecil married Vera and returned to work at the AMP Society where he took over the role of new business manager in the South Australian state office. Over the next few years, Vera gave birth to two sons (Ian and Peter) and three daughters (Peg, Patricia and Judith). In 1935, he was transferred to the Western Australian office as company accountant and the family lived in Nedlands. During the Second World War, Cecil joined the 1st Battalion, Volunteer Defence Corps between 1942 and 1944. His son Ian served in the RAAF during the war. Cecil was promoted acting Manager of the Perth office in 1945, before being promoted to manage the South Australian office in 1945, when the family lived in Tusmore. Cecil was a keen golfer and bowler, and a member of the Royal South Australian Yacht Squadron.

Cecil died on 15 December 1946 aged 57 years, after a short illness, and was buried at Centennial Park. His name is inscribed on the Blackwood Memorial and the Sturt Football Club Honour Board kept in the Unley Museum.

Photograph: Courtesy of the State Records of South Australia

Private Gilbert Ernest Baker of Blackwood

Bert Baker was a son of James and Louisa Baker, and was born in Blackwood in September 1891. He attended Coromandel Valley Public School and worked as a labourer before the war. The September 1914 issue of the Blackwood Magazine mentions that Bert was one of twelve local men who had enlisted soon after war was declared.

He enlisted on 8 September 1914 at the age of 22, and was an original member of A or 'Ack' Squadron, 3rd Light Horse Regiment when it formed at Morphettville. The 3rd Light Horse Regiment consisted of a headquarters and two squadrons raised in South Australia and a third squadron raised in Tasmania. The South Australian part of the regiment embarked on the 'Port Lincoln' on 20 October and disembarked in Alexandria, Egypt on 9 December 1914. After a period in camp at Maadi then Heliopolis, the regiment was volunteered to serve on Gallipoli as dismounted infantry, and landed at ANZAC Cove on 12 May 1915.

After digging in along Shrapnel Valley, the regiment was committed to defend Pope's Hill during the Turkish counterattack of 18/19 May 1915. It rotated on and off Pope's Hill until the end of July when it received a large number of reinforcements. During the period from their arrival until the end of July, the regiment had lost 29 killed and many wounded. From his first day on Gallipoli, Bert did valuable work as a sniper.

In early August, the regiment was redeployed to new positions to support the offensive which included the charge at the Nek on 7 August 1915, during which over 300 lighthorsemen from the 8th and 10th Light Horse Regiments were slaughtered. Between 9 and 22 August 1915, Ack Squadron of the 3rd Light Horse Regiment defended Quinn's Post. Throughout that period, Bert Baker did consistently good work in sniping and bomb (grenade) throwing, but on 22 August a new kind of bomb blew up in his hand as he was experimenting with it, and it blew his right hand off. He was evacuated to Mudros, on the island of Lemnos, then on to England, arriving in hospital in London on 9 September 1915, a year and a day after he enlisted. On 7 December 1915, the commanding officer of the 3rd Light Horse Regiment recommended Bert for the award of the French Medaille Militaire for his consistently good work as both a sniper and bomb thrower at Quinn's Post, but the recommendation did not result in an award. After treatment in London, Bert embarked for Australia in May 1916, and was discharged in Adelaide on 24 August 1916.

After the war Bert married Elizabeth and had a family. His grandson Jon remembers being picked up by his braces by Bert, using the prosthetic hook he wore in place of his right hand. He also remembers marvelling at how Bert rolled a cigarette one-handed.

Bert Baker died on 11 October 1957 at the age of 65 and was buried in Derrick Gardens, Centennial Park. His name is inscribed on the Blackwood Memorial.

Photograph: Courtesy of Jon Chittleborough

Trooper Oswald Vincent Pearson of Blackwood

Oswald Pearson was the only son of George and Marion Ann Pearson (nee Gravestock) and was born in Riverton in 1892. After attending school at Rose Park, he joined the firm of Elder, Smith and Co. working for four years at the Adelaide head office in Currie Street before moving to the country. He trained as a wool-classer at the School of Mines and Industries whilst working at head office. He worked in various locations, including Broken Hill, before taking over the management of the Snowtown office in 1914. In that same year, his mother re-married, his father having died some years before. His mother and two sisters lived in Blackwood with Oswald's step-father, James Dawson McLean. After war was declared, Oswald was very active in raising patriotic funds to support the war effort, auctioning goods donated for that purpose on Australia Day 1915.

Oswald had tried to enlist in Broken Hill in 1914, but after moving to Snowtown he successfully passed the medical examination in October 1915 and was allocated to the 14th reinforcements to the 3rd Light Horse Regiment. he embarked at Adelaide on 10 February 1916 on the 'Warilda', but on the voyage from Adelaide to Fremantle he contracted meningitis. He disembarked at Fremantle on 15 February 1916, and was admitted to No.8 Base Hospital at Fremantle, but died four days later.

He was buried in Fremantle cemetery, and his name is inscribed on the Blackwood Memorial, the Roll of Honour at the Australian War Memorial and the Elder Smith honour board at their head office in Currie Street, Adelaide. His name is also inscribed on a plaque in the South Australian Garden of Remembrance, Centennial Park.

Signaller Alan Stuart Bigg of Blackwood

Alan Bigg was born at Nairne, SA on 9 March 1895, the son of Richard and Harriet Louisa (nee Atkinson) who ran a general store in the town. Alan and his brothers attended Nairne Public School until 1905 when the family moved to a farm near Echunga, and they were schooled at the Hahndorf Academy. Alan served in the senior cadets and citizen forces and was apprenticed as an electrical engineer to Newton McLaren in Leigh Street, Adelaide from 1910 until he enlisted. While he was at Newton McLaren he lived in a boarding house in Norwood.

With his father's permission, on 16 June 1915 he enlisted under regimental number 1419 in the 11th reinforcements of the 3rd Light Horse Regiment. He arrived in Egypt in late November 1915, and received training as a signaller using semaphore, heliograph and telephone before joining A Squadron, 3rd Light Horse Regiment. He was kept very busy manning observation posts along the front with the Turks around Girga between February and April 1916. He returned to Zeitoun for more signals instruction in May 1916, then rejoined the regiment in mid June 1916 when they were operating near Romani.

After going on several fighting patrols in the area, he was with A Squadron during the Turkish attack on Mount Meredith in the early stages of the Battle of Romani on 4 August 1916. He was shot through the right foot during the fighting withdrawal of 1st Light Horse Brigade. The regimental doctor couldn't treat him due to the battle conditions, so he propped his foot on his horse's feedbag and rode back to the 2nd Light Horse Field Ambulance where they dressed his foot and evacuated him back to Cairo where two days later his foot was operated on. After examination, a medical board determined that he would be unfit for further service because of his wound. He left Egypt to return to Australia, and after a short stopover in Melbourne, returned to Adelaide on 2 October 1916. He was treated at 7th Australian General Hospital at Keswick Barracks for six months after his discharge in March 1917.

Before the war ended Alan, his brother Lloyd and their parents moved from Echunga to Adey Rd, Blackwood to finish building the house that Alan and Lloyd's brother Lyn had been building before he enlisted. Lyn died of wounds during the War. Alan worked for another engineering firm in 1918, then on ships of the Adelaide Steamship Company until 1922. He married Dorothea Alice Hewett on 20 October 1923 at the Blackwood Methodist Church, and they had two children, Margaret and Robert. He worked as a carpenter on the '1000 homes' project in Colonel Light Gardens in the 1920's, then turned to poultry farming in Ascot Park during the Depression. His wife passed away in 1975, and he remained at Ascot Park until shortly before he passed away in 1984 at the age of 89 and was cremated at Centennial Park. His name is inscribed on the Echunga War Memorial.

Private Gilbert Baker

Yesterday I did the research on Gilbert Ernest Baker, whose name is on the Blackwood Soldiers Memorial. He joined up soon after war was declared, served with the 3rd Light Horse on Gallipoli, and lost his hand during a bomb fight at Quinn's Post on 22 August 1915.

That's 38 names researched out of 237... Only 199 to go, but I keep finding new names at a rate of one a week...

In a strange coincidence, his grandson rang me today and left a message saying he had read about the project and that he had some memorabilia and photographs.