Trooper Albert Ernest Hall of Blackwood

Bert Hall was born in Coromandel Valley in 1887. He was the only son of James and Minnie Hall, and the family lived at 'Wardlowvale' near Blackwood immediately before the war. The family were active in the Coromandel Valley Methodist Church.

Bert was working as a mason, mostly in the Strathalbyn area, when he enlisted on 30 December 1915, and he was allocated to the 15th reinforcements to the 9th Light Horse Regiment. He embarked with the rest of those reinforcements on the 'Anchises' in March 1916 and was taken on strength of the 3rd Light Horse Training Regiment in Egypt the following month.

In September 1916 he was detached to the Imperial Camel Corps. In November 1916 he was allocated to No. 1 Company of the 1st ANZAC Battalion of the Imperial Camel Corps. While Bert was with the battalion it took part in the battles of Magdhaba and Rafa, and the three battles of Gaza. Bert spent a month in hospital in November 1917 with a fever and again in May 1918 with malaria. He went to the Light Horse depot in July 1918 when the Camel Corps was reorganised, and rejoined the 9th Light Horse Regiment in September 1918. He was with the 9th during the captures of Jenin, Sasa and Damascus just prior to the Turkish surrender. He was admitted to hospital again with malaria in February 1919 before shipping home. He was discharged in Adelaide in October 1919 and gave his address as Blackwood.

After his discharge he lived a reserved life. He suffered from asthma, and in the latter years of his life found relief by sleeping on an open verandah. He worked on the family property, milking cows, separating the milk, seeing to the poultry and attending to the garden.

During the Second World War he met and married an attractive woman, Elsie Daniels, who had two daughters from a previous marriage. The marriage did not last, and Bert moved back to the family home, which still stands.

Bert Hall died in 1962 at the age of 75 at the Blackwood Private Hospital and was buried with his parents in Coromandel Valley cemetery. His name is inscribed on the Blackwood Soldiers Memorial, the Coromandel Valley War Memorial and the Coromandel Valley Methodist Church Honour Roll displayed in the Blackwood and Community RSL.

Sapper Malcolm Neale Tilbrook Steele of Blackwood

Photo: Courtesy Jenny Sharman (nee Steele)

Malcolm 'Mally' Steele was born in Mount Gambier, SA in 1895. He served in the senior cadets for two years, but was considered too short (at 5 foot 2 inches tall) for the citizen's forces. Despite his height, he was a handy amateur bantamweight boxer, and had won some fights before the war. He was a wood working machinist and was living with his mother in Norwood at the time of his enlistment at the age of 20.

He enlisted on 6 July 1915 and was allocated to the 32nd Battalion, a unit which included West Australians as well as South Australians. He arrived in Egypt with the rest of his unit in December 1915 and was allocated to the battalion machine gun section. After a spell in hospital, during which his unit prepared to ship out to France, he was transferred to the 9th Light Horse Regiment as a trooper. He served with the Regiment from May to October 1916 before a further stint in hospital then a transfer to the signals engineers as a sapper. He was allocated to the ANZAC Mounted Division Signals Squadron which used despatch riders, heliograph, telephone and semaphore to communicate between the brigades and regiments of the Division. He served with the Division between April and October 1917, but bouts of malaria prevented him from active involvement in the fighting during 1918.

After the war ended he was selected as a member of the AIF boxing team to compete in the Inter-Allied Games held in Paris in June/July 1918. He also fought bouts aboard the 'Prinz Ludwig' on his return trip to Australia in late 1919. Malcolm married in 1925, and was a member of the Norwood Sub-Branch of the RSL and a keen supporter of the Norwood Football Club all his life.

Malcolm also served in the Second World War reaching the rank of Corporal in the 4th Garrison Battalion. For some time he was in charge of the guardhouse located at the entrance of what became the Repatriation General Hospital, Daw Park, SA. He also worked as a motorcycle dispatch rider at one stage during that war.

In 1949, Malcolm, his wife Dorothy, his daughter Jenny and her husband moved to Blackwood and built a home at 8 Cypress Avenue, Blackwood (later Hawthorndene), and Malcolm lived there until his death in 1973.