A Family At War

At the time World War One began, 20 year old Darcy was working on the family farm in Binginwarri, South Gippsland, with his parents. The sixth son of George and Jane Appleyard, by August, 1915, four of his brothers had already joined the army with Gordon in Turkey, Charles and Allan in the Western Front and Richard in the Middle East.   Now aged 21, and legally old enough to join the war efforts, Darcy would make the decision to follow his brothers into the theatre of war. The local paper, the Gippsland Standard proudly reported the enlistments, feeding the hope and pride of the families writing, “our boys have responded well to the call of ‘King and Country’.  In fact, we have very few of eligible age remaining in the district.” Enlisting on August 12, 1915, it would be almost 6 months later when Darcy would embark on the HMAT Warilda on February 8, 1916, disembarking in Marseilles, France, in March before joining the 9 th Reinforcement of the 23 rd Battal...

Charles Courtney Appleyard was married with three children and living in Carlton when the war began.  Born and growing up in Binginwarri, the carpenter enlisted on July 15, 12 months after the war had started and 3 months after his brother Gordon had landed on the shores of Gallipoli.  On the enlistment forms, Charles put his age as 28, however, birth records have Charles’ birth date as 1881 which would have made him 33 at the time.  The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Sarajevo in 1914 had begun a chain of events that would launch the war that, in the beginning, the general public believed would only last a few months.   With the thought of adventure and m aybe motivated by the landing at Gallipoli, 1915 saw the highest number of enlistments with 165, 912 Australian men signing up to fight for their King and country.  Four of these men were the sons of Jane and George Appleyard, joining their brother Gordon who had enlisted the year before and wa...

The son of George and Jane Appleyard, Gordon seem destined to fight for his country. Working in Queensland as a labourer at the time the war broke out, Gordon enlisted one month later on September 3 and, although he enlisted in Rockhampton, he was still included in the Shire of Alberton Honor Rolls, having grown up in Binginwarri with his six brothers and seven sisters. According to his mother Jane, “ the boy said when he was very young, if war broke out when he was a man, he would be a soldier.  He proved himself one.” Growing up with stories of his mother’s father and brother who fought for the British Army under Queen Victoria, Gordon may have been like many of his friends, enlisting with dreams of having the adventure of a lifetime amid expectations that the war would be over in weeks or months. Gordon was assigned to the 9 th  Battalion, G Company, one of the first units to be formed.  The unit left Australia on September 24 aboard ...