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Henry Barton BORWICK MC

BORWICK

Date of birth4 May 1895
PlaceCollingwood, Victoria, Australia
ParentsHenry Barton and Hannah Mary (nee Watson) Borwick
Date of death30 June 1974
PlacePrahran, Victoria, Australia
Age79
Scotch Year(s)1910 to 1914

Service record and post-war life

At Scotch, Henry had been a member of Cadets and the Captain of the Rifle Shooting team, as well as a First team representative in football and cricket. Before the war he was in the artillery of the Citizen Military Forces. After enlisting in the AIF in May 1915, Henry reached Suez in mid-July as a 2nd Lieutenant with the reinforcements for the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade. His service records for late 1915 are unclear but he was certainly on Gallipoli in September 1915, and possibly in August and October. He was promoted to full Lieutenant in December 1915.

In March 1916 he was transferred to the artillery of the newly formed 5th Division in Egypt and the following month joined the division’s 15th Field Artillery Brigade. In June 1916 it arrived in France. In August and September 1916 Henry was at an artillery school in London, and after returning to France was hospitalised for three weeks with scabies. In April 1917 he was transferred to the 53rd Battery of the 14th Field Artillery Brigade. That same month Henry was recommended for a Military Cross for ‘conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty’ at Lagnicourt on 15 April. The enemy had launched a counterattack, and Henry was attached as a liaison officer to a nearby infantry battalion.

His citation said ‘He established communication back to Brigade Headquarters, and was largely responsible for clearing up a difficult situation’, presumably by calling down artillery fire which led to the repulse of the enemy (see recommendation below). The award came through in June 1917 but in the meantime, at Morchies on 21 May, he received a gunshot wound to the right foot, which caused a compound fracture of his tibia. It was initially diagnosed as ‘slight’, but it required him to be evacuated to England.

His captaincy came through in September, but in October he sailed for Australia. He was at the time still on crutches. He was walking with the aid of a stick by the time he was released from the army in March 1918, at the age of 22. 

After the war Henry was an assistant engineer for the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission of Victoria (1921-22). In 1923 he became an engineer at the Vacuum Oil Co. Pty. Ltd. (later Mobil), of which he was also a director until retiring in 1960. Other company directorships included those of Kingsway Group Ltd., and Tennant Creek Metals N.L., and he was managing director of Alliance Oil Development N.L. and Alliance Oil Management Pty. Ltd. He served in the air force in World War II. Henry was a member of Melbourne University’s Faculty of Engineering, and a member of Legacy. Although he had two daughters he was a member of the Brighton Grammar School council, and he is the eponym of Borwick House in its Junior School. Henry died at Prahran in 1974. He had married Elizabeth Muriel Maddock (d. 1968) in 1922. His brother Thomas Faulkner Borwick also served in World War I and appears on this website.

Sources:

  1. Mishura Scotch Database
  2. Quarterly Army List for the Quarter Ending 31st December, 1919 Volume 1
  3. Scotch Collegian 1918 and 1919
  4. Tony Dingle and Carolyn Rasmussen, 'Borrie, Edwin Fullarton (1894–1968)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/borrie-edwin-fullarton-9545/text16811, published first in hardcopy 1993, accessed online 22 February 2016.
  5. ( https://books.google.com.au/books?id=8WC-BAAAQBAJ&pg=PA169&lpg=PA169&dq=EF+borrie+mc&source=bl&ots=OEvK67oUaM&sig=I44C-Hxim_Ck1MUe04tMpvzoxNo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjC6pr23IjLAhUEOJQKHUbyArEQ6AEIMTAE#v=onepage&q=EF%20borrie%20mc&f=false. )

Page last updated: 11 November 2015