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Hugh William Fancourt MITCHELL MC

MITCHELL

Date of birth15 January 1888
PlaceKyneton, Victoria, Australia
ParentsHenry St. John and Lena (nee Nankivell) Mitchell
Date of death7 January 1957
PlaceBairnsdale, Victoria, Australia
Age68
Scotch Year(s)1900 to 1906

Service record and post-war life

Hugh Mitchell was a notable sportsman at Scotch, as a member of the 1906 athletics team and as cox of the crew from 1901 to 1904. He was a medical practitioner in Brookton, Western Australia on enlistment in the AIF on 27 July 1915. He embarked from Perth as a Captain on 11 August 1915. His service record is a little cryptic on his Gallipoli service, but he reached Anzac in either mid-November or the first week of December. There he was temporarily attached to the 5th Field Ambulance until on 13 December he was taken on strength of the 13th Light Horse Regiment as Medical officer. He was back in Alexandria on 8 January 1916. Hugh fell ill in March 1916 , and was hospitalised with what was variously described as influenza, trunculosis, pyrexia of unknown origin and cellulitis of the neck. Whichever it was, he survived to be transferred in April 1916 to the newly-formed 51st Battalion as Regimental Medical Officer. He reached Marseille, France in June.

On 7 March 1917 Hugh was transferred to the 13th Field Ambulance. In June 1917 Hugh was awarded the Military Cross. The recommendation, submitted in March 1917 as he was leaving the 51st, referred back to his work the previous year, and especially at Pozieres in August and September 1916. The recommendation, reproduced below, said that since his appointment on 1 April 1916, Hugh’s ‘constant devotion to duty, cheerful manner and personal influence over the men’ had contributed significantly to keeping the battalion ‘at its fullest fighting value’.

At Mouquet Farm on 3 September Hugh had treated wounded under fire non-stop for 36 hours. In short he had done his duty with ‘conspicuous ability and merit’. In March 1917, the same month in which that recommendation was submitted, Lieutenant George Wood, formerly a teacher at Scotch and now a soldier with the 58th Battalion on the Western Front, wrote in a letter to the Collegian ‘The other day I had the pleasure of saluting a whole succession of Captains – Bob Ramsay, Stan Neale, G.S. Smith, Jack Laing, Les. Elliot, Jack Snowball and Hughie Mitchell’.

In August 1917 Hugh was promoted to Major. He was transferred to the 2nd Australian General Hospital in October 1917 and was an anaesthetist in its surgical team by early June 1918. He returned to Australia in May 1919.

Hugh practised medicine at Morwell, and in 1940 was made a member of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. That same year he was elected a life member of the Victorian Aero Club, of which he had been president. Hugh retired to Bairnsdale in 1948, and died suddenly at Bairnsdale in 1957. He had married Florence Agnes Manning (d. 1949) in 1917, and their sons Donald Fancourt Mitchell (1920-81) and Hugh Fancourt Mitchell (1928-99) attended Scotch from 1931 to 1938 and 1938 to 1945 respectively. Hugh’s two grandsons followed them at Scotch.

Photographs and Documents:

mitchellHWF

Recommendation for Hugh Mitchell’s Military Cross.

Sources:

  1. Australian War Memorial – Honours and Awards
  2. ‘College Roll: Mitchell, Hugh William Fancourt’, The Royal Australasian College of Physicians website, https://members.racp.edu.au/page/library/collegeroll/college-roll-detail&id=525
  3. Mishura Scotch Database
  4. National Archives of Australia – B2455, MITCHELL HUGH WILLIAM FAUCOURT (sic)
  5. Scotch Collegian 1917 and 1918
  6. The AIF Project - https://www.aif.adfa.edu.au/showPerson?pid=210557

Page last updated: 11 November 2015