Branch of Service

Army

Conflict

World War I (1914-1918)

Date of Enlistment

15/12/1914

Date of Discharge

27/05/1919

Place of Enlistment

Liverpool NSW

Gender

Male

Date of Birth

03/03/1874

Place of Birth

'Springbank' via Canberra ACT

Address (at enlistment)

Moree NSW (previously Canberra and Tuggeranong)

Occupation

Journalist

Next of Kin

Katherine R. Buckpitt (wife), Moree NSW

Service Number

1656

Final Rank

Private

Final Unit

13 Battalion AIF

Buckpitt was born in Canberra at 'Springbank' in 1874 - his mother, Mary, was a member of the Rottenbury family - and also lived at Tuggeranong before the family left the Canberra district in the 1880s. He left school at 12 and was apprenticed as a compositor for seven years before becoming a journalist. Buckpitt worked as a journalist in Cooma, Bathurst, Cobar and Moree where he managed the printing of the local newspaper for five years. He then became editor of the Casino Courier for three years and went to Temora just before he enlisted on 15 December 1914 at Liverpool.

He trained as a signaller and joined the 2nd Battalion on Gallipoli on 17 June 1915 but was evacuated in July because of illness. He served with the 13th Battalion and with the 4th Divisional Traffic Control in France from January 1918 before being wounded in the abdomen and right thigh by shell fire in June 1918. He returned to Australia on 17 February 1919 and was discharged medically unfit on 27 May 1919.

In June 1919 he was sent to the Grafton Agricultural College prior to taking up a soldier settlers' block in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, however a medical check up found him unfit for heavy clearing work. Buckpitt moved to Sydney and became a poultry farmer, then a drove a dray at the Hillview soldiers settlement near Liverpool on the outskirts of Sydney before taking up a block of land there in 1920. His health and age limited his ability for manual work and he became a proof reader for John Sands (who published directories) and William Brooks & Co. and then a door-to-door salesman for the Singer Sewing Machine Company.

It took until the mid 1920s before repatriation officials conceded his deteriorating health was attributable to his war service. By the time of the Great Depression Buckpitt was unemployable and spent increasing amounts of time in hospital. He died of heart disease on 27 October 1940 at the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney and is buried in Rookwood Cemetery.

Description - height 5 feet 9 inches, weight 140 pounds, chest 33-36 inches, dark complexion, blue eyes, dark brown hair, Church of England.

Biographical Register of Canberra and Queanbeyan: from the district to the Australian Capital Territory 1820-1930. Heraldry & Genealogy Society of Canberra Inc., 2001
NSW Births, Deaths and Marriages, http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/familyHistory/
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455, C138
Sydney Morning Herald - 29 October 1940