Service Details
- Branch of Service
- Army
- Conflict
- World War I (1914-1918)
- Date of Enlistment
- 20/11/1915
- Date of Discharge
- 16/07/1919
- Place of Enlistment
- Sydney NSW
Personal Details
- Gender
- Male
- Place of Birth
- Launceston, Tasmania
- Address (at enlistment)
- Paddington NSW (previously Acton ACT)
- Occupation
- Clerk
- Next of Kin
- Catherine Crawford (sister), Hobart, Tasmania
Unit and Rank Details
- Service Number
- 852
- Final Rank
- ER Corporal
- Final Unit
- War Records Section AIF
Notes
Crawford worked for the Department of Home Affairs in Canberra as a clerk in 1913. A sketch plan of the Royal Military College, Duntroon (dated 1913) is credited to a 'Mr. Crawford'. He resigned because of illness but returned to Canberra in 1915 before enlisting later that year.
He served in Rabaul with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (AN&MEF) from December 1915, and after being discharged on 10 February 1917, he enlisted in the AIF on 27 February 1917. He became ill in September 1917 after arriving in Egypt and then joined the War Records Section in England in July 1918 before becoming secretary to Charles Bean. According to Bazley it was Crawford who suggested Tuggeranong Homestead as a place to write the official history of Australia's involvement in World War I. In Volume 1 of the 'Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18', Bean refers to Crawford; "whose great literary abilities have suggested many improvements in the style and matter of every chapter of this volume, and to whom its indexing has been due." According to his obituary, Crawford worked for the Sydney Morning Herald and was an accomplished music critic. He wrote three plays - 'Distant Hills', 'The Canon's Conversion' and 'Eucalypta' - before he died on 24 November 1924 in Melbourne.
Description - height 5 feet 7 inches, weight 136 pounds, chest 35 inches, fair complexion, blue/ grey eyes, brown hair, Catholic.
Sources
Arthur Bazley, 'Writing the Official History of World War I at Tuggeranong', Canberra & District Historical Society paper, 1959
D.F. Balfour, 'Life at Mrs. McIntyre's Cottage', Canberra Historical Journal, March 1985
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)
NAA (151) Works & Railways Staff Index Cards
NAA (A207) G1915/33 Rates of pay - officers and employees of Lands and Survey Branch, Federal Territory
Queanbeyan/ Canberra Advocate - 25 November 1916
Sydney Morning Herald - 5 December 1924, 1 June 1940