Branch of Service

Army

Conflict

World War I (1914-1918)

Date of Enlistment

28/12/1915

Date of Discharge

04/09/1919

Place of Enlistment

Goulburn NSW

Gender

Male

Date of Birth

08/12/1884

Place of Birth

Yarralumla ACT

Address (at enlistment)

Reedy Creek ACT

School(s) Attended

Yarralumla School (Bulga Creek)

Occupation

Teacher

Next of Kin

Samuel Gifford (father), Reedy Creek (via Queanbeyan) ACT

Service Number

5366

Final Rank

ER Sergeant

Final Unit

Education Service

Queanbeyan RSL Wall of Remembrance, Crawford St, Queanbeyan NSW
Queanbeyan Methodist Church Roll of Honour

Alex Gifford was born at Yarralumla in 1884 (although some sources say the Parish of Goorooyaroo) and later lived at Reedy Creek on the Sutton Road (within the ACT) where his Gifford grandparents farmed. His father worked for the Campbells of Yarralumla and his mother was a McIntosh from Majura. He became a school teacher and taught at Tharwa from 1909 to 1911 where his pupils included Jack White, Jack Cregan and Jim Merritt. Gifford served with the 53rd Battalion in France from July 1916 (just after Fromelles), was hospitalised with trench feet in November 1916 and in March 1917 he received a gunshot wound to the right shoulder near Beaumetz. He returned to his unit to take part in the Second Battle of Bullecourt in May 1917 and in battles at Polygon Wood and Third Ypres during September 1917. He was with the 14th Field Company Engineers when he was gassed at Villers-Bretonneux in 1918 near where his brother in law, Walter Moore, was killed in action a few months later. After the armistice was promoted to Sergeant with the Education Service in the UK. He married in England and was discharged on 4 September 1919.

By the 1930s he was teaching and living in Sydney. He died at the Concord Repatriation General Hospital on 26 May 1960.

Description - height 5 feet 6 inches, weight 130 pounds, chest 31-34 inches, fair complexion, blue eyes, fair hair, Methodist, no civil convictions.

Rex Cross, 'Bygone Queanbeyan', 1980
Lyall Gillespie, 'Early Education and Schools in the Canberra Region', 1999
Matthew Higgins, 'A Century of Learning: Tharwa Primary School 1899-1999', Canberra 1999
Susan and Kevin McIntosh, 'The Highland Shepherd', 2017 (p.333)
Our Queanbeyan 'Boys', Howard & Shearsby, Yass (postcard)
Queanbeyan Age - 1 February 1916, 26 October 1917, 5 March 1918, 31 May 1960
Queanbeyan/ Canberra Advocate - 9 November 1916
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)