Branch of Service

Army

Conflict

World War I (1914-1918)

Date of Enlistment

30/12/1915

Date of Discharge

24/08/1919

Place of Enlistment

Narrabri NSW

Gender

Male

Place of Birth

Yarralumla ACT

Address (at enlistment)

Moree NSW (previously Yarralumla ACT)

Occupation

Shearer

Next of Kin

Margaret McMahon (mother), Michelago NSW

Service Number

2059

Final Rank

Private

Final Unit

33 Battalion AIF

Billy Grady was the brother of John Grady, half brother of Michael and Tim McMahon and cousin of James and David Grady. His family lived on the Yarralumla estate (at Weston Creek) but his father died in 1888 when he was hit by the Cooma mail train at Woden. His mother remarried but Grady left home at the age of 12 because of differences with his step-father.

He arrived in France in November 1916 with the 33rd Battalion and was wounded at Messines in June 1917 and by poison gas at Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918. He wrote after Messines that "war is awful, hideous and indescribable" and "I got hit on the fingers by a piece of shell when we came out of the trenches. I was just going to have a shave when a shell landed right in the midst of us killing two and wounding six. I was the luckiest, it broke the handle of my razor and knocked me over. It is very funny the narrow escapes one has." Grady appears to have moved around frequently, writing to authorities from Penrith, Gulgong, Canberra and Sydney. He died in 1945 in Randwick in Sydney.

Description - height 5 feet 9½ inches, weight 171 pounds, chest 34-36½ inches, dark complexion, brown eyes, dark hair, Catholic.

Biographical Register of Canberra and Queanbeyan: from the district to the Australian Capital Territory 1820-1930. Heraldry & Genealogy Society of Canberra Inc., 2001
Valerie Bofinger, 'Ryan: from Moycarkey, Tipperary to Mulligans Flat NSW', 1999 (p.104)
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)
Queanbeyan Age - 13 July 1917, 14 September 1917, 28 May 1918, 15 July 1919