MIDDLECOAT, Roy Twynam

  1. Service Details
  2. Personal Details
  3. Unit and Rank Details
  4. Commemoration
  5. Notes
  6. Sources

Service Details

Branch of Service
Army
Conflict
World War I (1914-1918)
Date of Enlistment
23/09/1915
Date of Discharge
23/08/1919
Place of Enlistment
Holsworthy NSW

Personal Details

Gender
Male
Date of Birth
30/06/1893
Place of Birth
Goulburn NSW
Address (at enlistment)
Canberra ACT
Occupation
Draftsman
Next of Kin
Mrs. Lydia Middlecoat (mother), Mosman NSW

Unit and Rank Details

Service Number
5588
Final Rank
Private
Final Unit
58 Battalion AIF

Commemoration

Ainslie Cricket Club Honour Roll (refer Queanbeyan Age 28 January 1916)

Notes

Roy Middlecoat was originally from Goulburn where he was born in 1893. His father was a draftsman with the New South Wales Department of Lands, a profession that Middlecoat also followed. The family later moved to Mosman in Sydney where, in 1908, Roy joined the Kangaroo Patrol, the first Scout patrol formed in Australia. Middlecoat began working as a draftsman for the Department of Home Affairs in Canberra in 1913 and, like most of his colleagues, he lived in a tent at the Bachelor Quarters in Acton paying £6 per annum for the privilege. He played cricket for Canberra and Ainslie and was involved with the local amateur performance group, the Canberra Pierrots. 

Middlecoat enlisted at Holsworthy on 23 September 1915 as a 22 year old. He embarked for Egypt four months later with the 14th reinforcements for the 1st Field Company Engineers but transferred to the 15th Field Company Engineers (part of the 5th Division) in March 1916. In June 1916 the 5th Division was sent to France and a few weeks later entered the front line near Fromelles, although it is unclear whether or not Middlecoat was involved in the subsequent battle there in July 1916. He was attached to the 8th Field Company Engineers in August 1916 but the diary of a Mosman soldier mentions Middlecoat serving with the 15th Field Ambulance near Estaires in northern France. The diarist, Wilfred Allsop, wrote how he “went into Sailly with Roy Middlecoat and visited the picture show. Later in the night we were called upon to assist in the operating theatre, working in shifts. A heavy bombardment was going on till after midnight.”

The 5th Division spent the winter of 1916 in the trenches near Flers on the Somme and in May 1917 fought at the Second Battle of Bullecourt. In July 1917 Middlecoat rejoined the 15th Field Company Engineers, which served in the Passchendaele campaign during autumn, but in December that year he transferred to the 58th Battalion (part of the 15th Brigade of the 5th Division), as an infantryman and he remained with them for the rest of the war. The 58th Battalion fought at Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918 and in the attack on Péronne and the Hindenburg Line during September 1918. While on leave in Britain he met Isabel Macalister from Airdrie in Scotland and they became engaged. He returned to Australia without her in May 1919 and was discharged on 23 August 1919 but the following year he paid £20 to upgrade the passage for his fiancée from Scotland. They married in March 1921 at St. Philip’s Church in Eastwood in Sydney. Middlecoat died in Bass Hill in Sydney on 20 May 1974. 

Description - height 5 feet 6 inches, weight 126 pounds, fresh complexion, grey eyes, brown hair, Church of England, scars above right knee and on left thigh.

Sources

Rex Cross, 'Bygone Queanbeyan', 1980
National Library of Australia : Country Women's Association of NSW (Canberra Branch) History, 1959 (manuscript call no. NLA MS 734)
National Archives (A202) 1913/4213 Statement of the Duties of each Officer of the Accounts Branch in the Federal Territory
Diary of W.J.A. Allsop (Mitchell Library) - http://acms.sl.nsw.gov.au/_transcript/2011/D04582/a3146.html
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)
NAA RecordSearch - Series A202 1914/4381 Full Names of Officers and Employees Federal Territory
Stories from the ACT Memorial, 'Ainslie Challenges the Kultur Club', ACT Heritage Library www.library.act.gov.au/find/history/stories_from_the_act_memorial
Our Queanbeyan 'Boys' No.4, Howard & Shearsby, Yass (postcard)
Queanbeyan Age - 9 December 1913, 6 February 1914, 1 September 1914, 25 January 1916, 2 June 1916, 9 October 1916
Goulburn Evening Penny Post - 5 January 1886
Sydney Morning Herald - 21 May 1974

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Image from Our Queanbeyan 'Boys' No.4 postcard, Howard & Shearsby 191?, provided courtesy of Patricia Hardy.

Image from Our Queanbeyan 'Boys' No.4 postcard, Howard & Shearsby 191?, provided courtesy of Patricia Hardy.

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