Service Details
- Branch of Service
- Army
- Conflict
- World War I (1914-1918)
- Date of Enlistment
- 28/08/1914
- Date of Discharge
- 12/08/1919
- Place of Enlistment
- Randwick NSW
Personal Details
- Gender
- Male
- Place of Birth
- Queanbeyan NSW
- Address (at enlistment)
- Waratah NSW (previously Tuggeranong ACT)
- School(s) Attended
- Tuggranong (Tuggeranong) School
- Occupation
- Signalman
- Next of Kin
- Eliza Brownsmith (mother), Station Road, Waratah NSW
Unit and Rank Details
- Service Number
- 2398
- Final Rank
- Sergeant
- Final Unit
- 2 Battalion AIF
Commemoration
Roll of Honor Queanbeyan Public School, Isabella Street, Queanbeyan NSW
Queanbeyan RSL Wall of Remembrance, Crawford St, Queanbeyan NSW (as L. Brown-Smith)
Notes
Brownsmith's father worked on the railways and they lived in the Tuggeranong area from about 1892 to 1905 when the family moved to the Newcastle district. Brownsmith landed on Gallipoli with the 2nd Battalion on 25 April. He was evacuated sick in August 1915 and returned to Australia on escort duty in December 1915. He rejoined his unit in November 1916 at Flers in France but was wounded twice in gas attacks in Belgium in October and November 1917. He returned to Australia in June 1919 and died in Parramatta in 1940. His son, Edward Joseph Brownsmith, died as a POW on the Burma-Thai railway in 1943.
Description - height 5 feet 10 inches, weight 147 pounds, chest 32-35 inches, dark complexion, blue eyes, light brown hair, Methodist.
Sources
John Cope, 'If only these stones could speak: a history of Queanbeyan Public School 1864-2001', 2001
Rex Cross, 'Bygone Queanbeyan', 1980
Tuggeranong School Punishment Book (Tuggeranong School House, Chisholm)
Queanbeyan Age - 11 July 1905, 18 April 1908
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)
AWM Roll of Honour Database