Service Details
- Branch of Service
- Army
- Conflict
- World War I (1914-1918)
- Date of Enlistment
- 01/06/1916
- Date of Discharge
- 09/07/1919
- Place of Enlistment
- Broadmeadows NSW
Personal Details
- Gender
- Male
- Other Name(s)
- Known as 'Claude'
- Date of Birth
- 30/05/1891
- Place of Birth
- Ginninderra ACT
- Address (at enlistment)
- Warren NSW (previously Ginninderra ACT)
- Occupation
- Hair dresser
- Next of Kin
- Argyle Cameron (brother), Wonbobbie Station, Warren NSW
Unit and Rank Details
- Service Number
- 28865
- Final Rank
- Gunner
- Final Unit
- 1 Division Artillery AIF
Notes
Claude Cameron's family were tenant farmers at the Glebe along Ginninderra Creek where he was probably born on 30 May 1891. His attestation papers for enlisting in World War 1 give his place of birth as Canberra or 'Camberra' in the county of 'Gloster'. The site of the Glebe farmhouse is behind Copland College in Goossens Place, Melba. His father, Charles Cameron, was a trustee of the Canberra Presbyterian Church (now St. Ninian's in Lyneham) where Cameron was baptised. The Camerons struggled to survive on such a small farm - one account describes how flooding rains in 1887 ruined Charles Cameron and nearly put him and his wife Margaret in early graves - however they carried on at the Glebe until around 1900 when they moved to Pound Hill in Queanbeyan. Claude's father died in 1902 and his mother in 1914.
Cameron enlisted at Broadmeadows near Newcastle on 1 June 1916 and embarked for England at the end of September 1916 with the 2nd reinforcements for the medium trench mortar batteries. He joined the 1st Divisional Ammunition Column in Belgium in June 1917 as they entered the Third Battle of Ypres and was mustered as a Driver in September 1917. He served with them until the end of the war but spent several months after the war in hospital with bronchitis. He arrived back in Australia in June 1919 and was discharged on 9 July 1919. Claude Cameron died in the Bankstown area of Sydney in 1952.
Description - height 5 feet 8½ inches, weight 144 pounds, chest 32-34½ inches, fair complexion, grey eyes, brown hair, Presbyterian.
Sources
AWM First World War Unit Embarkation Rolls
Lyndsay Gardiner, 'Witness in Stone; the history of the Presbyterian Church in north Canberra', 1958
Peter Procter, 'Biographical Register of Canberra and Queanbeyan', Canberra, Heraldry and Genealogy Society of Canberra, 2001 (p.36)
St. Stephen's Presbyterian Church, Queanbeyan (baptism records, Canberra & District Historical Society)
Monaro Pioneers Index WW1 - www.monaropioneers.com/1st_aif_participants.htm
NSW Births, Deaths & Marriages - http://www.bdm.nsw.gov.au/familyHistory/search.htm
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)