CAMERON, Claudius McDonald

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

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)

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