Branch of Service

Army

Conflict

World War I (1914-1918)

Date of Enlistment

14/08/1914

Date of Discharge

28/06/1919

Place of Enlistment

Royal Military College, Duntroon ACT

Gender

Male

Date of Birth

11/03/1892

Place of Birth

Warwick, Queensland

Address (at enlistment)

Royal Military College, Duntroon ACT

School(s) Attended

Toowoomba Grammar School

Occupation

Soldier

Next of Kin

Albert Clowes (father), Warwick, Queensland

Final Rank

Major

Final Unit

2 Division Artillery AIF

Military Cross (Commonwealth of Australia Gazette: 29 June 1917, page 1390, position 4), Distinguished Service Order (Commonwealth of Australia Gazette: 23 May 1919, Page 888, position 17), Serbian Order of the White Eagle, Third Class (Commonwealth of Australia Gazette: 25 July 1917, page 1542, position 35), Mention in Despatches (Commonwealth of Australia Gazette: 27 January 1916, page 156, position 20)

Clowes and his brother Norman entered the Royal Military College on 22 June 1911 in the first intake of cadets and was a member of the Honour Guard at the naming ceremony in Canberra on 12 March 1913. His class was graduated early on 14 August 1914 and Clowes was appointed as a lieutenant with the 2nd Battery of the 1st Field Artillery Brigade. A wound to the head received on 19 May 1915 at Gallipoli, while directing naval gun fire as a forward observer, left him partially deaf. In 1916 he was promoted to the rank of Captain with the 2nd Division Artillery in France. He was awarded the Military Cross for his actions at Bois Grenier in France in 1916 as a Divisional trench mortar officer and the Distinguished Service Order at Villers-Bretonneux in August 1918 for his work in positioning nine brigades of artillery. After the war he was an instructor at Duntroon from 1921 to 1925 and he married Eva Magennis at Jeir, near Canberra, on 17 December 1925.

He served as a Brigadier in World War 2 in the Royal Australian Artillery in North Africa and Greece and was promoted to Major General in January 1942 and given command of the 1st Division. He commanded Milne Force at Milne Bay in Papua from July 1942, inflicting the first land defeat on the Japanese during the war, for which he was made a Commander of the British Empire. He retired in 1949 and died at the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital in Melbourne on 19 May 1968.

AWM First World War Unit Embarkation Rolls
AWM Honours & Awards
AWM Collection Records : G00940A, P06234.001
Australian Dictionary of Biography online
http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/adbonline.htm
Colonel J.E. Lee, 'Duntroon: The Royal Military College of Australia 1911-1946', 1952
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)