Service Details
- Branch of Service
- Army
- Conflict
- World War I (1914-1918)
- Date of Enlistment
- 28/12/1915
- Date of Discharge
- 04/09/1919
- Place of Enlistment
- Goulburn NSW
Personal Details
- Gender
- Male
- Date of Birth
- 08/12/1884
- Place of Birth
- Yarralumla ACT
- Address (at enlistment)
- Reedy Creek ACT
- School(s) Attended
- Yarralumla School (Bulga Creek)
- Occupation
- Teacher
- Next of Kin
- Samuel Gifford (father), Reedy Creek (via Queanbeyan) ACT
Unit and Rank Details
- Service Number
- 5366
- Final Rank
- ER Sergeant
- Final Unit
- Education Service
Commemoration
Queanbeyan RSL Wall of Remembrance, Crawford St, Queanbeyan NSW
Queanbeyan Methodist Church Roll of Honour
Notes
Alex Gifford was born at Yarralumla in 1884 (although some sources say the Parish of Goorooyaroo) and later lived at Reedy Creek on the Sutton Road (within the ACT) where his Gifford grandparents farmed. His father worked for the Campbells of Yarralumla and his mother was a McIntosh from Majura. He became a school teacher and taught at Tharwa from 1909 to 1911 where his pupils included Jack White, Jack Cregan and Jim Merritt. Gifford served with the 53rd Battalion in France from July 1916 (just after Fromelles), was hospitalised with trench feet in November 1916 and in March 1917 he received a gunshot wound to the right shoulder near Beaumetz. He returned to his unit to take part in the Second Battle of Bullecourt in May 1917 and in battles at Polygon Wood and Third Ypres during September 1917. He was with the 14th Field Company Engineers when he was gassed at Villers-Bretonneux in 1918 near where his brother in law, Walter Moore, was killed in action a few months later. After the armistice was promoted to Sergeant with the Education Service in the UK. He married in England and was discharged on 4 September 1919.
By the 1930s he was teaching and living in Sydney. He died at the Concord Repatriation General Hospital on 26 May 1960.
Description - height 5 feet 6 inches, weight 130 pounds, chest 31-34 inches, fair complexion, blue eyes, fair hair, Methodist, no civil convictions.
Sources
Rex Cross, 'Bygone Queanbeyan', 1980
Lyall Gillespie, 'Early Education and Schools in the Canberra Region', 1999
Matthew Higgins, 'A Century of Learning: Tharwa Primary School 1899-1999', Canberra 1999
Susan and Kevin McIntosh, 'The Highland Shepherd', 2017 (p.333)
Our Queanbeyan 'Boys', Howard & Shearsby, Yass (postcard)
Queanbeyan Age - 1 February 1916, 26 October 1917, 5 March 1918, 31 May 1960
Queanbeyan/ Canberra Advocate - 9 November 1916
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)