|
On ANZAC Day 2021 we pause to remember those who have served in armed conflict on behalf of our nation, and especially those who made the supreme sacrifice. During the Great War 1914-1918, one Camberwell resident made a decisive contribution to the Allied war effort. We take time to honour him as one eminent, amongst many. On November 11th 1918 the Armistice was signed between the Allies and Germany, ending the first global war, a war that made devastating use of new, deadly technology, the Great War. In his book Monash: The Outsider Who Won a War, historian Roland Perry writes that it was the decisive victory at Amiens by the combined British, Canadian and General Sir John Monash's Australian Imperial Force, that turned back the momentous German offensive that had threatened to overrun the Allies. Monash himself described the Second Battle of Villers-Bretonneux on 25th April 1918 after the Germans had overrun the 8th British Division as the turning point of the war.  A local man, a resident of Camberwell, was a huge contributor to the success of the AIF's campaigns on the Western Front in 1918. Major General Harold Edward Elliott, known to his men as 'Pompey' Elliott. Elliott's leadership of the 15th Brigade, AIF, transformed a near-defeat at Villers-Bretonneux into a victory, changing the course of the war and hastening its end. |
