Honor Auchinleck, Corryong Courier

Any death among service personnel in conflict is a dreadful tragedy for their families and communities. Timing and circumstances ensure some wartime tragedies are more defining than others and so it was with Malcolm Chisholm.

He was the first Australian to die and the first of some 60,000 Australians who lost their lives on the First World War battlefields.

His death has resonated through more than a century and well beyond the Upper Murray. His story captured the imagination of commemorative portrait painter, George Petrou OAM, who painted such a good likeness as might have haunted all who remembered Malcolm.

Until Malcolm was killed, many Australians thought the war seemed a long way away and many thought that it would be over by Christmas 1914.

Tom Mitchell, Malcolm’s first cousin, remarked that here in the Upper Murray Malcolm’s death ‘shook people out of their complacency’ as they began to come to terms with the unfolding horror of the conflict. Describing the arrival of the news in the Upper Murray Tom wrote: ‘…on August the 30th came a cable stating baldly and plainly that Malcolm Chisholm had been killed in action. Everyone in the district knew and liked Malcolm; this sort of thing was not right at all; this was not according to plan; the cold, unvarnished words of the cable were read and re-read; people were dazed.’ Many might have feared what subsequent months and even years might bring.

Poignantly, in 1943 while a prisoner-of-war in Changi on Singapore Island, Tom remembered in 1913 when he was aged seven and together with his parents, he met Malcolm in London before World War One broke out.

‘I had last seen Malcolm as a Sydney Grammar School boy stalking ducks in an old blue shirt and dungarees on a lagoon at Towong.’ Tom went on, ‘Now I hardly recognised the smart, trim officer with the small toothbrush moustache. He found I had a number of lead soldiers, and he bought me some more, and lay for hours on his stomach with me on the carpet. He showed me really how to play with soldiers and he showed me as no-one else had, that a good general puts his cavalry on the wings because they can move fast, and his infantry in the centre.’

“You see,” he said, “it’s no good putting your guns in the front. The gunners are awfully busy people and in the front there is no one to look after them. Anyhow the guns can shoot ever so much further than the rifles, so we put them back here by the table leg. Take the horses out of the limber [a two-wheeled cart used for carrying artillery], Tommy, and give them some feed under the chair where they won’t be frightened when the guns go off bang.”

Hour after hour he played with me there and I lay fascinated as he told me how famous battles had been won, and made me move the troops and guns to illustrate it.

“I’ll be a soldier too when I grow up,” I told him, “just like you.”

“Bully for you, old man,” he said, “so you shall. We’ll win big battles together for the King and get simply rows of medals.” At the time neither Malcolm nor Tom knew what the twentieth century would do their lives.

Malcolm was the elder son of Dr and Mrs William Chisholm. Malcolm’s mother was Emma Isabel Mitchell from Bringenbrong, daughter of Thomas and Charlotte Mitchell. Having passed out of the Royal Military College Sandhurst in England, Malcolm was commissioned into the 1st Battalion East Lancashire Regiment.

After only four days in action, he was wounded on 26 August, 1914 and died the following day in the church in the northern French village of Lignyen- Cambresis. His death came just over two months before the first contingent of troops left Albany on 1 November 1914. Born on 25 February 1892 in his family’s Sydney home he was only 22 years old. His grave lies with six other soldiers in a small Commonwealth War Graves Commission plot in the cemetery in Lignyen- Cambresis.

Just opposite the Commonwealth War Graves Commission plot Malcolm’s mother Emma Isabel’s ashes are interred beneath an elaborate memorial in the civilian cemetery. As it was for parents across Europe, the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, Malcolm’s death had broken his mother’s heart. She died on 4 November 1928. Many mothers were not as fortunate as Malcolm’s mother and could not afford to travel to see where their loved one(s) lie, let alone have their ashes interred nearby. Perhaps for this reason, the tomb in the civilian cemetery in Ligny-en- Cambresis, stands as a symbol of maternal mourning.

Meanwhile, Malcolm’s younger brother Colin Chisholm had sustained brain injuries at Ypres. In 1919 he returned home with his family. Unsurprisingly, Dr William and Emma Isabel called their house in Woollahra ‘Ligny’ and Colin inherited Khancoban Station.

Arguably his injuries prevented him from the achievements he might have attained had it not been for the war. Ironically, his major racing success did not come until 1959 when his racehorse Regal Wench won the Caulfield Cup, a year after Colin’s death in 1958.

How many survivors must have felt they’d been cheated out of their best years by the conflict?

Before he died in 1984, Tom Mitchell said he was worried about Malcolm’s grave and suggested that Mark and I might visit it if we had an opportunity. Our chance was a long time coming and our first visit was in 1997 when we spent a night in nearby Mons en route for Mark to take up his appointment at NATO’s Land South East Headquarters in Izmir on Turkey’s Aegean Coast.

Unfortunately, with Tom having long since passed, we were unable to put his heart at rest and tell him how well Malcolm is remembered in Lignyen – Cambresis. Malcolm and his mother lie in beautifully maintained graves and the town has an École-Malcolm-Chisholm and a Rue Chisholm.

George Petrou is presenting his original portrait of Malcolm to L’ANZAC-Cambresis at its service on 26 April, 2023.

George’s painting and the generous purchase of the print by The Man from Snowy River Bush Festival for the Corryong Memorial and RSL Hall, has connected Upper Murray World War 1 heritage to another small town half a world away. The combined inspiration of a talented commemorative portraitist and the bush festival is a great achievement highlighting some Upper Murray Heritage.

The print of the portrait of Malcolm now hangs in the RSL Hall and will be displayed as part of the centrepiece at The Man from Snowy River Bush Festival’s Art and Photography Exhibition. 

This article appeared in the Corryong Courier, 30 March 2023.