Kitchener’s Hundred

In the first week of March 1915, the Board of Management of Melbourne’s Alfred Hospital was stunned by the sudden resignation of the Medical Superintendent and three of the four Resident Medical Officers. To comprehend why these otherwise responsible young men should have forsaken the last couple of months of their contract, it is necessary to go back to the early days of the First World War.

On 6 August 1914, two days after Great Britain declared war on Germany, Field Marshall Lord Kitchener took over the seals of the War Office from Prime Minister Asquith. Both sides expected a short conflict lasting from three to six months because by that time, it was assumed, most of the warring nations would be bankrupt. Of all the British politicians and military strategists, Kitchener alone foresaw a long struggle ahead. He predicted that the war would last at least three years and planned accordingly for a huge army. Events on the battlefields soon indicated that Kitchener’s vision was no illusion.

Between 19 October and 22 November 1914, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) sustained appalling casualties in the First Battle of Ypres, losing four-fifths of its original troops. By the end of that year, the BEF had suffered further heavy losses during many futile attempts to regain lost ground in Belgium and France against fierce artillery bar rages and withering machine gunfire. Early in 1915, it became apparent that Britain could not maintain adequate medical services for both its expanding army and its civilians without help from the Dominions. Already, some Australian doctors, who had been studying in England when war broke out, had enlisted in the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) during the latter months of 1914, but many more would be required if Kitchener’s planned army of seventy divisions were to receive adequate medical support.

On 8 February 1915, the British War Office, through the Australian High Commissioner, dispatched a cable to the Australian Defence Department requesting one hundred medical practitioners as soon as possible for service with the RAMC in Europe. The Minister of Defence, Senator Pearce, sought the assistance of the universities in obtaining the necessary medical officers. The university authorities cooperated by bringing forward the final year examinations, and advised the Minister that there were many members of the profession not in regular touch with the universities who would be prepared to make sacrifices for their country. On 26 February, Senator Pearce issued a lengthy statement, published the next day in all the leading newspapers. The Melbourne Argus ran these headings:

The recruits were required to be single men, under forty years of age and medically fit. The terms offered were

All medical students who passed their finals were asked to offer their services to the Defence Department or to arrange to relieve RMOs so that they could go to the front. The Minister recognised that, as a result of the War Office call, many hospitals would encounter difficulty in obtaining a sufficient number of RMOs, but he believed that ‘all medical men will feel that the call of their country comes first’.

In the same press, statement reference was made to instructions issued by the Acting Director-General of Medical Services that fourth and fifth year medical students were not to be enlisted in the ranks of any Australian units. However, despite this injunction, three fourth year students (J.N. Brown, W.E.J. Harrison and R.F. Le Souef) did man age, subsequently to join the AIF. They were among the 46 Melbourne University medical students who enlisted in 1915 (see Chiron, Vol. 2, 1989, p51). All three were recalled to finish the course.

The Argus kept the public informed of the progress of the War Office appeal by publishing articles under the heading ‘DOCTORS FOR THE FRONT’. On 6 March 1915, it re ported that already three doctors (Ashley, Lorimer and McShane) had left for England, and printed the names of another nineteen (including the four RMOs who had just resigned from the Alfred Hospital) who had been accepted for active service on behalf of the RAMC. This article went on to say that the defence authorities knew that a number of medical students about to sit for their final examinations were most anxious to go on active service. On 13 March the Honorary Secretary of the Medical Students Society called a meeting of final year students at the Melbourne Hospital to discuss the call for doctors and to take the names of intending volunteers.

On 17 March, the Argus highlighted Sydney University’s response with these headlines:

It was reported that Sir Thomas Anderson Stuart, Dean of the Medical Faculty:

Among those who graduated in Sydney and volunteered for service with the RAMC were two women, but the British War Office was quick to inform the Australian Government that it could not ‘utilise’ the services of women doctors. In 1916 the shortage of medical officers in the armed forces became so acute that the War Office was obliged to reconsider its position regarding women medical officers and invited medical women to join the RAMC (see Chiron, Vol2, 1990, p51).

Twenty-eight of the 73 who graduated MBChM* at the University of Sydney in March 1915 became members of an elite group which came to be known among them selves as ‘Kitchener’s Hundred’; some enlisted on the very day their degree was conferred. A further fifteen, ten of whom graduated in 1914 and five in 1913, made up the 43 representatives from the University of Sydney. Five members of Kitchener’s Hundred (J.B. Dawson, C.F. Drew, R.B. Lucas, H.J. Penny, and B.W. Wibberley) had graduated from Adelaide University and three (T.E. Ashley, R.O. Bridgman and W.C. Marsden) had British qualifications.

In Melbourne on Thursday, 1 April 1915, at a special ceremony performed by the Vice-Chancellor, Dr J.H. MacFarland, fifteen successful medical students were presented by the Dean, Professor Sir Harry Allen. After the conferring, Sir Harry said that all of the young men had been accepted for service in France with the RAMC and would be leaving Australia by the next two mail steamers. Ten of the fifteen were actually at sea when the annual conferring of degrees took place on 17 April 1915. The remaining five, together with two who graduated in absentia at the main ceremony, were on their way to England be fore the end of the month. One other medical graduate of that year was included in the Hundred, making a total of 18 out of 51 men and five women who qualified MBBS (Melbourne) in April 1915.

Although the rank and pay were infe¬rior to those pertaining in the Australian Army, the War Office call was no less ap¬pealing to some of the 1914 graduates who were shortly to complete their hospital resi¬dency. As noted previously, the Alfred Hos¬pital management was particularly incon¬venienced when four of the five members of the resident staff resigned in the first week of March 1915. At the outbreak of war, the Al¬fred Hospital’s resident medical officer (RMO) staff comprised a medical superintendent (MS), one senior medical officer (SMO) and four junior medical officers (JMO). When the Medical Superintendent (R.S. Whitford) enlisted in the first month of the war, R.M. Clarke, the SMO, assumed the office of MS, but on 1 March 1915, he resigned in order to respond to the urgent appeal of the Imperial War Office and informed the Alfred Hospital Board of Management that he would be leav¬ing in two days. During the same week, three of the remaining four RMOs (N.H.M. Puckle, C.T. Stephen and H.C. Colville) likewise re¬signed and left the hospital at short notice to join the RAMC. The Board of Management, while recognising the serious inconvenience that such short notice on the part of four members of the Resident Medical Staff in¬volved, resolved to let them go as they de¬sired. At the Melbourne Hospital, where the resident medical staff comprised an MS and ten RMOs, two of the latter (C. Chechi and H.R. Dew) sought, and were granted, leave of absence from their duties for the remainder of their term of office on account of war serv¬ice with the RAMC.

The sudden resignations at the Alfred Hospital left A.H. O’Hara Wood as the sole RMO. He acted as MS until July 1915, when he left for England to join the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) in a non-medical capacity. Arthur Holroyd O’Hara Wood had been a brilliant student at Melbourne Grammar School where he passed eight matriculation subjects at the age of 14, won the Government Prize for Science, gained First Class Honours at Matriculation and was equal Dux of the School with H.C. Colville (qv) in 1908. At the University, his brilliance as a scholar was equalled by his prowess on the sports field. He was a triple University Blue in tennis, cricket and rifles, and despite his intensive involvement in College and University sports, obtained Honours and the Forensic Medicine Prize in final year. At tennis, he was outstanding being, in turn, University, Victorian and Australasian champion. O’Hara Wood saw the possibilities of aviation and believed that he would be of greater service to the Allied cause as a flying man than as a medical officer. He served with great distinction in the RFC, became a flying instructor and was mentioned in Despatches. While leading a patrol above St Quentin one month before the Armistice his aircraft was accidentally hit by another RFC machine and he was killed.

Cedrick Alwyn Stewart, the next MS at the Alfred Hospital became another tragic war casualty. He was a JMO at the Melbourne Hospital before spending two years as MS at the Alfred Hospital. In final year he performed brilliantly, obtaining First Class Honours in all three major subjects of Medicine, Surgery and Gynaecology, sharing the Exhibition in Surgery. He gained his MD by research in cerebrospinal meningitis undertaken with Neil Hamilton Fairley. He enlisted in the AAMC in February 1917 and was killed by a high explosive shell in France in April 1918. Stewart’s successor was H.C. Colville, one of Kitchener’s Hundred, who returned after completing one year’s service with the RAMC.

Kitchener’s quota of one hundred medical men was quickly filled and all left Australia before the end of April 1915. The great majority sailed in groups on the passenger liners Mala, Medina, Mongolia, Orontes and Orsova. A few travelled on the Ballarat and Morea. three were appointed medical officers, for the voyage only, to the Runic, Argyllshire and Star of England. R.O. Bridgman, appointed the Medical Officer to the Star of England, was injured in an explosion and had to be replaced by M.J. Gallagher. Bridgman rejoined the RAMC later and sailed in the Malwa.

Although the Director General of Medical Services (DGMS) announced on 8 April 1915, that the selection of one hundred medical men for the RAMC had been completed, his office continued to receive many requests to join the RAMC. When informed of these requests, the British War Office expressed pleasure at the prospect of a second hundred RAMC Australian doctors, but there was no further official appeal for volunteers.

Exactly half (50) of the members of the Hundred had attended the University of Melbourne, including W.C. Marsden who completed his course in England. A further 47 Melbourne graduates joined the RAMC – some were undertaking postgraduate studies in London or Edinburgh when war erupted, while others travelled independently to England, preferring service abroad to uncertain enlistment at home. Herbert Moran, for example, dreaded being in camp in Australia for a long heart-breaking period, so decided to go to London by the then quickest route, via USA. Two of Kitchener’s Hundred, J.W. Farrar and A.J. Trinca, had already seen service in the Royal Australian Navy on the Hospital Ship Grantala which took part in the action at Rabaul in September 1914.

Several members, after completing their contract with the RAMC, joined the AAMC. One, H.A.C. Wall, after being invalided to Australia from Lemnos, regained his health and again responded to the call to arms. He re-enlisted in the RAN and saw further service in the Mediterranean. Some were still fit and active at the outbreak of the Second World War and offered their services again. Outstanding among those was Charles Huxtable, MC & Bar, who at the age of 48, joined the AIF (13 AGH), was captured in Malaya and survived the agonies of being a Japanese POW, despite contracting tuberculosis.

Cyril Checchi, today the sole surviving member of Kitchener’s Hundred, left the Melbourne Hospital three weeks before his residency was due to end. He was one of a group of twenty Melbourne doctors who sailed on the SS Orontes to join the RAMC. They left Melbourne on 14 April 1915, travelling first class as civilians and were required to dress for dinner each night. The ship was unescorted and there were no wartime restrictions. It was like a peacetime voyage with the passengers enjoying all the luxuries. They were in the Mediterranean when the landing at Gallipoli took place. After disembarking at Plymouth, they travelled by train to London where they were not expected and nobody seemed to know what to do with them. Eventually, the Australian Agent-General found them accommodation. They were given a week’s leave, during which time they were outfitted with uniforms. They then went to the RAMC training unit at Crookham, near Alder shot, and some were fortunate enough to be billeted in private homes near the camp. The training was strict – drill starting at 6 am route marches, horse riding classes, but no clinical work.

Another group underwent similar training, except for the riding classes, at the Field Ambulance group at Eastbourne. Dr Cecil Gordon McAdam, one of the fifteen to graduate at the special ceremony in Melbourne on 1 April 1915, recorded his experiences in a diary from the time of his embarkation on the Morea on 20 April until his departure from Eastbourne for the front on 31 August 1915. To McAdam, it was a ‘great adventure’ with ‘duty the key’. He was accompanied by five other RAMC recruits (R.W. Hogg, J.D.H. Hughston, C.H. Lloyd, R.B. Minnett and A.E. Stenning). The voyage took exactly six weeks and was uneventful. His medical activities consisted of smallpox vaccination and typhoid inoculation of members of the crew and the treatment of occasional minor illnesses. Prickly heat was a common complaint and McAdam himself was severely affected by it. While travelling through the Suez Canal they heard that the Medina, which was ahead of them and carrying fifteen of the Hundred, had narrowly missed a Turkish mine.

After landing at Tilbury, McAdam spent a week in London sightseeing, ordering his uniform and arranging pay, before travelling, with his five companions from the Morea, to Eastbourne, where they were attached to E Division 54th Field Ambulance. Here they came across several other members of the Hundred. They were quartered in two-man tents and each had a batman, who prepared a daily bath at 6 am. There was an hour’s drill before breakfast, then lectures interspersed with field work. The lectures were on sanitation, hygiene, ‘diseases affecting troops’, correspondence in the field, military law, law of evidence, courts martial, organisation of the British Army, duties in hospitals, gas defence, field work, accoutrements, field ambulance work, ambulance equipment and map reading. The field work included exercises, drilling and marching, stretcher drill for collection of the wounded, semaphore drill, learning bugle calls, wagon drill, tent pitching and striking, digging latrines, urinals, grease traps and incinerators.

There was a stir at the camp when it was reported erroneously in the Australian press that Roy Minnett, the former Test cricketer, had been killed in action at Gallipoli, Minnett was very much alive at Eastbourne and cables were hastily sent to rectify this shocking mistake. Minnett was the last Australian to leave Eastbourne for the front and survived the war.

A special Act of Parliament was passed in the House of Commons to legalise the medical registration of McAdam and those other members of the Hundred who had left too hurriedly for Australian registration to be effected. With respect to his commissioning in the RAMC, McAdam proudly noted in his diary dated 21 June 1915: ‘I was gazetted in The Times today’. Towards the end of July, McAdam was seconded at short notice to the Transport Section of the War Office to relieve the medical officer in charge of the transportation of wounded men arriving at Victoria Station.

Major Dunhill, an Australian who was later to become Sir Thomas Dunhill and Surgeon to the King, was McAdam’s superior officer at the Victoria Street office. Among the 33 wounded Australians from the Dardanelles was Colonel G.A. Syme, who was suffering from cellulitis of the arm. One of McAdam’s less arduous assignments was the delivery of a letter to Buckingham Palace, believed to contain an invitation for the King to visit Harefield Park, a convalescent hospital for wounded Australians.

On his return to Eastbourne, McAdam was bitterly disappointed to find that all his fellow Australians, with the exception of Minnett, had already left with their ambulances for the front. Some time previously, Cliff Scantlebury was mistakenly included in a group of Canadians ordered to the Mediterranean at short notice. The authorities discovered the mistake, but Scantlebury insisted on going and ended up at Cape Helles. Three others, C. Checchi, N.L. Prichard and H.A.C. Wall, also served with British units at Cape Helles during the disastrous Gallipoli campaign. Cyril Checchi remained on the Gallipoli peninsula until the successful evacuation of all forces in December 1915. He subsequently enlisted in the AAMC, but his service with the RAMC was not recognised and he found him self junior in rank to many who joined up after him or had been on the Reserve awaiting training, let alone having seen active service.

Many times in his diary McAdam expressed frustration at the delay in posting him to the front. He was often very homesick and sometimes philosophical: ‘If I fall I shall have done all that I can do for my Country and I shall have given all I can give. The sacrifice can never be too great.’ McAdam served with the RAMC on the Western Front, Salonika and Palestine and had attained the rank of major at the time of his demobilisation in August 1919. He was in France in September 1915 during the memorable Battle of Laos, where he estimated that the British casualties were 60,000. He was wounded at Salonika and invalided back to Australia, but later re turned to the Middle East and was Medical Officer at a prisoner of war camp for Turks when the war ended.

After completing the training at Crook¬ ham or Eastbourne, the newly-fledged Aus¬tralian members of the RAMC were posted to various British Army units. Most of them went to front-line field ambulances operating in the battlefields of France or the Balkans. Some served in casualty clearing stations, hospitals or on hospital ships, while others acted as regimental medical officers. Several served in more than one of the main theatres of war – Flanders, Salonika and Mesopotamia. At least three (G.A. Birnie, W.A. Bowman and F.E. Keane) underwent the ghastly experience of Passchendaele in 1917. Birnie, who had two lengthy stints in the front line and was severely wounded on each occasion, has left a vivid account of the appalling conditions un¬der which the infantry fought in France. Early in 1916, after his regimental aid post received a direct shell hit, Birnie notes:

After recovering from this wound Birnie returned to France, spent some time at anuncongenial Stationary Hospital, and was then posted to a front-line regiment which was subsequently decimated in the futile Allied offensive at Passchendaele. Birnie recorded that on the day 830 men of his regiment went ‘over the top’, only 94 were not killed or wounded. He received a bullet wound in the neck and was awarded the Military Cross for his courageous efforts in alleviating the wounded under heavy fire on the day ‘our battalion was sacrificed’.

The awards for bravery and the decorations won by this select group of one hundred make an impressive list. No fewer than twenty were awarded the Military Cross (including two bars), seven were mentioned in Despatches; there were, also, one Distinguished Service Order, one Croix de Guerre with Palm, one Medaille d’Honneur and one Italian Silver Medal for Military Valour. Of the fifty Melbourne members, 11 were wounded on the field of battle and two were gassed; five of these were invalided out of the Army as a result. One such was Reginald Morley Clarke who, as previously mentioned, resigned abruptly as Medical Superintendent at the Alfred Hospital to join the RAMC. During devoted service in France with the British Expeditionary Forces, Clarke’s health was seriously undermined by prolonged exposure to poison gas and he was declared unfit for active military service. He died suddenly in January 1921, leaving a young family of three. His two sons, Maurice Vivian Clarke, CBE, and Denis Morley Clarke, became distinguished members of the medical profession in Melbourne.

Another invalided out of the RAMC was Oswald Barton, a graduate of the University of Sydney and a son of Sir Edmund Barton, the first Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia and, subsequently, a Justice of the High Court. In a letter to the Acting Prime Minister, Senator Pearce, dated 9 May 1916, Mr. Justice Barton expressed concern that his son Oswald, who, having regained his health after spending many arduous months in the British trenches and desiring to join the AAMC, would not have his service with the RAMC recognised in terms of seniority. Barton’s request to have such British service equated with AIF service was turned down. At an earlier date, 1 April 1916, the Australian Defence Department received a cable stating that a number of Australian Medical Officers who had completed one year’s service with the RAMC, wanted to enlist in the AIF in England. The matter was referred to the DGMS who stated in a minute to the Secretary of the Defence Department dated 20 April 1916:

Since the AIF then had sufficient medical officers for its needs, the Australian doctors serving abroad with the BEF were informed that if they wished to transfer to the AAMC they would have to return to Australia and be placed on the AAMC Reserve with seniority from that date. It is no wonder that Justice Sir Edmund Barton was constrained to write in his letter of 9th May:

Several outstanding sportsmen were among Kitchener’s Hundred, including Test and Sheffield Shield cricketers, league footballers and State tennis players. Roy Baldwin Minnett played for Australia in nine Test Matches in 1911-12. He made 90 in his first Test, sharing a sixth-wicket partnership of 109 with Victor Trumper. He was top scorer in two other innings in the 1911/12 series. Charles Francis Drew played League Football with North Adelaide and represented South Australia in both cricket and football. Norman McAlister Gregg represented New South Wales in both cricket and tennis and was in the team captained by his hero, Victor Trumper, which toured Tasmania early in 1915. Ernest Robertson represented Victoria in tennis. Several others received University Blues or featured prominently in College teams. In rifle shooting, Henry Cecil Colville was champion of the University of Melbourne.

Two Melbourne members of Kitchener’s Hundred were killed in action, namely, Johnston D.H. Hughson (at Salonika in September 1918, after being wounded in France) and William Rogerson (by shrapnel in France in August 1918, previously mentioned in Despatches). Two Sydney members (N.W. Broughton and A.C.A. Jekyll) died on active service. R.B. Lucas, an Adelaide graduate, died of wounds in a German hospital shortly after being taken prisoner in 1916. Of the ninety-five who survived the war, some remained in England after the termination of their service with the RAMC. One of these was Raymond William Ryan who joined the Royal Air Force Medical Service when it was formed in 1919. Subsequently, he became Air Commodore and President of RAF Medical Boards. In the Second World War, Ryan was successively the first Director of the Royal Canadian Medical Services, Air Officer Commanding the Central Medical Establishment, and later Medical Adviser to the Guild of Air Pilots. Another was Norman Edward Packer, who was killed in a riding accident whilst serving with the British occupation forces on the Rhine in 1922.

Of the fifty Melbourne doctors selected for Kitchener’s Hundred, 14 served for one year in the RAMC, 9 served two years, 14 served three years and 12 served four years; the service record of one (M.E. Robinson) has not been located. M.H. Sorokiewich, one of the fifteen to graduate at Melbourne on 1 April 1915, changed his surname to South¬ wick on his return to Australia at the end of 1918.

After completing one year’s satisfactory service in the RAMC, the doctors were duly promoted to Captain, but remained inferior in rank to their AAMC colleagues who were commissioned Captains and became Majors on first promotion.

The great majority of Kitchener’s Hundred returned to Australia where many of them became leaders of their profession:

A. (Archie) S. Anderson, CBE, MBBS, DOMS, FRCPS: Ophthalmic Surgeon, Vice President, Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital; Foundation Chairman, Ophthalmic Research Institute of Australia; Ormond College Council; Board of Management, Victorian Eye & Ear and St Andrews Hospitals.

G.A. (Alec) Birnie, MC, MDBS, DPH (Eng), FRACP: Physician, Alfred Hospital; Council Vic. Branch, BMA.

E.P. Blashki, MC, MBChM, FRACS: ENT Surgeon, Royal North Shore Hospital.

B.M. Carruthers, OBE, MBChM, FRSani: Director, Tasmanian Hospital & Medical Services.

C.K. Cohen, MBChm, FRACS: Ophthalmic Surgeon, Sydney Hospital.

K.G. Colquhoun, MDBS, FRACP: Dermatologist, St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, and Repatriation Department.

H. Cecil Colville, KB, MBMS, FRACS: Paediatric Surgeon, Alfred Hospital; First President, AMA; Gold Medallist BMA and AMA.

Harold R. Dew, KB, Medaille d’Honneur, MBBS, FRCS, FRACS: Professor of Surgery, Uni. Sydney; Surgeon, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital; Hunterian Professor, Jacksonian Prize, Royal College of Surgeons; Syme Prize, Uni. Melb.; Sims Travelling Scholar; wrote authoritative books on hydatid disease and malignant tumours of the testicle.

Charles F. Drew, MC, MBBS: BMA Council, South Australia, Vice-President.

Norman MeA. Gregg, KB, MC, MBChM, DOMS, FRACS, FRCOG, FRACP: Ophthalmologist, Royal Prince Alfred and Royal Alexandra Hospitals, Sydney; President Ophthalmological Society of NSW; Shorney Prize; James Cook and Addingham medals; Britannica Australia Award in Medicine; discovered the link between maternal rubella and foetal abnormalities the Gregg syndrome.

C.R.R. Huxtable, MC & Bar, MBChm, FRACS (Edin): Royal Flying Doctor Service; Officer of Rhodesian Legion of Merit.

C. Gordon McAdam, MBBS co-founder of Lord Somers Camp and Power House; Honorary MO YMCA.

W.S.(Bill) Newton, KB, MDBS, FRACP: Physician, Board of Management, Alfred Hospital; Faculty of Medicine; council member RACP; Anti-Cancer Council; Consultative Council on Tuberculosis.

L.J.J. Nye, MBChM, FRACP: Physician, Brisbane General Hospital; Council Queensland Branch of BMA & AMA; Member University of Queensland Senate; Prisoners Parole Board.

Alan Pryde, MBBS: Surgeon, Launceston General Hospital; President Tasmanian Branch of BMA.

H.N.M. Puckle, MBBS, FRCS (Edin), FRACS, Italian Silver Medal for Military Valour: Surgeon, Victorian Eye & Ear Hospital.

S.W.G. Ratcliff, OBE, MBChM: Chief Executive Officer, Royal Alexandra Hospital, Sydney; Consultant NSW Hospitals Commission; Chairman, NSW Consultative Council for Physically Handicapped.

G.C. (Cliff) Scantlebury, MBS, FRCS (Edin), FRACS: ENT Surgeon, Royal Melbourne Hospital.

J.G. Sleeman, MDBS, FRACP, FCCP: Physician, Royal Adelaide Hospital; CMO Tuberculosis Services.

Alfred J. Trinca, MDBS, FRCS, FRACS: Pathologist & Surgeon, Alfred Hospital; Anti Cancer Council; Consultant, Baker Institute.

The complete list of Kitchener’s Hundred follows.

• G.G. Adams, A.S. Anderson, J.T. Anderson,
• C.H. Armitage, T.E. Ashley, 0. Barton,
• G.A. Birnie, W.A.H. Birrell, E.P. Blashki,
• W.A. Bowman, A.W. Bretherton,
• R.O. Bridgman, N.W. Broughton, G.C. Bury,
• B.M. Carruthers, R.B. Carter, C. Checchi,
• R.M. Clarke, B.W. Cohen, C.K. Cohen,
• K.G. Colquhoun, H.C Colville, L.B. Daly,
• E.P. Dark, J.B. Dawson, H.R. Dew, J.L.
• Digby, C.O.G. Donovan, C.F. Drew, W.A.
• Edwards, J.F. Fahy, C. Farren-Ridge, J.W.
• Farrar, D.F. Finlay, A.D. Forbes, M.J.
• Gallagher, T.E. George, W.E. Giblin, W.H.
• Raymond, G.A. Renwick, R.W. Richards, A.T.
• Roberts, E. Robertson, M.E. Robinson,
• E. Rogerson, W. Rogerson, R.W. Ryan,
• G.C. Scantlebury, J.G. Sleeman,
• M.H. Sorokiewich, A.E. Stenning, C.T. Stephen,
• Godby, N.McA. Gregg, C.M. Harris,
• W.S. Hawthorne, W.A.L.H. Henderson,
• R.W. Hogg, J.D.H. Hughston, C.R.R. Huxtable,
• J.I.M. Jamieson, A.C.A. Jekyll, F.E. Keane,
• C.H. Lloyd, F.H. Looney, G.N. Lorimer,
• R.B. Lucas, C.G. McAdam, J.B. MacCulloch,
• C. McShane, W.C. Marsden, C.H. Martin,
• A.H. Melville, R.B. Minnett, F.H. Moran,
• J. Morlet, A.W.G. Murray, W.S. Newton,
• L.J.J. Nye, J.J. L’Neill, N.E. Packer,
• H.J. Penny, L.M. Pigott, E.T. Pinhey,
• F.W.A. Ponsford, N.L. Prichard, A. Pryde,
• H.N.M. Puckle, S.W.G. Ratcliff, A.W.
• F.W. Stone, N.C. Talbot, A.J. Trinca,
• C.A. Verge, G.D.K. Waldron, H.A.C. Wall,
• H.W. Ward, A. Weigall, B.W. Wibberley, W.F.S.Yeates.

Author’s note:
I first came upon Kitchener’s Hundred when searching for information about my father’s war service (Chiron, Vol. 1, 1987, p.24). I never heard him use the term, so I was surprised to find it mentioned in an obituary to Jack Morlet who was among the twenty RAMC recruits, including my father, who left Melbourne in the Oronles on 14 April 1915. Subsequently, I found three other references to Kitchener’s Hundred:

I became fascinated by the story and in the months that followed I managed to trace the names and careers of this unrecognised group of Australian doctors. When I searched the Roll of Honour at the Shrine of Remembrance I was disturbed to discover that the names of thirty-seven of the fifty Melbourne members of the hundred were missing, presumably because they spent their entire war service with the British Army. Furthermore, the Australian Army Records Department has no record of their service with the RAMC and the War Office in England lost many of their records during air raids in the Second World War. Thus, there are only the documents held in private family collections to prove that these gallant men ever volunteered and served overseas in the Allied Forces.

Cyril Checchi and the fellow Australians who served with British units in the Dardanelles campaign were not considered eligible for the Gallipoli Medal awarded to the Anzacs who fought on the Gallipoli peninsula. The Australian authorities denied Checchi’s requests for recognition and it was only through the efforts of RSL Victorian President, Bruce Ruxton, that sixty years later Cyril Checchi, CBE, became the proud owner of the Gallipoli Medal.

Although Alfred Trinca acted as Surgeon Lieutenant on the Hospital Ship Grantala and wore the uniform of a RAN Officer, he was classified as a civilian surgeon and not given a service number. His active service with the Australian Navy is not recognised and his name consequently does not appear on the Honour Roll at the Shrine of Remembrance, although he devoted four years of his life in the service of the Allied cause. The British Ministry of Defence has no record of his three-year service with the RAMC, as is revealed in the letter, dated 27 July 1987, from the Departmental Record Officer (Archives):

The Australian Department of Defence has little more to offer as the following extract from a letter, dated 25 June 1987, to the author shows:

*The Sydney MBChM became MBBS in 1927.

• Alfred Hospital Board of Management minutes
• The Argus
• Australian Archives
• Australian Medical Directories
• G.A. Birnie, ‘With the RAM.C. in the Great War’, Alfred Hospital Clinical Reports, Vol. 14, 1967
• British Medical Registers
• Centenary Book of the University of Sydney Faculty of Medicine, Syd. Unit. Press, 1984
• Cyril Checchi, personal communication
• Chiron, Journal of the University of Melbourne Medical Society
• Christopher Martin-Jenkins, The Complete Who’s Who of Test Cricketers, Rigby, Adelaide, 1980
• Department of Defence, Canberra
• Encyclopaedia Britannica
• C.G. McAdam, private papers
• Medical Journal of Australia
• Melbourne Hospital Committee of Management minutes
• Melbourne University Calendars
• Ministry of Defence, Middlesex, England
• Herbert M. Moran, Viewless Winds, Davies, London, 1939
• K.F. Russell, The Melbourne Medical Schooll862-1962, Melbourne Uni. Press, 1977
• Shrine of Remembrance Roll of Honour
• Sydney University Calendars
• A.J. Trinca, private papers
• Barbara W. Tuchman, August I914, Constable, London, 1962
• The University of Melbourne Record of Active Service of Teachers, Graduates, Undergraduates, Officers and Servants in the European war 1914-1918, Government Printer, Melbourne, 1926
• R.S. Whitington, The Courage Book of Australian Test Cricket 1877-1974, Wren, Melbourne, 1974