RAYMOND, Harold McCheyne (1892-1917) (War Service 1914-1918).JPG)
H M Raymond (War Service).
Harold McCheyne Raymond was born in 1892 in Brighton, the son of the Rev Arthur Rufus Raymond and Hannah nee Winter, of The Rectory, Orbost. He attended Melbourne Grammar Preparatory School from 1903 to 1904, however when his family moved to the country he attended Geelong College. On leaving school he entered the Union Bank, Melbourne, and two years before his enlistment in the AIF he was transferred to the Brisbane office of the bank.
His Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour particulars state:
‘He enlisted in response to a powerful appeal made in his own Parish Church by the Bishop of Tasmania, Dr Hay. He enlisted initially in 26 Battalion (No. 2675), and embarked from Brisbane on HMAT A48 Seang Bee
on 21 October 1915 for France, subsequently being transferred to 12 Battalion. After nearly two years service he was killed on 9 April 1917 during operations in the Bapaume district.’ His chaplain wrote to his father:
‘He was killed early on the morning of Easter Monday in helping to repel a heavy German counter-attack. This was during the operations which resulted in the capture of the village of Boursies. I buried him the next day in a soldier’s grave almost where he fell, and on the bank of the road from Boursies and Lagnicourt. You can think of him with pride. He knew his work and did it. I can give none of our boys out here higher praise than that.’ He was with 12 Platoon when he was cut down by machine gun fire at Boursies on 9 April 1917, aged 24. Private Harold Raymond’s grave could not be located at war’s end, so his name is commemorated on Villers Bretonneux Memorial.
His cousin, Gunner Walter Charles Wallace, the son of Peter and Elizabeth Wallace, of Sydney, 38th Battery, 8th Field Artillery Brigade, was killed in action, aged 33, near Bonnay on the Ancre River on 24 April 1918, and is buried at Bonnay Communal Cemetery Extension, France – Grave B.5.
Sources: Based on an edited extract from Geelong Collegians at the Great War compiled by James Affleck. pp 91-92 (citing J Beacham Kiddle OBE, War Services Old Melburnians 1914-1918 (1923); Photo War Services Old Melburnians 1914-1918.)