WAUGH, Angus James Campbell (1896-1987)Angus Waugh was born on 30 October 1896, the son of William Angus Waugh and Hannah nee Campbell. He was enrolled as a boarder at Geelong College in February 1910, leaving in December 1915. He had previously been taught by a governess and his address at the time of entry was Clare Station, Balranald, New South Wales. At College, he was a member of the Athletics Team in 1914 and 1915, the 1st Football XVIII in 1915 and the 1st Rowing VIII in 1915.
During World War I, he enlisted (No. 32251) with the AIF on 18 October 1916, and embarked for France on
RMS Osterley on 14 February 1917 to serve in the 8th Field Artillery Brigade (FAB). He was wounded in the same incident in which his contemporary at Geelong College,
Cappur Mitchell Webb (1896-1917), lost his life.
Pegasus reported this in December 1917:
'On September 19th he (Webb), and some others were sent to prepare some positions for their guns; while he and six others were asleep in their dug-out, a shell landed in the middle of it; a splinter pierced his breast, and he died soon after at the dressing station. Angus Waugh, who at the same time was wounded in the back and arms, went with him, and did not leave him till he died.' An article by Sandra McGrath in The Australian Weekend Magazine in 1980 about his life on Clare Station, cited his service during the war:
'After Geelong ... he went on a 'holiday' to Europe. The holiday was as a soldier in the 29th Battery of the 8th Brigade. He spent his 21st birthday in a London hospital, having been badly injured in both legs and arms at Passchendaele in Flanders during the third battle of Ypres in the autumn of 1917. There was a 75 per cent mortality or injury rate. Waugh was the only survivor of an eight-man gun team. Eventually he was sent back to Australia, and after some months recovering in a Melbourne hospital he returned to Clare and the life he was to lead for more than sixty years - 'following the Clare sheep'.' Angus Waugh returned to Australia, embarking on 12 March 1918.
His brothers, John Hall Waugh (1899-1962), William Ronald Cameron Waugh (1903-1981), and Gordon Fraser Waugh (1904-1979), were also educated at Geelong College.
Sources: Based on an edited extract from Geelong Collegians at the Great War compiled by James Affleck. p334 (citing The Pegasus; The Australian Weekend Magazine 23 August 1980; National Archives).