11th Battalion Lance Corporate John Eric Brickhill

John was born in Sydney, NSW, on 11 January 1898. When he was a child his family came to Western Australia, where they lived at 24 Stone Street, West Perth; more or less under where the Mitchell Freeway is now. 

John trained as a law clerk and served in the 88th Infantry (militia), but when war broke out he was keen to do his bit. His mother was just as keen to stop him - he was the youngest of her ten children and one son was already serving - but John enlisted on 21 January 1916, ten days after his 18th birthday, and he was assigned to the 11th Battalion.

He spent a fairly long stint in training and did not embark for overseas until 9 November 1916, arriving in England the day before his 19th birthday, on 10 January 1917.

After further training John was deployed to France and joined his battalion in the field on 24 April 1917. He was the battalion's bugler and being young, fit and fast, was a runner, running messages from base to base. This was often in action and he was dangerously exposed, but apart from a brief period in hospital with scabies and some leave in England, John’s war was exciting but fairly uneventful.

In the months following the Armistice in November 1918 John was promoted to temporary corporal, and spent most of 1919 assisting with demobilisations and the return of other Australian troops.

He returned to Australia just before Christmas 1919 and was discharged back here on 28 January 1920, almost exactly four years after he’d enlisted.

John tried to pick up the threads of his pre-war life, but the man to whom he’d been articled had died during the war. Instead he worked with the Tramways and Electricity Department as a tram conductor for a few years, before returning to clerical work in the Electricity Department.

In 1924 John (26) married 22-year-old Albany lass Winnie Trainor, and their daughters June and Betty were born in 1925 and 1927 respectively.

In November 1929 Winnie (27) kindly cared for their neighbour who suffered terribly with boils, which Winnie diligently dressed each day. Family legend records as Winnie was on her way home to bathe her hands in antiseptic, she scratched the back of her neck. She soon contracted the blood poisoning that killed her just two days later, on 26 November 1929, leaving her two girls, June (4) and Betty (2), motherless.

Four years later John married again to Winifred Alice Kernutt nee King; a widowed mother of four young sons. Betty, who turned 90 in 2017, said Winifred was the most loving, devoted stepmother anyone could wish for, and she loved and cared for John’s girls as if they were her own. In 1938 another daughter, Erica, joined the brood.

During WWII John enlisted once more; this time in Home Service, in which he was seconded into Intelligence. After the First World War, Betty said, her father was careful to only tell his girls the funny things that had happened. He told them nothing at all about his work during the Second World War of course, as he was bound (by the Official Secrets Act) from speaking about it for 30 years.

Whether John would have told them anything had he lived beyond that 30 year silence is unknown. He had heart trouble and collapsed on 13 April 1959, as he was dressing for work. He died a couple of hours later, aged 61.

Betty is the patron of a local Perth primary school which held its usual Anzac Day service in 2017. Prominent in the display for that event was John’s bugle, used during WWI, brought home and kept carefully all these years, with cord and tassle still attached.

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