5th Field Ambulance Private George Frederick Sykes

George was born in West Perth in 1896, the second of four sons born to George and Ada Sykes, and the only one to survive infancy.

He grew up in Kalgoorlie and was just 13 when his father died in March 1909. In February 1913 his mother Ada remarried, to Alexander Anderson.

Before enlisting in the AIF, George earned his living as a jeweller. He also served three years with the 88th Infantry, and a further nine months as a senior cadet with the 21st Australian Medical Corps, and passed his St John's Ambulance First Aid exam on 11 July 1915.

Six weeks later, on 23 August 1915, George (then 19) enlisted. He was appointed to the Special Reinforcements No: 2 Stationary Hospital and embarked on 1 November at Fremantle on HMAT Benalla for Alexandria, Egypt. He no sooner arrived in May 1916 than he was deployed to HMAT Itonus, as a nursing orderly, on a journey back to Australia.

In October 1916 George was briefly admitted to the 1st Auxilary Hospital with lantern burns to his left arm and hand. In June 1918 while serving in France with the 5th Field Ambulance George suffered a gun shot wound to his left thigh and spent the next ten days in hospital. He rejoined his unit in France on 27 July, where he remained until the unit’s departure on 27 February 1919. 

He worked as a nurse on the journey home, arriving in Fremantle on 8 April 1919 aboard the Tras-os-Montes. A few weeks later he was admitted to hospital in Fremantle with rheumatism in both knees. He was discharged from the AIF on 8 March 1920 and, in time, received the 1914/1915 Star, the British War and Victory Medals.

In 1924 he married Gladys Laurel Leaf Harris and they lived in North Perth before George’s work as a hotel manager saw him move to the Manjimup and Miling Hotels. They moved back to North Perth in the 1940s and retired to Mandurah where he died aged 62 on 24 January 1958. Gladys died at the grand age of 96, in 1989.

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