George Colin BUCHANAN

Colin Buchanan was born on 11 December 1895 in Ballarat East, Victoria. His parents were George Colin and Mary Ellen (née Olver) Buchanan. He attended Scotch from 1909 to 1910 as a boarder.

Colin was a university student when he enlisted on 25 June 1915 at Ballarat, Victoria. He served in the 46th Battalion with the rank of Private. His Regimental Number was 2463.

Colin died on 11 April 1917 at Bullecourt. He was 21 years of age.

Service record

At the outbreak of war Colin was serving in the 18th AMC, a medical unit of the militia. He was only 19 when he enlisted in the AIF (see his parents’ permission letter below). In August 1915 Private Buchanan was assigned to reinforcements for the 14th Battalion. He joined the unit at Mudros on Lemnos Island on 23 October. He served on Gallipoli until the unit was relieved in December. In March 1916 he was transferred to the 46th Battalion in Egypt. He was briefly hospitalised in May 1916 with hemorrhoids.

On 8 June he arrived with the 46th at Marseille, France. He was in hospital again in late August and then again in September, the latter time with ‘Bells Paralysis’ (weakness or paralysis of muscles on one side of the face). He was sent to England, where there was an additional diagnosis of ‘sceptic [sic] nasal’. He had nearly a month’s furlough before returning to a training battalion in England and then leaving again for France in mid-November 1916. He rejoined the 46th Battalion on 9 December 1916.

The next entry in his service record says that on 11 April 1917 Colin was posted ‘wounded and missing’. This was in the midst of the 46th Battalion’s entry into the disastrous First Battle of Bullecourt, named for a village in the heavily fortified Hindenburg Line. 11 April was the bloodiest day in the 46th Battalion’s history. In November 1917 Colin’s status was altered to ‘Killed in action’. In the interim a large Red Cross Wounded and Missing file was created through numerous testimonies. One soldier said he had seen Colin, who was a Lewis Gunner, walking back to medical assistance and bleeding freely from a bullet wound to the mouth. One of his comrades, and the Red Cross, surmised that he had been wounded again while going back to the Dressing Station.

The Ballarat Star, his hometown newspaper, reported on 14 December that Colin’s father had only just received official word of his death, a day after what would have been Colin’s 22nd birthday.

George Buchanan has no known grave but is commemorated at the Australian National Memorial, Villers-Bretonneux, Picardie, France.

Photographs and Documents:

Colin Buchanan at age 18

Parents’ permission letter for Colin Buchanan to serve

Colin Buchanan sent this apron from Paris to his sister in early 1917. The Australian War Memorial caption says the apron arrived just days before news of Colin’s death.

Sources:

1. Australian War Memorial – Roll of Honour and Red Cross Wounded and Missing file
2. Ballarat Star Friday 14 December 1917
3. Mishura Scotch Database
4. National Archives of Australia – B2455, BUCHANAN G C
5. Scotch College Archives
6. The AIF Project - https://www.aif.adfa.edu.au/showPerson?pid=37561