Robert Clive CROCKER
Robert Crocker was born on 29 June 1888 in Prahran, Victoria. His parents were Henry Sayers and Margaret Eleanor (née Wilson) Crocker. He attended Scotch in 1904. He completed his Matriculation in 1904.
Robert was a solicitor when he enlisted on 18 August 1914 at Melbourne. He served in the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade - Brigade Ammunition Column and 6th Battery with the rank of Captain.
Robert died on 12 July 1915 at Cape Helles, Gallipoli. He was 27 years of age.
Service record
In 1913 Clive Crocker was admitted to practice as a solicitor, but he had also been in the Citizen Military Forces for some five years before the war. The Scotch Collegian mentions his deep interest in military matters, exemplified when, during a visit to Victoria from Lord Kitchener, he was ‘specially mentioned for his excellent work’ as a lieutenant in the Army Service Corps at Queenscliff. He had subsequently transferred to the Artillery.
After the outbreak of war he entered the Australian Imperial Force as a 2nd Lieutenant in the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade Ammunition Column. In Egypt his legal training was called upon in courts martial. On the voyage from Egypt to Gallipoli he was appointed Adjutant of the transport, and reportedly landed on 25 April at Gallipoli. He was promoted Captain on 31 May 1915 and transferred from the Ammunition Column, dealing with supplies, to the 6th Battery, a fighting unit. He became a Forward Observation Officer: that is, an artillery officer with the task of taking up a forward position and directing artillery to targets. This unit had already lost its commanding officer to enemy fire doing the same work on 30 May. While at his observing work on 12 July, Clive was shot in the shoulder. One source says that he was evacuated and operated on, but died of his wounds.
Officially he is categorised as ‘Killed in Action.’ One of his comrades of 6 Battery wrote of him: ‘Clive was a splendid fellow and a capable officer, and though he had been with the battery only a short time, was loved by all the men. Everybody misses him, and all hope they will get a capable officer to replace their late loved comrade.’
Clive Crocker was buried in the Gully Beach Cemetery at Helles by his comrades that same day, and a photograph of this grave was sent to his parents. However, after the war, the Graves Registration Units could not find the grave (see 1926 letter reproduced below), even with the assistance of the photo sent in by Clive’s father. As part of a postwar ‘concentration’ of British graves at Gallipoli, bodies had been moved from the Gully Beach Cemetery to the Pink Farm Cemetery. Apparently in this process, Clive’s body had been reburied as that of a man with ‘Unknown’ identity. In 1919, at the unveiling of a memorial, Brigadier-General Brand, the State Commandant, said of Crocker: ‘He died as he lived, an ideal officer, a gallant young gentleman, and a credit both to the land that gave him birth and the college he loved so well.’
Robert Crocker has no known grave. Buried at Pink Farm Cemetery, Helles, Gallipoli.
Photographs and Documents:
Clive Crocker, then a lieutenant in the Brigade Artillery Column, is sitting fourth from the right in the centre row in this group portrait of officers of the Australian Field Artillery in front of the Sphinx and Pyramids at Giza in 1915.
From http://www.anzacs.org/pages/AOcrocker.html, probably from University of Melbourne Record of Active Service
From 1915 Collegian
From Crocker’s service record, concerning his burial
Memorial to Clive Crocker, formerly at Scotch College in East Melbourne
Sources:
- Australian War Memorial – Roll of Honour
- Lost Leaders of Anzacs - http://www.anzacs.org/
- Mishura Scotch database
- National Archives of Australia – B2455, CROCKER RC
- Scotch Collegian 1915 and 1919
- ‘Stories from the Memorial Board: A Supreme Court of Victoria and Legal Profession First World War Commemoration’, entry on Robert Clive Crocker - http://ww1scvstories.com.au/pdf/CROCKER,%20Robert%20Clive.pdf
- The AIF Project - https://www.aif.adfa.edu.au/showPerson?pid=67284
