Edward Joseph Bruce enlisted in the AIF on the 3rd of September 1915. A horse breaker before he joined up, Edward embarked on HMAT Wandilla from Brisbane on the 31st of January 1916 as a reinforcement for the 2nd Light Horse Regiment.
The ‘Wandilla’ was initially a steam ship operated by the Adelaide Steamship Company between Fremantle and Sydney was acquired by the military firstly as a troop ship and later as a hospital ship.
His mother, Mary Bruce, lived in Murwillumbah and in July 1918, received a letter from the Base Records Office at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne, advising her that her son had been awarded the Military Medal.
His citation read in part: “For conspicuous bravery and devotion to duty. On the morning of the 22nd October 1917, he was wheel driver in a six-horse team which had just delivered a gun to the forward position. When returning along the Zonnebeeke– Frezenberg Road the hostile shelling increased and the road was heavily barraged. A (?) shell landed under the wheelers, killing all six horses, wounding the N.C.O in charge and the other two drivers. Driver BRUCE was blown some distance away by the explosion, but returned at once to his wounded comrades and though under heavy shell fire and very severely shaken, he succeeded in getting them all to a dressing station some distance away. He had remained on duty and carried out his work in an exemplary manner ever since.”
Edward spent his time with the 111th Howitzer Battery of 11th Australian Field Artillery Brigade and returned to Australia in May 1919.
Edward dies at Kyogle in 1953. |
