Clark Maxwell GRAY
Eyes dark grey, Hair dark brown, Complexion dark
Clark Maxwell Gray – Dunedin’s finest
With thanks to Scotch College and East Melbourne Historical Society for information relating to Clark Maxwell Gray.
Clark Maxwell Gray “Max” was born on 6 December, 1896 in Dunedin, New Zealand to William Gray and Mary Gray nee Cameron, both born and raised in the Dunedin area. In 1911, The family moved to Australia. Max alongside his brother Alastair schooling commenced at the Terrace Primary School, Thornton, Wellington, and then he attended Wellington College from 1909 - 1911.
There, he was Sergeant in charge of the platoon that won a public school competition for senior cadets. He was also a King’s Scout. The family then moved to Melbourne where his father took on the position of Principal, Presbyterian Ladies College. Clark attended Scotch College from 1912 to 1915. He was an avid tennis player . His The Scotch Collegian obituary says he won several prizes, including an Ormond residential scholarship.
He spent a short time at the University of Melbourne prior to enlisting on 31 May 1914 aged 18 years. Max served for 2 years in the Senior Cadets in New Zealand, 2 years in Senior Cadets at Scotch College and under a year with the Melbourne University Rifles, Citizen Military Forces.
Max embarked from Melbourne on board the HMAT A64 Demosthenes on 16 July 1915 and joined the 6th Battalion, 7th Reinforcements at Gallipoli on 5 September, 1915. He was promoted to Temporary Sergeant on 1 October 1915, reverted to Private on 19 November, then promoted twice within a short time, first to Corporal in November, then Lance Sergeant in December 1915.
He wrote a vivid letter about arriving there at night. He described swimming amidst enemy shellfire and enjoying it, how the miles of Anzac defences were ‘like ground bored by rabbits’, mentioned the ominous onset of winter rain, and matter-of-factly explained how a bullet had struck his temple but, as it was spent, inflicted only a bruise.
On 5 December he was appointed Lance-Sergeant and promoted to full Sergeant in Egypt in January 1916. The following month he was transferred to the newly formed 58th Battalion and in March was appointed a 2nd Lieutenant in that unit. He was part of the general Gallipoli evacuation, disembarking at Alexandria from Lemnos on 7 January 1916.
Whilst in Egypt he was soon promoted to Sergeant on 15 January 1916, then transferred to the 58th Battalion in February. By March 16 1916, he was appointed 2nd Lieutenant. Max left Egypt for the Western Front on June 11, 1916 embarking from Alexandria on the HT Transylvania to join the British Expeditionary Force. He disembarked Marseilles 23 June, 1916, transferring to Fromelles.
On 19 July, 1916, the AIF was engaged in the Battle of Fromelles, its first on the Western Front. Max was likely killed instantly in No Man's Land sustaining machine gunshots to his arm and stomach whilst delivering ammunitions. Initially there was some thought he had been taken prisoner by the Germans, however several eye witness accounts confirmed he was killed in action. Gray’s Red Cross Wounded and Missing file contains the usual contradictory rumours about his fate.
In one file an orderly says Gray was commonly called ‘Dolly Gray’ (from a popular song), that he was ‘a very fine fellow’ and ‘popular with the men’. Other accounts say variously that he was shot in the chest, taken prisoner, hit in the thigh and stomach, hit by machine gun fire, was in a group of bombers or grenadiers and that he was looking after the unit’s ammunition.
Statement, Red Cross File No 1201004, 4535 Pte O.C. LAIDLER, C Company, 58th Bn (patient, Faucett Road Hospital, Portsmouth, England), 4 December 1916:
'Informant states that in July 1916 at Fromelles during a raid on the German trenches Lt. Gray was taken prisoner. Informant had been told this by Private Gordon, A. Coy., 58th Battn., A.I.F. who was with Lt. Gray during the raid, but Informant could not say for certain that Pte. Gordon had seen [underlined] Lt. Gray taken prisoner though he understood that he had done so.'
2414 Pte J.R. NORRIS, 58th Bn (patient, No 9 Red Cross Hospital, Calais), 18 October 1916:
'Lieut. Gray was killed on the 19th July between V.C. Avenue & Pinney Avenue by a shot in the chest... I saw Lieut Gray dead. He was a Melbourne University Student.'
1774 Pte G. JAMES, C Company, 58th Bn (patient, No 2 General Hospital (Palais), France), 5 December 1916:
'At Fromelles on 19th July about 6 p.m. we had attached the German first line and been driven back. I was with Lieut. Gray: on our way back to our trenches I saw him hit in the right thigh and stomach. I had to carry on. Next day I saw Lt. Keyes 57th Battn. Trench Mortars and he told me he had been out with a search party early next morning and found Lt. Gray's body and he brought in all his belongings.'
Statement, Red Cross File No 1201004, 2603, Pte Cameron wrote:
“Informant says Lieut. Gray was in charge of Grenadiers in July 19th in attack. Only one of them came back and he stated Lieut. Gray had been killed. Informant does not know the survivors name that brought the news. The position attacked by Lieut. Gray remains in German hands.”
About a month after his death a fellow officer of the 58th, Lieutenant William Scurry wrote a letter that was reproduced in Gray’s The Scotch Collegian obituary:
’You will know by now that Max has paid a soldier’s big price, and that you are left with all the pride that he was an officer and a gentleman…. Think of all I know of him. We lived together out there on the scorching sand; we swam, rode and talked together, and always I was the gainer by our friendship. When last I saw him as I stood among my guns on that evening, he gave us another lesson which I and a lot of my comrades will gain by.
There was not one of his men in front of him. Then later on in the night, as we still stood among those guns, we heard that somewhere in the front he had dropped, and still there were none of his men in front of him. He died, as, if it is so decreed, we would all choose to die, in front of his men and facing East.’`
Lieutenant George Wood, former Scotch teacher who also served in the 58th Battalion, wrote to the school in 1917 that among the many Scotchies and other servicemen he was meeting on the Western Front, ‘C.M. Gray, of the P.L.C., was very highly spoken of, both as a good fellow and as a good officer’.
A Court of Enquiry, held on 6 August 1916, determined:
'The above Officer was killed in action, unless during the ensuing six months his name should appear in any Hospital List or in Lists of Prisoners of War
He is commemorated at: V.C Corner (Panel No 13), Australian Cemetery Memorial, Fromelles, France. His name is located at panel 165 in the Commemorative Area at the Australia War Memorial, Canberra.
Brother - Alastair Gray
On 9 November, 1917, Alastair, a Gunner, embarked from Melbourne on th HMAT Port Sydney A15 , disembarking at Suez on 12 December the same year. By 22 December he was admitted to the 19th AGH in Taranto, then moved the UK for hospitalisation where he remained until 13 March 1918. On 13 April 1918 he sailed from Southampton to France where he joined the 12th Army based near Roulles. By 21 June he was hospitalised again for a week then sent to the 2nd Army Rest Camp in France for 2 months.
He rejoined the 47th Battalion mid-August, disembarking from France to Folkestone on 10 November, 1918, where again he was admitted to hospital for a week before sailing back to Australia mid-March 1919 on the' Port Denison'.
On return to Melbourne, Alastair trained as an Architect. He was a teacher and artist as well. His wife was a well known female Australian tennis champion. They had one son, Ian who became a Supreme Court Justice. Alastair was primarily a watercolor artist who also painted in oils. He was secretary of the Victorian Artists’ Society in 1958. Alastair’s paintings were exhibited around the world and are held in numerous national galleries. Alastair later remarried and died in 1972.
Brother - Hugh Gray
Hugh studied as a Dentist, eventually moving to England. He signed up for The RAF in 1939 and served in the Dental division. He died in 1972 in Wycombe, England.
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