Inspiring service to the community
Too often people forget the many welfare and humanitarian initiatives in our communities today have their roots with those who rose to the need during major conflict. And so it was with Lady Edith Lilian Bridges (1862 – 1926). Lady Bridges was the widow of Major General Sir William Throsby Bridges KCB, CMG, commander of the 1st AIF.
Perhaps the Major General is better known as the founder of The Royal Military College, Duntroon in 1911 and for his early death on 18 May, just three weeks after the Landings on Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. Bridges was on his way up Monash Valley to see Brigadier Chauvel at Quinn’s Post, when a sniper shot him, rupturing the femoral artery in Bridges’ right leg.
While nobody really knows the origins of the acronym ‘ANZAC’ (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) it is thought that the name emerged in the 1st AIF Headquarters.
Major General Bridges’ role and fate and the ceremonies surrounding his repatriation and reburial on Mt Pleasant overshadowed other prominent members of his family. His son Lieutenant Noel Bridges served on Gallipoli with the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers and was promoted Captain in October 1915. Later he transferred to the AIF and as Major Bridges, he served with the 25th Australian Infantry Battalion on the Western Front. He was awarded a Distinguished Service Order in 1917 and wounded in 1918 in Flanders. Perhaps torn between the example of his late father and the anxiety of his mother who could not bear the risk of possibly losing him in the war, Noel Bridges resigned on 21 March 1919 and took up his original job as a surveyor becoming the sixth Surveyor General for the Federated Malay States in 1938.[1]
Meanwhile Lady Bridges had become the inaugural President of the ‘Friendly Union of Soldiers’ Wives and Mothers: Australian Imperial Forces’ (c.1914 – c.1946). This wartime initiative was set up by Lady Helen Munro Ferguson[2], the wife of the Governor-General to provide support for wives and families of the 1st AIF.
Lady Bridges was no newcomer to grief as she had lost three of her seven children. The eldest died when six months old in 1886, one of her twin daughters drowned in a boating accident six months later and a son died at boarding school in England. An initiative such as the Friendly Union of Soldiers’ Wives and Mothers might have been an organisation she had had craved for her own support in her bereavement. Whatever the catalyst had been, she identified the need for supportive friendship and understanding from like-minded people experiencing similar circumstances. It is therefore unsurprising that she should want to ensure that others could receive it.
When her health forced her retirement from public life, she handed over the Presidency of the ‘Friendly Union of Soldier’s Wives and Mothers’ to General Sir Harry Chauvel’s wife, Lady Sibyl Chauvel, thus passing the torch and establishing yet another link between the Bridges and Chauvel families. Lady Bridges’ early death in 1926 broke the link.
It is often said that behind every great man, there is a strong woman and so it was with many of the wives of the 1st AIF. Interestingly the vice presidents included Mrs G F Pearce, wife of the Defence Minister, Mrs Legge, wife of General J. G. Legge and Mrs Sellheim, wife of General Victor Sellheim[3].
In 1927 Lady Chauvel’s appointment to the ‘Friendly Union of Soldier’s Wives and Mothers’ led to her becoming one of the founding members of the Shrine of Remembrance Committee. In their lifelong love affair, two of the many passions Sir Harry and Lady Chauvel shared were their commitment to commemorations and welfare.
The other woman appointed to the Shrine of Remembrance Committee was Mrs S J Powell who represented the bereaved.[4] The Committee was abandoned in 1933 and the Shrine was opened on 11 November 1934.
Although these women of the ‘Friendly Union of Soldier’s Wives and Mothers’ were the trailblazers in welfare for soldiers’ wives and families and fundraising, the provision of support for the families of military personnel is still a vexed issue. In a rapidly changing world, multiple and short deployments in different trouble spots continue to provide challenges for military families.
It is well worth visiting Lady Bridges’ grave and paying tribute to a woman who gave freely of her time and effort to so many. For this reason Lady Bridges’ resting place is included on the Canberra Light Horse Trail. Her grave can be found in the churchyard of St John the Baptist, Canberra. She was one of the first of many women who worked hard on the home front. Lady Bridges did her bit against the terrible combination of private bereavements and anxiety for the remaining members of her family. Her youngest son Major Anthony George Bridges (1905 – 1983) and his wife Dorothy Judith (1922 – 2005) are memorialised on the foot of her grave.
In 1939 Lady Sibyl Chauvel was made an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for her work in social welfare. After the outbreak of World War Two, as State Commissioner for Girl Guides, in May 1940 she wrote a letter to the Argus asking for assistance for the Girl Guides who were raising money for ‘The Little Victims of War’.
After Sir Harry died on 4 March 1945, Lady Chauvel retired gradually from public life to concentrate on a growing family of grandchildren.
In 1979 Lady Chauvel was cremated and her ashes were interred in Springvale Botanical Cemetery. Apart from a short will, Lady Chauvel didn’t leave a personal archive. Her daughter Elyne Mitchell OAM had kept a small, but colourful and beautifully written correspondence archive with her mother. Unfortunately it was burned in the Summer 2020 Bushfires that burned Elyne’s old home.
Lady Chauvel’s place on any Light Horse Trail must remain in memory. Like Sir Harry she wanted no memorial. She might have argued that she was one of many while Lady Bridges was among the first of many.
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Notes
[1] It is presumed that Noel Bridges drowned when the SS Ban Ho Guan was sunk at the end of February or early March 1942, possibly by a Japanese submarine.
[2] Lady Helen Munro Ferguson was the founder of the Australian Red Cross on 13 August 1914, just nine days after the outbreak of World War 1 and continued to represent the Australian Red Cross long after her return in 1920 to the United Kingdom.
[3] Major General Victor Sellheim had served with General Sir Harry Chauvel in the Queensland Mounted Infantry
[4] Scates, Bruce, A Place to Remember: A History of the Shrine (Cambridge University Press, 2009. P 92