Captain Edward Frederick Robert BAGE Clicking on Photo will return to Page A - B

BAGE Captain Edward Frederick Robert (King's Polar Medal) 3rd Field Company, Australian Engineers Born 17 Apr 1888, in St. Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria [Birth certificate: 1888 15976 St Kilda Vic] Educated: Melbourne Church of England Grammar School; Trinity College, Melbourne University. B.Eng. (Civil) 1905 - 1910, Victoria Single; Soldier / Officer of Australian Permanent Forces, of Fulton Street, East St. Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria Next of Kin listed as: Father; Edward Bage. Mother; Mary Charlotte Bage (nee Lange), of Cranford, Fulton Street, East St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria Photos of Captain Bage are known to exist in the following locations: Anzac Memorial 1917 p256. University of Melbourne Record of Active Service p1.War Services of Old Melburnians 1914-18 p113. Argus 16 June 1915 p7*. Brisbane Daily Mail 19 Jun 1915 p13. Sydney Mail 23 Jun 1915 p30. Melbourne Punch 24 Jun 1915

2nd Lieutenant in Corps of Australian Engineers, Queensland, 1909. Transferred to Royal Australian Engineers as Lieutenant, 1911, submarine mining station, Swan Island, Victoria.

Astronomer, assistant magnetician and recorder of tides with Sir Douglas Mawson's 1911 Antarctic expedition. Stayed away two years and three months, as he was one of the six volunteers forming the relief party that was left in the Antarctic for a second winter when Mawson and his companions had failed to return to winter quarters on time. Lieutenant Bage contributed the chapter 'The Quest of the Southern Magnetic Pole' to Mawson's book 'The Home of the Blizzard.' Awarded the King's Polar Medal in 1915.

Took up duty at Port Phillip Heads in 1914, on return from Antarctica.
Appointed Captain, 3rd Field Company Engineers 18th October 1914. (War Services of Old Melburnians 1914-18 p66, 125).

Only son of the late Edward Bage, merchant, of Melbourne and Cranford, Fulton Street, East St. Kilda. Entered Melbourne Grammar School 1900, obtained Witherby scholarship, 1901. Left the school in 1904 with 1st class honours in physics at matriculation and a warden's scholarship to Trinity College, Melbourne. Obtained 1st Class honours in chemistry. Rowed in College Eight, and was honorary secretary of the Students' Representative Council. While in Antarctica was leader of the southern sledging party which accomplished a hazardous 600 mile journey. (Brisbane Daily Mail 19 Jun 1915 p13).

The toll that war is taking of our bravest and best is strikingly shown in the death of Captain E.F.R. Bage, states the Melbourne Argus. Here was a young man who before the war had enshrined his name in the book of Australian heroes. During the two and a quarter years he was away with the Mawson Antarctic Expedition he amply proved the fine temper of his courage and resolution. He was one of the choicest spirits of that gallant band, and at twenty-five years of age had crowded a world of romantic achievement into his life. Yet immediately war broke out he volunteered for service, and it was second in command of the 3rd Field Company engineers that he fell.

Killed while marking out a proposed new trench on the forward slope of Silt Spur, on the southern edge of the Lone Pine Plateau:
'At 3 in the afternoon Bage and Drake Brockman went out, eight men under Lieutenant Selby of the 11th accompanying them. ...It has been estimated that at least five machine-guns were directed upon them. Bage was hit first in the arm, then in the leg, and finally through the head, and killed; Selby and two others were wounded. Bage's body was left until dark, when at great risk one of the covering party, Lance-Corporal Joyce, and some men of the 11th, searched for and brought it in.' (Bean V2 p257 quoted, 258n. diagram p257).

'Captain Bage was killed by a bullet. Went out in front of firing line to mark out a trench and got picked off. It was only natural, very bad luck tho'. The enemy's guns killed a few men today,. Knocked up a couple of guns. Killed an artillery officer.' (Probert, Cpl. J.K. No. 1, 4 Section, 2nd Field Company, Engineers. Diaries. 7 May 1915).

 

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