2nd Lieutenant Everard Digges La Touche

2nd Lieutenant Everard Digges La Touche

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DIGGES LA TOUCHE
2nd Lieutenant Everard

6th Reinforcements, 2nd Battalion, Australian Imperial Force

Born 14 March 1883 at Burrendale, Newcastle, County Down, Ireland
[Birth certificate: 1883 March qtr Kilkeel 1 547 (IRL)]

Educated: Bedford Grammar School, England and Trinity College, Dublin: B.A. 1904. M.A. 1908. Litt.D. 1910.

Married; Clerk in Holy Orders (Clergyman), of Hornsby, Sydney NSW

Next of Kin listed as: Wife; Eva Digges La Touche (nee King), of 'The Rectory', Miltown, County Kerry, Ireland

Photos of 2nd Lieutenant Digges La Touche are known to exist in the following locations: Anzac Memorial p47. Town & Country Journal 10 Mar 1915 p29. Sydney Mail 1 Sep 1915 p37

Killed in action
6th August 1915
at Lone Pine
Aged 32






2nd Battalion, A.I.F.



Grave:

Lone Pine cemetery


Epitaph:

Faithful Unto Death
Quis Separabit
('Who Can Separate Us')



Notes:

CWGC lists Next of Kin (in addition to wife) as: Father; the late Major E.N. Digges-la Touche. Mother; Clementine Digges-la Touche. Father; Everard Neal Digges La Touche, served as a major in the Bengal Infantry, Indian Army.

On embarkation roll, Marital status is listed as single, but this is a mistake.
NOK is listed as: Mother, Mrs. C.[Clementine] Digges-la Touche [nee Eager], care of C.B. Jameson Esq. 'Monasterean', County Kildare, Ireland.

Married Eva King, daughter of Catherine and Canon William John King, of the rectory in Miltown, Kerry, in 1909. First son born 1910, in Bradford, England.

Appears in group photo; Officers of No.17 School of Instruction, The Warren, Marrickville, Sydney. Town & Country Journal 10 Mar 1915 p29.

Born Burrendale, Newcastle, County Down, Ireland. Anglican [Church of Ireland].
Youngest ever Litt.D. from Trinity College, Dublin.

Unable to obtain a position as Chaplain, joined the A.I.F. as a private, but dropped out due to ill health. When recovered, attended the Officer Training School at Marrickville, Sydney, after which was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant. Left a widow and two sons, Everard William James Handley, and Paul.

Held post of Donnellan lecturer in the University of Dublin, at the time the youngest ever to do so. Went to Sydney in 1912.

CWGC lists date of death as 6th/8th August, but Bean is specific in stating this to be the 6th August.

Reached Anzac with the 6th Reinforcements on the eve of the Lone Pine battle; shot in the intestines next morning in a deep trench, on the southern Lone Pine Plateau, and died some 12 hours afterwards: 'Among the first eager leaders to reach it [the trench] was a reinforcement officer who had arrived only the night before from Egypt but had begged leave to join the attack - Lieutenant Everard Digges La Touche, a missioner of the Church of England in Sydney. At its first bend he and two of his men fell mortally wounded...' (Bean V2 p517).

'As D Company moved across they passed, and added to, numbers who dotted No Man's Land, the early casualties. Vicious enfilade machine gun fire was sweeping the Second [Battalion] and Digges La Touche was mortally hit.' (F.W. Taylor p128).

'Where possible, the wounded were cleared, although to any man wounded through the intestines this movement was probably fatal. .... Capt. Jacobs had determined that his friend Digges La Touche, who lay in his trench grievously wounded in this manner, should not be moved. But the wounded man insisted that he must be cleared out of the way. 'It's not me you must consider,' he urged, 'but the position.' He was moved, and shortly afterwards died.' (Bean V2 p532, 532n).

Lieutenant Digges La Touche's younger brother, Lieutenant Averell Digges La Touche, was killed in action at the Battle of Loos, at Hooge, France, September 25 - 27, 1915, while serving with the 2nd Battalion, Royal Irish Rifles. Their mother had a memorial plaque erected to the memory of her sons and her husband in St. Patrick's, Dublin. Another memorial plaque for her sons is located in the Anglican church at Monasterevan, Ireland where she was living at the time of their deaths.


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