The Military History Society of NSW

William Malcolm Chisholm, circa 1911 ( Sydney Grammar School archives ) This blog post presents items about  Lieutenant William Malcolm Chisholm of Sydney, who has been officially recognised by the Australian War Memorial as t he first Australian to be killed in the First World War. This occurred belatedly on 9 July 2014 when his name was finally added to the Memorial's Commemorative Roll. Lt Chisholm was not serving in Australian uniform but as a commissioned officer of the British Army's 1st Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment. He  was wounded at the Battle of Le Cateau on 26 August 1914, just three days after arriving in France, and died the next day. He was 22 years of age and is buried in Ligny-en-Cambresis cemetery, where his headstone bears the inscription "Elder son of Dr. & Mrs William Chisholm of Sydney, New South Wales". Lt Chisholm was born in Sydney in 1892, the eldest son of an eminent Macquarie Street surgeon.  He grew up on Macquarie Street and att

Hadrian’s Wall once marked the boundary between Roman Britain and the unconquered lands of Caledonia to the north. The term ‘Hadrian’s Wall’ refers not only to the physical wall itself, but all the towers, milecastles, fortlets and nearby large garrison forts that supported the legions and auxiliary troops who manned it. But why was the Wall built? Construction commenced in AD 122 at the direction of the Emperor Hadrian. He wanted a recognizable limit to his empire and was concerned about keeping out the constantly troublesome Pictish tribes from what we now call Scotland. The Wall remained in use in various forms until around AD 410 when the Romans abandoned the Province of Britannia. This lecture will address the political and military aspects of the need for such a massive defensive structure at the edge of the Roman Empire. In military terms it facilitated control of the local populations on both sides; it was a tool to strike fear into the enemies of Rome, then the most powerful e