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An Australian officer

Lieutenant Bryant Charles Hamilton

 

 

Bryant Charles Hamilton was born in Adelaide, Australia. His parents had emigrated to Australia in the 1800s from Tandragee, Craigavon, County Armagh. His father was born at Castlecaulfield, Dungannon, County Tyrone, where his father was a curate. Hamilton was in England soon after the war broke out and volunteered. It appears that he played a role in the British Army's response to the Easter Rebellion in 1916, as shown by the picture below, with Hamilton and two others crouching behind a barricade in Dublin's Holles Street.

 

 

Commissioned into the North Irish Horse as a 2nd Lieutenant on 26 July 1916, Hamilton arrived in France in March 1917, where he joined A Squadron of the 1st Regiment. According to his family Hamilton had three horses shot from under him during action in France. He was promoted to Lieutenant on 28 January 1918.

Hamilton returned to South Australia after the war. The photographs below include two rare training photographs, one which appears to be bayonet practice.

 

 

 

Written on the reverse of the postcard below is:

This is a photo of A Squadron the one I did most of my fighting with. The first officer on my right is Capt Bocher, the second is Atkinson. This was taken a few days before I went into Hospital. B.C.H. (Hamilton was hospitalised with pneumonia.)

Hamilton appears to be sitting in the front row, third from the viewer's right. Third from the viewer's left, front row, is Lieutenant Edwin Arthur Atkinson, originally a Sergeant in the 9th Canadian Mounted Rifles. Another version of this photograph appears under the Dodds collection on this site.

 

 

I am grateful to Bryant Hamilton's daughter, Anne Magarey, for kindly agreeing that I reproduce her pictures here.