People Australia

Studio portrait Harold Edmund Gamble, c. 1916, photographer unknown

from Bank of NSW Roll of Honour

AROLD EDMUND GAMBLE, the son of Mr. Joseph and Mrs. Emily Gamble, was born in Leadville, near Mudgee, N.S.W., on 11th July, 1893. He received his education at the Leadville Public School.

Joining the Bank’s staff at Gulgong, N.S.W., on 28th June, 1911, Harold Gamble was transferred in the following August to Coonamble, and a year later to the Head Office.

He enlisted at Victoria Barracks, Sydney, on 24th July, 1916, as a wireless operator in the 4th Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps. While training in England he became a second air mechanic in the Royal Flying Corps, and was sent to France on 20th August, 1917, with the 71st Squadron of the R.F.C.

Soon after his arrival in France, Harold Gamble was temporarily attached to the 105th Howitzer Battery as a receiver of wireless messages. With that battery he took part in the action at Westhoek Ridge, near Ypres, and on 22nd October, 1917, was resting in a "pill-box” behind the line. While there a German shell hit the window and burst in the pill-box, the concussion killing Harold Gamble instantly.

The instructor at the wireless school in Sydney, who was associated with Harold Gamble up to the time he went to France, says that no one of his men stood out more prominently as a good Australian. “I always felt that the influence of a young man such as he was, always tended towards the happiness and pleasure of his companions. . . . He was a thinking fellow, with a correct and steady vision of the things that mattered, and his actions always coincided with his ideas.”

He was buried in the Australian portion of the cemetery at Oodurdum, a few miles from Ypres.