Grose Vale's Urtle and Louis Ezzy both served in World War I

Urtle was born in 1885, was schooled at Grose Vale Public School, and was a blacksmith by trade, employed on the Richmond River.

War records show he had ten months experience with the Bangalow Rifle Club when he enlisted in October 1914 at the age of 29.

During the war, Private Urtle Hilton Ezzy served under the 4th Battalion 1st Infantry Brigade. Sadly, he was killed in action on May 11, 1915 in the Gallipoli Peninsula, and is buried in Gallipoli.

According to a publication called We remember them: First World War volunteers from the Kurrajong & Colo districts by the Kurrajong-Comleroy Historical Society, by June 25, 1915 Urtle’s parents received word from the Defence Department that their son had been killed in action at the Dardanelles. Urtle was the couple’s second-eldest son and, at the time of his death, he was only 30 years old.

After Urtle’s death, his older brother Louis (born 1882) decided to join as he wanted to avenge the death of his brother.

Louis was a cattle station manager by occupation, and was 34 years old when he enlisted on November 8, 1916.

Records show Trooper Louis Conrad Ezzy was in the Camel Corps, and in February of 1917 he was transferred to the 4th Light Horse Regiment (his family believes he fought in Beersheba). On March 27, 1917 he was made Lance Corporal.

Louis contracted malaria on June 22, 1918, and returned to Australia on December 26 of the same year, before being discharged on April 25, 1919.

When Louis returned home he married the local Grose Vale post mistress, Vera Hough, and they had three children. The eldest, James (Jim) Ezzy, turns 91 this year, and lives in Richmond with his wife Betty.

Jim told the Gazette he grew up hearing the story that his father, Louis, had enlisted to avenge the death of his brother - Jim’s uncle - Urtle.

“I had two uncles in the war,” he said. “One on my mother’s side got a military medal at Beersheba for being the first one over the trenches. The other poor man [Urtle] lasted 25 days on Gallipoli - we have been to the grave and we have photos of it.”

Jim grew up in the same house in which his father Louis and uncle Urtle grew up, on Cabbage Tree Road. However, in 1944 when Jim was 17, a great bushfire gutted the house and took with it much of the family’s memorabilia.

Among the items lost in the fire, were Urtle’s belongings that were sent back home after he was killed in the war - including a brass plaque the family was given after his passing, which melted in the sheer heat of the flames - along with Turkish flags, letters and photographs.

Today, one of the only surviving photographs of Louis (who passed away in 1968) is a framed picture of him in his military uniform taken right before he headed off to war. There are no surviving photographs of his brother Urtle.

Jim said the fire had been burning in bushland up near Bilpin for around a fortnight before it spread and wreaked havoc on the Ezzy home.

“On what we call ‘blowup day’ - the twelfth of December, 1944, which was a Sunday - 60-miles-per-hour winds were blowing, and it was tremendously hot - well over the forties,” Jim recalled.

“That bushfire started off at Mountain Lagoon at half-past-nine in the morning, and by four o’clock in the afternoon it had moved to Schofields. It nearly got to Penrith, too. We lost quite a lot of stuff in that fire.”

Today, Jim’s daughter Alison Ezzy-Dickford (the youngest of two children) lives on Cabbage Tree Road on the same plot of land that has been in the Ezzy family for generations.

Alison lives with her husband and two children in a house that was built in the very same place her father’s childhood home - and her grandfather Louis’s and great-uncle Urtle’s childhood home before that - burnt to the ground almost 75 years ago.

Miraculously, the Ezzy family members were able to save from the fire a letter that Urtle sent his brother Louis after Urtle left for the war. The letter details Urtle’s journey to Egypt, leaving from Melbourne on the HMAT Themistocles.

The letter, dated February 25, 1914, is water- and age-stained and a piece has been ripped out of it, but Alison has transcribed what she can make out from the letter, which begins: ‘Dear Brother, No doubt you will be quite surprised to hear when this letter reaches you that I am in the above named place, and close to the Great Pyramids. Your letter you wrote to Broadmeadows, I received in Camp yesterday.’

Urtle goes on to explain that he is in an infantry Battalion (foot) and that he had undergone a stiff medical examination and eyesight test. He tells his brother that if he plans to join the mounted Regiments, he will also be required to pass a riding test, ‘but I have no hesitation in saying that you would pass that test quite easily, height 5 ft. 6 in, chest measurement 34 inches’.

He said after leaving Melbourne on December 21 and arriving in Albany on December 26, he and his fellow men waited five days for all the 17 transports to join them. 

‘On Dec 31st we steamed out of Albany in two lines, a sight I will never forget while I live. The name of the transport I was on was the S.S. Themistocles which carried the reinforcements for the first contingent from,’ the letter says.

‘From Albany we sailed for Colombo, the time being fourteen days seeing nothing else but sky and water, and the lines of transports. During the voyage across the Indian Ocean I had the week to take measles, and a week isolation was the result. Arriving at Colombo we had a stay of two days, but not allowed on shore.’

From that post they sailed for Aden (Arabia) and stayed one day, then sailed through the Red Sea for Suez where they stayed two days, and then through the Canal for Port Said, ‘a sight also I will never forget, a lovely sight it was,’ the letter states.

They then sailed to Alexandria where they disembarked and took the train for Abbessia, where Urtle said he could see pyramids from his tent. He also mentioned they went through Cairo, which was ‘a sight well worth seeing’, with narrow streets