Hugh Gemmell Lamb-Smith


Hugh Gemmell Lamb-Smith, known as Gemmell, was an innovative Australian educator who landed at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli, on Sunday, 25 April 1915 as a member of the Second Field Ambulance unit, and went on to serve in Europe for the duration of the war. He also served as an AIF Education Scheme Instructor in Belgium. He was a prominent member of the Melbourne Anglican community, and he taught at Caulfield Grammar School from 1913 to 1951.

Family

The son of William and Margaret Serpine "Maggie" Lamb-Smith, née Gemmell, Hugh Gemmell Lamb-Smith was born on 31 March 1889, at Cheltenham, Victoria. and died on 26 December 1951, at his home in East St Kilda, Victoria.

Father and mother

His father, William Lamb-Smith, born in Renfrewshire, Scotland in 1846, was a Justice of the Peace, and a prominent auctioneer and land developer in the outskirts of Melbourne. He was also, among many things: a Councillor of the Moorabbin Shire Council from 1899 until 1902, and served as its President in 1893; President of the Cheltenham Lawn Tennis Club; President of the Mentone Erica Literary, Musical and Dramatic Society, the Captain of the Cheltenham Rifle Club from its inception until his death ; and the Consul-General for Paraguay.
His mother, Margaret Serpine "Maggie" Lamb-Smith, née Gemmell — who had married William in St Kilda, Victoria on 19 April 1883 — was the daughter of Hugh Mitchell Campbell Gemmell, and Simonette Marie Gemmell, née Christiani. Born in the West Indies, she "was much given to good works, and rated serving people more highly than reputation or wealth", and, moreover, "was sensitive to the beauties represented by art, and especially music". She was a life governor of the Alfred Hospital, and a member of the foundation committee of the Convalescent Home for Men, at Cheltenham. She died at St Kilda on 22 June 1938.

Sister

Gemmell's only sibling, Mora Marie Lamb-Smith, was a trained nurse. She enlisted in World War I, and served in India, with the rank of Sister, in the Australian Army Nursing Service. She returned to Australian on 17 May 1919, and her military appointment was terminated on 29 June 1919. She married Hugh Gibson Gemmell Sloane, of Mulwala, New South Wales on 26 October 1921 at Christ Church in South Yarra; they had two sons, one of whom died at the age of seven. Mora and her brother Gemmell were both confirmed at the same ceremony at Saint George's Anglican Church in Malvern, Victoria on 21 June 1904.

Wife

One of the five daughters and four sons of William Marshall Harris,, bank manager, and Alderman of the Borough of Armidale, and Marina Jane Harris, née Ross, Dorothy Vernon Harris was born in Armidale on 3 September 1885. One of her brothers, Second Lieutenant Philip Vernon Harris, A.I.F., died of wounds on 11 June 1917, in France.
Dorothy graduated from the Sydney Kindergarten Training College as a fully qualified kindergarten teacher in December 1908. She married Gemmell Lamb-Smith at Turramurra, on 17 May 1924. They had no children. Dorothy died in Sydney on 15 August 1964.
From his own, direct, personal experience of Dorothy, Horace Webber, observed that she was a "gracious lady", and remarked that she was well aware of the sufferings Gemmell experienced as an ever-present consequence of the horrors of his wartime experiences, and that, once they were married, "her benign influence did much to restore his peace of mind" — and there's no doubt that Dorothy's innate, natural propensities in these directions had been considerably enhanced by her own extensive wartime experiences of working for the Red Cross, as a quartermaster, in Australian military hospitals in England from 1916 to 1919.
She was one of the 2,300 Victorians that were awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal in June 1953.

Education

He was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne from 1901 to 1904, at various other schools, and, then, at Wangaratta Grammar School, where he not only completed his Junior Public Examination studies, but was also.
In addition to the extra-curricular studies he had pursued in England under the auspices of the AIF Education Scheme prior to his return to Australia in November 1919, he resumed his "evening student" university studies in 1921, having settled into his teaching role at Caulfield Grammar School once again. He eventually graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1931, and a Diploma in Commerce in 1933.

Teaching (1907–1914)

Having taught at Wangaratta Grammar School in 1907, he went on to teach at another two schools in New South Wales — Tudor House School, Mona Vale and Chatswood Preparatory School — before returning to Melbourne in 1910, and entering the Victorian State Government Education Department's Teaching Service. He commenced teaching at Caulfield Grammar School in 1913, having been recruited by its owner and principal, Walter Murray Buntine, "from a small school in Gippsland", to serve as a "Resident Master".

First A.I.F.

On 11 September 1914, soon after the declaration of war, Lamb-Smith — " sympathy lay with healing people rather than wounding them" — enlisted in the A.I.F., and joined the Expeditionary Camp at Broadmeadows.
On 15 December 1914, having completed his basic training, he was appointed to the Second Field Ambulance, a unit that had been raised at Broadmeadows, in mid-August 1914. During the five years that he served in the A.I.F., Private Lamb-Smith was temporarily promoted on a number of occasions to fill vacancies caused by the vacations, leave, or deployment of others — including temporary Lance Corporal, temporary Corporal, and temporary Sergeant — then, once the individual he had replaced had returned, he reverted to his earlier rank.

Landing at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915

As a member of the Second Field Ambulance, he landed at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915. The historians at the Australian War Memorial write of a "casualties debacle":

Illness and injury

Lamb-Smith sought treatment for gastric illness from time to time at Gallipoli, and in November 1915 he was hospitalized in Egypt with a case of "Enteric Fever", which was severe enough for him to be invalided back to Australia in December 1915, where he recovered sufficiently, four months later, to be able to return to duty. He rejoined the Second Field Ambulance, in France, in August 1916.
He was wounded-in-action in the left leg, in France, on 22 April 1917. He was hospitalized for a month, released, and, then, re-admitted with a poisoned left leg five months later. He returned to active duty with the Second Field Ambulance in mid-December 1917, and continued to serve with them until the end of the war.

The A.I.F. Educational Scheme

The A.I.F. Education Scheme was created and administered by Brigadier-General George Merrick Long — a former headmaster of Trinity Grammar School, in Victoria ; and, at the time of his appointment as Director of Education, A.I.F., the Anglican Bishop of Bathurst — with the assistance, support, and guidance of Major Harry Thomson, a Rhodes Scholar, of Oxford and Adelaide Universities, and Captain William James Mulholland, of Sydney University. The Scheme had its origins in the A.I.F.’s response to the report made by Long in mid-1918: at a time when it was obvious that it could take at least twelve months for the available transport to be able to repatriate all military personnel to Australia.
Following his report, Long was commissioned to form the A.I.F.’s Education Service — which operated continuously from that time until late 1920. Given that very few of its members were professional soldiers, and that all of its members were volunteers, the A.I.F. clearly understood its obligation to "refit the fighting man for his return to civil life and to make good as far as possible the wastage of the years spent at war" ; and, in recognizing that "the longer the war goes on the more difficult becomes the taking up of the old life", its Education Scheme was specifically designed to meet the particular post-war needs of three quite different groups of men:
When applying for support from the scheme, the men provided particulars of their pre-enlistment occupation, their current military employment, their intended post-war occupation, the areas within which they desired training, and the details of any special courses of instruction that might prove beneficial. Training was freely available to all, always voluntary, and never compulsory. It was of a non-military nature, and was delivered to the men, as part of their individual post-war demobilization procedure, through two separate but inter-dependent programmes:
Lamb-Smith not only worked immediately post-war as one of the scheme's in-service instructors — remaining overseas such that he was in one of the last groups repatriated — but he also used the opportunity the scheme provided for him, as a career educator, to spend some time at King's College London where, he studied the approach of Henry Caldwell Cook, a British ex-soldier and teacher at an all-boys school, whose work emphasized the importance of making learning an exciting, inspirational, and imaginative exercise for all involved. Following that sojourn in England, he also studied in France, before returning to his instructional duties in Belgium, from whence he was repatriated on 6 October 1919.

Teaching at Caulfield Grammar School (1920–1951)

Lamb-Smith returned to Australia from his overseas service on 6 November 1919, and was officially discharged from the A.I.F. on 4 February 1920. Inspired to deliver his teaching with an entirely new outlook, and in an entirely new way, he resumed his teaching career at Caulfield Grammar School in the first term of 1920, although he was in a rather fragile state and greatly affected by his horrific wartime experiences as a member of the Field Ambulance.
As an experienced teacher of boys and young men, Lamb-Smith had been greatly influenced by his wartime observations of the prior education, wants, needs, talents, and native abilities of the men who enrolled in the AIF Education Scheme in order to prepare themselves academically, occupationally, and personally for their return to post-war civilian life.
Having directly observed these men collectively — most of whom had completed their secondary education some years earlier — he began to recognize the importance of teaching in a far more interesting and engaging fashion. Moreover, he also came to recognize the considerable impact of the wide range of useful skills the men had acquired as a consequence of their military service; both in terms of unlocking their hidden talents, and in terms of making them far more useful to themselves and their society.

Hobbies

Cadet Corps

Some form of military training had been a part of the formal tuition at Caulfield Grammar School since its founding in 1881. When it officially raised its own Cadet Corps as a detachment of the Victorian Volunteer Cadet Corps on 3 March 1885, it was the eighth school in Victoria to do so. The Cadet Unit which had been completely disbanded in 1929, was re-established, during wartime, in 1941. Lamb-Smith volunteered and was immediately made its O.I.C. He continued in that role until December 1948.

Other offices

In his lifetime he variously held the offices of lay Chairman of the Cathedral Branch of the Church of England Men's Society, President of the Old Caulfield Grammarians' Association, Chaplain of the Caulfield Grammarians' Masonic Lodge, the Treasurer of St James the Great Anglican Church, East St Kilda, Honorary Treasurer of the Victorian Amateur Athletic Association's Inter-Club Sports Committee, and the Caulfield Branch of the All for Australia League. He was a member of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1914.
Also, he was an active member of the Returned Sailors and Soldiers Imperial League of Australia, the Honorary Organizer of the Caulfield Grammar School's Memorial Hall Fund, and, with his wife Dorothy, he worked actively for the Auxiliary of the Royal Children's Hospital.

Remembrance and Thanksgiving at Caulfield Grammar School

Anzac Day

Among all of the Australian Schools, Caulfield Grammar School has an unusual, if not unique, relationship with 25 April.
The idea of a moment of silence at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month was first suggested by an Old Caulfield Grammarian, journalist Edward George Honey, in letter he wrote on 8 May 1919, to The Evening News of London.

Death

Having discharged "the heavy responsibilities" of reading out the "names of the Fallen" at Caulfield Grammar's annual Remembrance Day Ceremony in November 1951, Lamb-Smith returned to his office, "suffered a severe stroke, and collapsed" — "he lived on for some weeks, but never recovered from the illness", and died at his home in East St Kilda on 26 December 1951.

Legacy

In a number of ways, Lamb-Smith's legacy is deeply embedded within Caulfield Grammar School:

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