Cranbury Rifle Club First World War Honour Roll

The Cranbury Rifle Club First World War Honour Roll is a white marble tablet, affixed to the eastern wall of the Cranbury Community Uniting Church. It lists the names of five members of the rifle club who served in the war. 

Three of the men honoured on the memorial are Clarrie Nash, Keith (Barney) Davis and Harold Whitmee. They all enlisted together in 1915 and their first training camp was at Lithgow. While they had been members of the rifle club, they had no basic military training before that time. They were trained as reinforcements for the divisions already in Gallipoli and were allocated to the 13th Reinforcements. As casualties were high at Gallipoli, they were soon sent to Egypt to finish their basic training. Before this was completed, the troops were withdrawn from Gallipoli. The new recruits were mixed with experienced troops and a new Division, the 5th, was formed and the Cranbury boys made up part of the new 5th Division in the 54th Battalion. The other two men listed on the memorial are Christopher Parker who was killed in 1917 and Frank Doust, who was unlucky to have been killed on 31 August 1918, only three months before the war ended. 

On 23 April 1920, the Canowindra Star and Eugowra News reported that the memorial had been unveiled at a service on 11 April by the Reverend L. M. K. Mills before a large congregation, in what was then the Cranbury Methodist Church. When the new church was opened in 1955 the memorial was moved to the new building.

Notes by Harold Balcomb of Toogong, NSW