Norman Sidney Robens

The Description Sheet

The AIF recorded him at five feet six inches, dark complexion, brown eyes, dark brown hair, religion Methodist — and with scars on both knees, his right buttock and his right forearm, acquired before he ever saw a war.⁴

The same papers give his age twice, a month apart, and disagree with themselves: twenty-six on the attestation form of 6 September 1916, and twenty-four years and eleven months on the medical description sheet of 5 October. The inconsistency is the AIF’s own, not a later transcription error.

Eighteen Months of Depots

He spent the next year and a half moving between training establishments: the Rifle Range Grounds at Sydney in October 1916, the Machine Gun Depot into January 1917, then a transfer to the infantry, the 1st Depot Battalion at Royal Park, and further training at Langwarrin and Broadmeadows. He was re-attested at Broadmeadows in November 1917.⁵

He embarked at Sydney aboard HMAT A18 Wiltshire on 2 February 1918 and disembarked at Southampton on 20 April, joining the 9th Training Battalion. His file carries two small disciplinary entries from this period, both of the ordinary kind: a fine of 2/6 for drunkenness, committed at sea, and four days’ Field Punishment No. 2 for failing to salute an officer.⁶

Eighteen Days

He crossed to France via Folkestone on 8 August 1918 and was taken on strength with the 39th Battalion on 13 August. On 31 August — eighteen days later — he was wounded in action.⁷

The news reached Manly in the compressed form these notices always took.

He returned to Australia on 20 May 1919 aboard a transport her record gives as the “Nector” — almost certainly the Nestor, a troopship in AIF service at the time — and was discharged on 28 July 1919.⁸

A Marriage, and a Warrant

In 1919 he married Dorothy Edith R. Foster in Sydney. She had been born at Katoomba in 1898, daughter of William T. and Annie E. Foster.⁹ A daughter, Valerie Dorothy, was born in 1921.

The marriage did not hold. In 1922 the Manly Bench issued a warrant for Norman’s arrest, charged with disobeying a magisterial order for his wife’s support. The Police Gazette description is the mirror of the one issued five years later for his brother-in-law William Gage — the same format, the same flat catalogue of a man’s appearance and clothes.¹⁰

He Had Indeed Gone to the Country

By 1925 the electoral rolls place him at the Shamrock Hotel, Mitchell, in western Queensland, working as a labourer — some five hundred miles beyond the reach of the Manly Bench.¹¹

Dorothy petitioned for divorce. The State Records file, “Divorce papers Dorothy Robens Norman Sydney Robens,” runs from 31 October 1924 to 19 August 1926.¹² The decree absolute was reported in the Daily Telegraph of 31 March 1926, in a list of decrees pronounced before Mr Justice Owen.¹³ Dorothy remarried; she died on 16 May 1946 under the surname Werry, and was buried at Woronora Memorial Park, Sutherland.¹⁴

The Rifle Range at Clermont

He stayed in central Queensland for at least a decade after the divorce. The electoral rolls for both 1937 and 1939 place him at the Rifle Range, Clermont, working as a labourer — not, as an earlier draft of this history had it, as a millhand. That came later.¹⁵

Two Fingers, and £202

By the early 1940s he had come back to New South Wales, to a property called “Malvern” on Victoria Street, Parkes, working as a mill hand. He was still there in 1946 — on the same street as his brother Harold and Harold’s family.¹⁶ After twenty years of moving, he had settled two doors from a brother.

In December 1942 he was injured at Ashwin’s Sawmill on the Back Yamma Road, losing two fingers. He brought a claim in the Workers’ Compensation Court, represented by Mr M. J. Maguire, with corroborating evidence from a Kevin Rhall. Judge Moffit found in his favour for the full amount claimed — £202.¹⁷

Norman Sidney Robens died at Parkes on 27 August 1951, aged sixty, and was buried at Parkes General Cemetery.¹⁸ He was the first of the twelve to go.