Australian Engineer Concerts in Brightlingsea UK 1916-1919

On the 28th of April 1918 a concert was held at the Empire Theatre for the men based at the Australian Engineer Training Depot (AETD) was established in Brightlingsea between 1916 and 1919. Over 5,000 Anzacs were stationed in the town and surrounding areas, leaving behind a significant social and supporting legacy which has not been forgotten.

The establishment of the Australian Engineer Training Depot (AETD) in Brightlingsea, grew out of the need to find additional locations for ANZAC training camps as the camps already established around Bulford, Boscombe and Salisbury Plain soon became full to overflowing.

This coastal Town was chosen as a training base for thousands of Australian and New Zealand troops. They were trained in bridge, pontoon and road building, trench and tunnel digging and front line military tactics in the soft mud and tidal creeks that made the area such a perfect training ground for the conditions they were likely to encounter on the Western Front.

A small British military training depot was set up in the town at the start of the war but it wasn’t until the Australian Engineers Training Depot was established in 1916 that things really began to change. The men were camped under canvas in the fields but as it was so cold the locals took them in and boarded them. As everyone was living in these close quarters it was inevitable that another generation was to be born and a lot of men stayed after the war and married. Their descendants still return on a pilgrimage to remember their ancestors.

“The Australians stayed the longest and had the biggest impact. They came here because in this part of Essex, the terrain was considered compatible with some parts of the frontline. They were not frontline soldiers but behind-the-lines men, although they often ended up in the line of fire.”

Some Australians were battle-hardened troops, often from Gallipoli, acting as instructors and some were brand new recruits but all were volunteers. At the end of the course, the men were deployed on active service overseas and more Anzacs arrived to be trained.

Regular concerts were held at the Empire Theatre (photos 2 and 3) for the men based at the Australian Engineer Training Depot (AETD). One of the performers at the concert was Miss Alice Wyatt, who, for a time was part of a duo with Myra Hammon called the “Shadow Girls” and together with 10 other ladies and 2 gentlemen regularly entertained the Australian Engineers in the Empire Theatre in Brightlinsea.

We have in our collection an Autographed Souvenir of an All Australian Concert held on 28th April 1918 showing a portrait of Miss Alice Wyatt to whom it was presented and signed by “The Diggers” (Photo 1)

This item was loaned permanently to the RAEAV by Gary Edwards and proudly hangs on the wall in our Engineers Room at the Oakleigh Barracks.

At the end of the war the AETD remained in Brightlingsea for a number of months. On January 13 1919 a silver bowl was presented to Captain Geoffrey Charles Payne, Commanding Officer of the AETD on behalf of the townspeople in remembrance of the time the ANZACS had spent in the town.(photos 4 and 5)

In April 2016 Ann Berry from the Friends of Brightlingsea Museum contacted the Australian War Memorial regarding the whereabouts of the bowl and wondered if by chance it had come into the National Collection. Ensuing research discovered that the bowl had been donated to the Australian War Records Section (the precursor to the Australian War Memorial) soon after the First World War. This news was met with tremendous excitement from Brightlingsea as the whereabouts of the bowl had been a mystery for many years.

Sources;

Cinque Port Liberty, Brightlingsea

Australian War Memorial

Mel Constable RAEAV