Gallipoli - The Colonel Remembers

Long before he became "TG Millner", the patriarch of the Woods, Tom Millner was a young man who went off to the Great War. Twice wounded at Gallipoli, it impacted him in many ways - not least of which was that he was nursed back to recovery by May Pattinson who he subsequently married in England in 1918 and thus founded the family dynasty that we know today.

Born in Sydney in 1887, TG grew up in Newcastle where he played footy for East Newcastle and then when he returned to Sydney as a young man, Tom Millner actually played footy for Easts - our opponents this coming weekend.

Some 50 years later in 1965, he went back to the Peninsula on an anniversary tour that was in the way of a pilgrimage for his fallen comrades. He recorded his thoughts in a series of articles for the Club magazine of the time - click here to read it . It's impossible to read his tender tribute to Dick Irving the fallen brother of our Life Member ALC Irving and not be moved by the depth of feeling and the sense of loss that that generation endured

As the Colonel said " Alas, how young so many of them were"

Lest we forget

Colonel Millner at the grave of Dick Irving, Lone Pine 1965