Edmund Malcolm (Mal) Brown

Mal was born in 1893 at Moonee Ponds, Victoria, the youngest of three sons to Edmund Joseph (a surveyor) and Annie (née Moran). On the 2nd of November 1900, Mal’s mother passed away at their home, “Aparima” in Grosvenor Street, Moonee Ponds. Three years later Edmund married Mary Annie Tovell (née Mitchell). Mary’s first husband, Charles Edward Tovell, had also died in 1900, leaving Mary with three boys aged 10 to 13. The middle son, John Francis Huon Tovell, would also be killed in Gallipoli on the day of the landing. Mal was educated at Brighton Grammar and later attended Dookie Agricultural College.

Mal’s story is one of countless others of loved ones who simply disappeared in the heat and chaos of battle. 

War had been declared on the 4th of August, 1914. Mal, like thousands of other young, and sometimes not so young, men decided to answer the call. On the 29th of August, at the Sydney recruiting office, he signed his enlistment and became Private Edmund Malcolm Brown, Regimental Number 20, of A Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Brigade of the 1st Australian Division.

On the 18th of October the 2nd Battalion embarked on HMAT A28 Suffolk at Sydney. After months of training in the sands around mena Camp, the battalion embarked on HMS Derfflinger at Alexandria and set sail for the Island of Lemnos on the 5th of April. Three days later they were disembarking at the Port of Mudros. Over the coming two weeks the battalion practiced the embarking and disembarking routines they would use in the coming offensive. The battalion war diary has no records from the 17th of April to the 1st of May, however it’s known that it took part in the landing on the 25th of April as part of the second and third waves. 

The first day at ANZAC was chaos, with units being mixed and groups of soldiers becoming lost and, in some cases, leaderless. Mal’s story becomes hazy at this point. An investigation on the 2nd of May, 1915, indicates that Mal had been wounded at some time. His Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry bureau file lists ten witness statements with very little correlation between them. Some list him as being seen on a hospital ship while others have him wounded and on the way to England. A number of them do concur that Mal had been seriously wounded in the lower part of the body on the first day and that he was carried down to the beach to be taken off by boat. Mal’s family were still asking for answers as to his fate in 1921. All that we can be confident is that Private Edmund Malcolm Brown (655) of the 2nd Battalion lies somewhere amongst fellow comrades on Gallipoli.

Mal is remembered on the Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, the Lone Pine Memorial to the Missing, the Brighton Grammar School Roll of Honour, the Bayside’s Fallen plaque at Green Point, Brighton Beach, Victoria, the Hampton RSL Gallipoli Memorial Gardens, and the Boer War and WW1 Roll of Honour at Tallangatta, Victoria. For his service, he was awarded the 1914-1915 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.