Acting Sergeant Millwood - 5/400070

 




Edward Lauderdale Millwood is the fallen soldier who started my interest in the West Australians who died in the Korean War. Edward Millwood was known to all as Toby.


Sergeant Millwood (foreground) in Korea, November 1950. 
Australian War Memorial 

It was January 2015 when my husband and I found his name on the Wall of Remembrance at the United Nations Cemetery in Busan. We knew Toby was related to my husband and so I started my research into his life when we got home to Perth.

Millwood, who was from Kalgoorlie, ended up being a distant cousin of my husband’s -a cousin twice removed.  How did a miner from the West Australian goldfields end up in Korea?

Millwood was a five-year soldier in World War II. He embarked in Convoy 8 from Fremantle in January 1941 after completing training in Northam and disembarked in Palestine in April 1941.  Millwood was originally in 1/9 Australian Infantry Battalion but transferred to the 47th Australian Infantry Battalion in September 1944. He went to Torokina in Bougainville which was one of the largest campaigns in WWII.  Near the end of the war, his report from the New Guinea training school in March 1945, where Millwood passed the exams for section commander, described him as ‘not a parade ground soldier but a very good fighting soldier who has good courage and can lead men’.

When the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment, (3RAR) was committed to service in Korea in the third quarter of 1950 and enlarged quickly, most of its new members were volunteer ex-WWII soldiers. Was it the spirit of adventure that took Millwood back to active service and thus to Korea? 

I don’t know a lot about Millwood’s early life in Kalgoorlie, but he was one of five children, born to parents who moved to the goldfields in the early 1900s. They never grew rich, but Millwood and another brother ended up working in the mines. Millwood went back to the mines on his return to Western Australia in 1945 and worked in the asbestos mine in Wittenoom and gold mines in Meekatharra and North Kalgoorlie.

Millwood enlisted for three years in Korea in August 1950, arriving in Korea that September. Only 209 days later, he found himself in heavy fighting at Kapyong, north of Seoul in late April of 1951. Kapyong was where the Australian troops of 3RAR, (together with troops from New Zealand, Canada, and the United States) broke the offensive of a full Chinese division.  Unfortunately for Millwood one of the Chinese snipers shot him in the abdomen as he was walking over open ground. Millwood was his platoon’s only casualty, but one of 32 Australians killed at Kapyong. A fellow West Australian soldier, Private Atkinson of Midland was also killed at Kapyong on the same day, 24 April 1951.


Photo of Toby Millwood's grave at UNMCK, Busan, South Korea

I think Freddy From, his platoon commander at the time of the battle of Kapyong, best sums up the sort of man I imagine Millwood was.  From saw Millwood, his acting Sergeant as an equal but also - “irascible at times and was forthright and although liked and admired by the men, was a little feared too.  He had all the high principles of a good unionist.”

Photo of Toby Millwood's plaque in Kings Park, Perth


References:

 Frederick R From as the sergeant Platoon Sergeant Anti-tank Platoon 3rd Battalion The Royal Australian Regiment (3 RAR), Korea 1950-1951, interviewed by Bill Fogarty. 15 May 2022. Australian War Memorial. https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C989672. Accessed 6 Mar 2023.

FROM, Frederick Rennie.  That’s Enough Freddy From. Strategic Book Publishing. 2013

GALLAWAY, Jack. The Last Call of the Bugle: The Long Road to Kapyong.  UQP. 1994

MILLWOOD, Edward Lauderdale [includes prior service under WX6348]. National Archives of Australia file held in Melbourne. Accessed in June 2016.

West Australian (Perth, WA : 1879 - 1954), Monday 30 April 1951, page 22. Accessed via Trove 20 Feb 2023

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