Old soldier a last link with Palestine campaign

Press, 23 October 1978, Page 2

Old soldier a last link with Palestine campaign

By

D. W. HODGE

Mr D. B. Murchison, M.C., who was aide-de-camp to General Sir Edmund Allenby in the First World War Palestine campaign, and an associate of Lawrence of Arabia, died at Talbot Hospital, Timaru, recently. He was 93. A veteran of Gallipoli, from which he was taken off by stretcher, Mr Murchison was possibly the last link in the British Commonwealth with the World War I Palestine campaign. He was awarded the Military Cross for conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty in the Second Battle of Gaza, through which the Imperial Camel Corps and the Canterbury Mounted Rifles, New Zealand Mounted Rifles Brigade, pursued the retreating Turks for 75 miles. Mr Murchison was the oldest member of the South Canterbury Returned Services’ Association. Every inch a cavalryman,] Lieutenant Murchison served] with the Canterbury! Mounted Rifles. He was in] the last big advance in] which cavalry took the lead-' Ing role. He marched along the Bib-] lical King’s Road into the! Sinai Desert and on to Pale-| stine. He was with Lawrence of Arabia after the capture of Damascus on October 1, 1918, and was

with the Occupation Force in Constantinople. A son, Mr I. L. Murchison, served with the New Zealand Divisional Cavalry in the Middle East during the Second World War. He, too, won the Military Cross for gallantry, in the Second Libyan campaign. They were the first father and son with the award. i Educated at Waimate and at Christ’s College, Mr Murchison sen. farmed in the Cheviot area. His mother, Mrs Janet Murchison, taught at the Main School in

Lyttelton. His father, Mr John Murchison, bought Lake Coleridge station about 1895. Infantryman, camelier, cavalryman, Mr Murchison’s] epitaph could well be that of the Camel Corps: “In the desert we have written our names.” It was the first time in the history of the S.C.R.S.A. which, as the Returned Soldiers’ Association, was formed on May 25, 1916, that a funeral service was organised by the association. The graveside service at the Timaru Cemetery was con-1 ducted by a vice-president of; the association, Mr L. E.l Moffat, who recited Binyon’sj “Ode to the Fallen.” Poppies] were placed on the coffin by I members of the R.S.A. Mr Murchison joined the] South Canterbury Returned: Soldiers’ Association when] he returned from active service.