Langford Wellman Colley-Priest
Australian stretcher bearer
Langford Wellman Colley-Priest MM (September 1890 – 11/12 February 1928) was an Australian stretcher bearer during the First World War for the 8th Field Ambulance. He was awarded the Military Medal for conspicuous gallantry on the Western Front in 1917. He survived the war, but later drowned in 1928, and his body is believed to have been eaten by a shark.
Early life
Colley-Priest was born in Glebe, New South Wales, in September 1890 to George and Rose Colley-Priest. Prior to his embarkation for Egypt and deployment on the Western Front he resided with his parents in Neutral Bay and worked as a warehouseman. Colley-Priest was an Anglican.
Service
Colley-Priest enlisted in the 8th Field Ambulance, part of the 8th Infantry Brigade of the Australian Imperial Force, on 19 May 1915 and embarked aboard HMAT Ascanius on 9 November, bound for Egypt and the Western Front. While serving, he was deployed at the Somme, Racquinghem, Polygon Wood, Messines, Villers-Bretonneux and Mont Saint-Quentin. In 1917, Colley-Priest was awarded the Military Medal. The recommendation for the award noted that he displayed:
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This entry incorporates text from “Langford Wellman Colley-Priest” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.