Born: 6 February 1889
Died: 6 August 1915
Killed in the attack at Lone Pine on 6 August 1915.
His brother, Alan Macdonald Armstrong, who served in the 7th Australian Light Horse Regiment under the name of Alan Seymour Armstrong, had been with him the day before the fateful charge.
The Officer in Charge Base Records had advised him that his brother’s grave at Gallipoli had not been located and requested any further information about where he had been buried.
He wrote in June 1921:
I have no letters of any use to you. But there should be no doubt of the position of his grave, as I have seen the letter written by Col. Mackenzie (Fighting Mac) late Chaplain of the 4th Bat (sic) to my mother (deceased) enclosing a photo of my brother and his friend taken with some captured Turks, in which he said “if your son is one of the men in this photo I remember having buried him just outside the Lone Pine Trench”. …
I may mention that I saw my brother the day before the Lone Pine stunt (that is on [Thursday] the 5th Aug. 15) and I was one of the 7th ALH to relieve his Battalion on the following Monday or Tuesday and there learned that he was hit in the chest, in the first waves, but made the Lone Pine Trench, and was seen by his platoon Sergeant. The stretcher bearers carried him out but he died before reaching the dressing station.
When we relieved the 4th we passed a flat space just before entering the communication trench to their position on which a number of the 4th (slain casualties) were laid out and covered over with blankets. The place as far as I can remember was just on the left as you enter the first communication and I have no doubt that my brother was amongst them, though at the time I thought he was on the hospital ship. ...
Source: Service Record, 213 Victor Seymour Armstrong, p18-19, Australian National Archives.
Despite the information provided, Victor Seymout Armstrong's body was never located. He is commemorated on the Lone Pine Memorial. [JSB]
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