John Raymond Broadbent CBE DSO ED (1914 - 2006)

Born 24 Jun 1914 in Manly, New South Wales, Australia

Ancestors

Husband of Fanny Amelia (Powers) Broadbent — married 1943 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Died 27 Oct 2006 at age 92 in North Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

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NOT TO BE CONFUSED WITH BRIGADIER/QUARTERMASTER-GENERAL JOHN RAYMOND BROADBENT
Born 1893 Ballarat Vic, Died 1972 Canberra

Biography

John Broadbent CBE DSO ED is Notable.

Major General John Broadbent CBE DSO ED LLB BA was a senior Australian Army officer and lawyer.

John Raymond Broadbent was born on 24th June 1914 in Manly, New South Wales, Australia. He was the son of Joseph Broadbent and Margaret L unknown. ^[1] He studied at the University of Sydney, gaining the degrees of Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Arts in 1938.

John married Fanny Powers in 1943 in Sydney, New South Wales. ^[2]

John Broadbent CBE DSO ED is a Military Veteran.
Served in the Australian Army 1935-1967
Sydney University Regiment; 2/17th Aust. Infantry Battalion; 17th/18th Infantry Battalion; 5th Brigade; 2nd Division

While at university, John joined the Sydney University Regiment in 1935 and was commissioned as a Lieutenant on 9th February 1937. Soon after the outbreak of the Second World War, on 7th May 1940, he transferred to the Second Australian Imperial Force, being posted to the 2/17th Australian Infantry Battalion, 9th Division. In 1940-41, promoted Captain, John served with the 20th Australian Infantry Training Battalion. He was with the division at Tobruk and El Alamein in North Africa; one of the famous Rats of Tobruk. The division returned to Australia and took part in the amphibious landing of Australian troops at Lae and Finschhafen, New Guinea in 1943. Whilst a Major in April 1944, Broadbent was appointed Companion of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for his exemplary service. ^[3] Promoted once more, to Lieutenant Colonel, he was appointed the final commanding officer of 2/17th Australian Infantry Battalion (1944-46), leading his battalion in the liberation of Brunei. ^[4][5] His future brother-in-law, Alan Wright, was a Captain in the 2/17th. For his war service he was awarded the 1939-1945 Star, Africa Star, Pacific Star, Defence Medal, War Medal 1939-1945 and Australia Service Medal 1939-1945.

Following the war, he was commanding officer of 17th/18th Infantry Battalion from 1948-51, before being placed on the Reserve of Officers. Made active again in 1955, John was appointed Commander 5th Brigade as a Brigadier. Other staff appointments followed before he was given command, from August 1965 to November 1966, of 2nd Division on promotion to Major General. He retired from military service at 53 years of age in 1967. ^[6] He was awarded the Efficiency Decoration (ED) for twenty years service as a Militia Officer. In the Queen's Birthday Honours list in June 1967 John was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). ^[7]

John Broadbent passed away, aged 92 years, on 27th October 2006 in North Sydney, New South Wales.

Proud soldier and legal innovator
November 16, 2006
ON THE first Friday in November, to the three volleys of the 21-gun salute, preceded and flanked by a contingent of 100 soldiers from the Australian Army, the body of Major-General John Broadbent was marched from St Thomas's and along Church Street, North Sydney. The military band played. The street was closed. It was a fitting farewell to a man who committed his long life to the service of his nation.
His funeral service was held in the home church of the 17th Battalions, two days before the annual Remembrance service where Broadbent had for so many years mourned the deaths, and celebrated the lives, of his fellow soldiers. His eight pallbearers were his valued old war comrades, colleagues from the Citizen Military Forces and the legal profession, and three of his much-loved six grandchildren - David Garrick, Annika Broadbent and Tim Rahn - the firstborn of each of his three daughters.
Broadbent, who died at 92, served in the Sydney University Regiment before World War II and was an original member of 2/17 Battalion. He served with it throughout the war as it played a prominent role in the Middle East, North Africa and Papua New Guinea.
The battalion fought at the Battle of Tobruk where Rommel's famous German tank/infantry was given its first sustained defeat. As Broadbent later observed, those six months in 1941 gave his Ninth Division the maturity and desert know-how that proved invaluable at the Battle of El Alamein in Egypt the following year. There, after the death and injury of superior officers, Broadbent was called on to co-ordinate arrangements, give orders and control the advance. It was a battle that turned the tide of the war.
The battalion moved from desert to the jungle of Papua New Guinea with the first Australian Army sea landings since the 1915 Gallipoli attack as part of the crucial third phase of the campaign against the Japanese. The 2/17 Battalion led the advance towards Lae, Broadbent commanding a northern group. At Finschhafen, Broadbent was military landing officer. He planned and co-ordinated the beachhead area attack and ran through the confusion at Siki Cove to establish the vital light required for effective landing. Many soldiers said they owed their life to Broadbent that night. In 1945, the battalion released Brunei from Japanese control.
Broadbent was promoted to captain in 1940, to major in 1942 and to lieutenant- colonel in 1944 when he became, at 29, the youngest battalion commander in the 9th Division. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Order for "energy and determined leadership" at Lae and Finschhafen in 1944, mentioned in dispatches in 1945, and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1967.
Broadbent was a dedicated officer who led by example. He never expected others to do something that he would not do himself. In pursuit of the welfare and safety of his soldiers he was strict in maintaining discipline and unrelenting in ensuring that all under his command were thoroughly trained and physically fit.
After the war he was committed to the Citizen Military Forces, developing training procedures and systemic co-ordination. He was promoted to brigadier in 1955 and major-general in 1963.
In September 1956, Broadbent was one of the Australian Army's most senior officers to be part of radiation exposure trials at Maralinga. When this was made public in 2001, Broadbent recalled that they walked around the site for a couple of hours the morning after the nuclear explosion, then "someone went over us with something" to measure the radiation effect.
While watching the explosion Broadbent got "a burn on my cheek like sunburn where the light came in under the brim of my hat". However, he said, "I think it was quite safe. They did everything that was reasonable."
Broadbent was born in Manly in 1914, the first son of Ray, a bank manager, and Lillian Broadbent. The family moved to Kempsey when he was nine. Two years later his father died. He attended Parramatta High School, where he was a high-jump champion, and at the generous intervention of his uncle Jack was sent to Melbourne Grammar for the last two years of his schooling. He learnt a stoic self-reliance, a weighty sense of duty, a painful inner criticism, and the importance of social equity very early in his life. He also developed a sharp wit and a keen sense of humour.
The tenacious commitment to loyalty, integrity and fairness that Broadbent embodied as a soldier also characterised his work as a solicitor. To him, the law was not a path to wealth or social status. He valued the dignity of the profession - a word he related to the duty and privilege of service.
For almost 60 years he gave legal support to his soldiers and their families freely or at much reduced rates. He also gave his time, as all did then, to the council of the Law Society of NSW. From 1967 to 1973 he was successively junior vice-president, senior vice-president and president.
As a member of the law council he played a significant role in the Law Society's decision to take the banks to court to have interest paid on solicitors' trust accounts. This enabled fidelity funds to be paid in full and allowed the establishment of the Law Society legal aid scheme. It also enabled the Law Society to found the College of Law in 1973. The college provided, in place of the former articles of clerkship, a full-time practical legal training course for all graduates intending to enter practice as solicitors. In 1972, at Broadbent's instigation, the first inspector of solicitors' trust accounts was employed.
Broadbent's character, and the affectionate regard in which many of his colleagues held him, was expressed by Henric Nicholas, QC, at his swearing in as a judge of the Supreme Court of NSW in 2003. He said of Broadbent, who had been his master solicitor: "He is a fine soldier and an astute solicitor, with whom one always stands a little straighter."
John Broadbent is survived by his wife, Fanny, daughters, Megan, Frances and Jillian, and six grandchildren - all of whom loved him dearly and most of whom yearned for his approval. Great pride, Broadbent once said, must carry the endless sense of loss.
Megan Broadbent
- Sydney Morning Herald 16 Nov 2006

Sources

1. ↑ New South Wales Birth Index #38176/1914
2. ↑ New South Wales Marriage Index #742/1943
3. ↑ Australian Honours: DSO; accessed 19 Mar 2022
4. ↑ Australian War Memorial nominal roll: NX12225 Lieutenant Colonel John Raymond Broadbent; accessed 17 May 2018
5. ↑ Australian War Memorial unit record: 2/17th Australian Infantry Battalion; accessed 20 Dec 2018
6. ↑ Australian War Memorial service timeline: Major General John Raymond Broadbent; accessed 17 May 2018
7. ↑ Australian Honours: CBE; accessed 19 Mar 2022

See also

• Wikipedia: John Raymond Broadbent; accessed 17 Jun 2018.