57 Facts About Edmund Herring

Edmund Herring joined the Australian Army, rising to the rank of colonel by 1939.

Edmund Herring left his corps to become the longest-serving Chief Justice and Lieutenant Governor of Victoria, serving for three decades.

Edmund Herring was educated at Maryborough College and High School and at Melbourne Grammar, where he excelled at tennis and cricket, and was both School Captain and Dux in 1910.

In 1911, Edmund Herring entered Trinity College, the Church of England residential college at the University of Melbourne, where he played cricket and tennis.

In December 1914, Edmund Herring was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery, and was posted to B Battery, 99th Field Artillery Brigade of the British 22nd Division.

Edmund Herring succeeded Winwood as battery captain, and was promoted to acting captain in April 1917.

Edmund Herring returned to Maryborough, where he met Mary Ranken Lyle, the daughter of the mathematical physicist Thomas Lyle, then a medical student at the University of Melbourne, on New Year's Day 1918.

Edmund Herring departed for Salonika in February, returning to duty there in March 1918, and was promoted to acting major on 24 October 1918 on assuming command of B Battery, 99th Field Artillery Brigade.

Edmund Herring reverted to lieutenant on ceasing to command the battery on 22 January 1919.

Edmund Herring worked as a barrister, and lectured in law at the University of Melbourne.

Edmund Herring was elected to the Melbourne Club in 1927, a year before Sir Thomas Lyle became its president.

Edmund Herring joined the Young Nationalists, an organisation founded by Robert Menzies and Wilfrid Kent Hughes.

Edmund Herring joined the Christian service organisation Toc H in 1925 and became its Victorian Area Commissioner in 1936.

On 6 October 1939, Edmund Herring was informed that Major General Sir Thomas Blamey had decided to appoint him as Commander, Royal Artillery, of the 6th Division, of the new Second Australian Imperial Force being raised for service overseas.

Edmund Herring's command was only partially reequipped with the new 25 pounders before being committed to the Western Desert campaign in December 1940.

At the Battle of Bardia, Edmund Herring controlled all 120 guns used in the division's attack, in which the infantry were supported by Great-War-style barrages.

Edmund Herring has a quiet, easy manner and his last war service has given him an understanding of the British to which they were quick to respond.

In building up the artillery plan, Edmund Herring brought to bear the same thorough, relentless logic and attention to detail with which he had so often built up a legal argument.

Edmund Herring was refloated but then ran aground again near the wharf.

Edmund Herring returned to Australia with it in March 1942.

In Blamey's reorganisation of the Army in April 1942, Edmund Herring was given command of Northern Territory Force.

Edmund Herring backed a plan to take American engineers off working on the airstrips to develop the port by building a causeway to Tatana Island, the successful completion of which doubled the port's capacity and was the logistical turning point of the campaign.

Edmund Herring acknowledged that the two men had faced a difficult task but felt that they were tired and that Brigadier Ivan Dougherty and Major General Vasey could do better.

Edmund Herring planned the systematic reduction of the Japanese positions at Buna and Sanananda.

Edmund Herring struggled to amass enough troops, equipment, guns, and supplies to allow Australian troops under Vasey and Americans under Eichelberger to overcome the Japanese and capture the area.

Out of sensitivity towards the sensibilities of the Americans, Edmund Herring left the command arrangements between Major General Stanley Savige's 3rd Division and units of the American 41st Infantry Division ambiguous.

Edmund Herring prepared to fire Savige, but an investigation by Major General Frank Berryman determined that the dispute was not Savige's fault.

The timing of the landing was contentious; Barbey, who feared air attack, wanted to land at night while Edmund Herring held out for a dawn landing, threatening to take the issue to General MacArthur.

Edmund Herring decided to fly to Milne Bay to discuss the matter of resupply in general with Barbey.

When next he flew, Edmund Herring took a B-25 and made a point of requesting the major who had been in charge of the crashed plane to be his pilot.

Mackay became convinced that Edmund Herring was becoming increasingly difficult to work with as a result of stress and fatigue and asked Blamey for permission to relieve him.

Yet Blamey maintained his faith in Edmund Herring, who retained command of I Corps on the Atherton Tableland, where he trained his men for the next operation.

Edmund Herring did not know when or where this would be, so he focused on amphibious warfare.

Edmund Herring created the 1st Beach Group and developed tactics and doctrine for amphibious operations based on his own experience in the New Guinea Campaign and reports from the Allied invasion of Sicily.

General Edmund Herring is prepared to accept the appointment and I recommend he be released from the Army.

Edmund Herring has rendered excellent service over four years, mainly on active service in the field.

Edmund Herring was recalled to duty for a year as Director General of Recruiting in August 1950 when the Korean War spurred efforts to build up the Army again.

In January 1953, Edmund Herring was selected as leader of the Australian Services Contingent for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II.

Edmund Herring maintained connections with his comrades from both World Wars.

In 1962, Edmund Herring visited Richard O'Connor at his home in Ross.

Edmund Herring obtained government backing for his idea, and arranged for more than twenty former American generals, including Leif J Sverdrup, Hugh John Casey, William C Chase and Clyde D Eddleman and their wives, to visit Australia in 1974, with commemorative functions being held in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane.

Edmund Herring steadfastly believed that MacArthur, like Blamey, was a great commander who was not fully appreciated in his own country.

Edmund Herring's twenty years as Chief Justice was a period of significant change and growth in the administration of the law.

Edmund Herring earned a reputation as a fine judge and able administrator.

Edmund Herring set up the Chief Justice's Law Reform Committee to try to ensure justice in Victoria's courts was abreast of the times, and a committee for religious observances and services to arrange the religious services marking the opening of the legal year.

Edmund Herring retired as Chief Justice in 1964 but stayed on as Lieutenant Governor until his 80th birthday in 1972, serving in the position for a record 27 years.

Edmund Herring again became the subject of controversy in May 1978 when Barry Jones revealed in Federal Parliament that during the Second World War Edmund Herring had confirmed death sentences on 22 Papuans convicted of handing over seven Anglican missionaries to the Japanese, which Jones called "the darkest secret in modern Australian history".

Edmund Herring claimed that they had been treated fairly under the conventions and circumstances applicable in wartime.

Edmund Herring was president of the Boy Scouts' Association of Victoria for 23 years, and was later the first president of the Australian Boy Scouts' Association from 1959 to 1977.

Edmund Herring was chairman of trustees of the Shrine of Remembrance from 1945 to 1978 and chairman of trustees of the Australian War Memorial from 1959 to 1974.

Edmund Herring was Honorary Colonel of Melbourne University Regiment for 33 years from 1948 until his death.

Edmund Herring was made a fellow of New College, Oxford, in 1949, received an honorary DCL from Oxford in 1953, became an honorary bencher of the Inner Temple in 1963 and received an honorary LLD from Monash University in 1973.

Edmund Herring was active in the Anglican Church, and for many years was chancellor of the diocese of Melbourne, the highest church office that could be held by a layman.

Edmund Herring died at a Camberwell, Victoria, nursing home on 5 January 1982.

Edmund Herring was given a state funeral at St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, planned by his wife, Dame Mary Ranken Herring, who had died three months before.

Victoria's Edmund Herring Island is named after him; it is beside the Monash Freeway in Melbourne's Yarra River at South Yarra, approximately 3 kilometres from the city.

Edmund Herring's papers are in the State Library of Victoria.