Early Life and World War I
Wrigley was born on 21 April 1892 in Collingwood, a suburb of Melbourne, to Henry and Beatrice Wrigley. He was educated at Richmond Central School and at Melbourne High School, where he joined the cadets. Studying at the University of Melbourne, he became a state school teacher and a member of the militia prior to the outbreak of World War I. He joined the Australian Flying Corps (AFC) on 5 October 1916. Wrigley trained as a pilot under the tutelage of Lieutenant Eric Harrison at Central Flying School in Point Cook, Victoria, before departing Melbourne on 25 October aboard a troopship bound for Europe.
After further training in England, Wrigley was posted to France and flew on the Western Front with No. 3 Squadron AFC (also known until 1918 as No. 69 Squadron, Royal Flying Corps). Operating Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8s, the unit was engaged in reconnaissance, artillery-spotting and ground support duties. Having been promoted to captain, Wrigley was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his "exceptional devotion to duty", in particular his persistence in pressing home an attack against enemy infantry on 29 October 1918 in the face of "intense machine gun and rifle fire"; the honour was promulgated in the London Gazette on 3 June 1919. Wrigley later observed that most wartime aircraft were "impossible to fight in", and that senior officers were "too occupied with coaxing aeroplanes into the air and teaching pilots to bring them down again without breaking their necks" to consider the wider implications of air power.
Read more about this topic: Henry Wrigley
Famous quotes containing the words war i, early, life, world and/or war:
“There’s no telling what might have happened to our defense budget if Saddam Hussein hadn’t invaded Kuwait that August and set everyone gearing up for World War II½. Can we count on Saddam Hussein to come along every year and resolve our defense-policy debates? Given the history of the Middle East, it’s possible.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)
“Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn
A light-blue lane of early dawn,”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“Personal change, growth, development, identity formation—these tasks that once were thought to belong to childhood and adolescence alone now are recognized as part of adult life as well. Gone is the belief that adulthood is, or ought to be, a time of internal peace and comfort, that growing pains belong only to the young; gone the belief that these are marker events—a job, a mate, a child—through which we will pass into a life of relative ease.”
—Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)
“There is a certain class of people who prefer to say that their fathers came down in the world through their own follies than to boast that they rose in the world through their own industry and talents. It is the same shabby-genteel sentiment, the same vanity of birth which makes men prefer to believe that they are degenerated angels rather than elevated apes.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)
“If the alternative is to keep all just men in prison, or give up war and slavery, the State will not hesitate which to choose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)