Early Life and World War I
Bostock was born in Surry Hills, an inner-city suburb of Sydney, to an English father, also named William, and a Spanish mother, Mary. He was educated at The School, Mount Victoria, in the Blue Mountains region of New South Wales, where he completed his junior certificate. The family later moved to Burwood, in Sydney's Inner West. After leaving school Bostock was employed as an apprentice with the Marconi Company for two-and-a-half years, and spent time at sea as a wireless operator.
In November 1914, Bostock joined the 2nd Signal Troop of the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) as a sapper. He landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, serving there until August, when he was evacuated suffering from dysentery. He returned to active duty in January 1916, and was made lance corporal the following month. Promoted to sergeant, Bostock was posted to Egypt with the ANZAC Mounted Division in April 1916, and saw action against Turkish forces in the Sinai Peninsula.
Bostock transferred from the AIF to the Royal Flying Corps Special Reserve on 18 February 1917, and was commissioned as a probationary second lieutenant. He was posted to No. 48 Squadron in August, following pilot training in Egypt and England. Bostock fought on the Western Front and was awarded the Belgian Croix de guerre. He was invalided back to Britain in March 1918, after which he transferred to the newly created Royal Air Force (RAF).
Read more about this topic: William Bostock
Famous quotes containing the words war i, early, life, world and/or war:
“There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“I have always had something to live besides a personal life. And I suspected very early that to live merely in an experience of, in an expression of, in a positive delight in the human cliches could be no business of mine.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)
“If I could do my life over, I would try to cleanse at least my pleasures of self-pity.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Life is a search after power: and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,—there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,—that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)