Bill Keogh

Esmond Venner (Bill) Keogh was a remarkable man. I am only one of many whose lives have been greatly influenced by his actions behind the scenes. Initially enlisting in November 1914 as a non-combatant soldier in the Third Light Horse Field Ambulance and serving in Gallipoli and Egypt, in 1916 he transferred to the Third Australian Machinegun Battalion and served in France with such courage that he was awarded a Military Medal (MM) and a Distinguished Conduct Medal (DCM). During the World War II, when he had to wear his decorations on his jacket, he would insert that part beneath his lapel. After World War I, he initially worked as a dairy farmer, then in 1922 he embarked on a medical course, graduating in 1927 with first-class honours in medicine. He wanted a laboratory job, and joined the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories in May 1928. After travelling about Australia a good deal, in 1935 he established a small research unit at the Commonwealth Serum Laboratories and also worked for a time with Burnet at the Hall Institute. Bill was in the United States in September 1939, and returned immediately to Australia and was gazetted as a major in the Royal Australian Medical Corps on 13 October, 1939. On 14 February, 1940, he sailed as pathologist with the 2/2 Australian General Hospital, initially to Gaza, moving in November to Kantara, where he remained until the hospital moved back to Australia in February 1942. He was immediately moved to Army headquarters at Victoria Barracks as a full colonel and Director of Hygiene, Pathology and Entomology. As well as all his official duties, which included appointing me as pathologist and then as a malariologist to 2/2 Australian General Hospital, he played a major role, with Brigadier Fairley and Ted Ford, in establishing the LHQ Medical Research Unit in Cairns, with the specific mission of developing effective antimalarial drugs (see Gardiner, 1990).