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Remembering Cecil Healy, Olympic Champion and soldier of distinction

 

Remembering Cecil Healy, Olympic Champion and soldier of distinction

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AOC
Cecil Healy2

If there’s one Olympian serviceman who sums up the Olympic ideal it’s the late Cecil Healy – the only Australian gold medallist to be killed in action during wartime.

He went to war as an Olympic champion, a living legend of Australian swimming and a man noted for an extraordinary act of sportsmanship at the 1912 Stockholm Summer Olympic Games.

Second lieutenant Cecil Healy died in a burst of machine-gun fire at the Somme in France on August 29th, 1918 as part of an Allied push, serving with the Australian 19th Battalion AIF.

Cecil had signed up at Victoria Barracks in Sydney on September 15th, 1915, boarded a troop transport ship on November 25th that year, headed for Egypt and eventually, France.

He was popular with his fellow soldiers, not least because of his Olympian status. But he also organised and participated in numerous sporting events both in France and in the United Kingdom.

 

 

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