A farm labourer (working on the family farm) prior to the war, he enlisted on 20 July 1915, and embarked 9 November 1915 on HMAT Beltana, arriving in Suez in December. 

After training in England and Egypt he left for France on March 26, 1917, and served as a gunner with the 14th Field Artillery Brigade for the duration of the war. 

He was gassed in Camiers (France) on August 8, 1918 and returned to Australia on December 9, 1918 aboard the troopship Argyllshire. 

He returned to his hometown an invalid, with a wasted left leg. Of the four Bradney boys that served during World War I (two brothers and a nephew), Donald was the only one to return home. 

Donald returned to his hometown, and was still living there in 1943. He died in 1955 at Gosford on the Central Coast of NSW.  His name appears on the Victory Memorial Arch, Wagga.

– Information compiled by Michelle Maddison from the Museum of the Riverina for the exhibition He Belonged to Wagga – Our Anzac Story (1914-19), now on display at the Museum of the Riverina Willans Hill site.

LETTERS from Wagga men training with the 1^st Australian Imperial Force in Egypt began filtering back home in late February, 1915.

The Daily Advertiser on February 24 said “a considerable amount of mail” from AIF soldiers had reached the town, including letters from J Drummond, George Cowell and Ernest Ferguson.

The previous day, the Advertiser published extracts of a letter from Senior Lance-Corporal Secombe, of Yathella.

Dated January 13, the letter gave a colourful description of the exotic surroundings and training environment at Mena, near Cairo.

It ended with “The Wagga boys are satisfied, and are eager to go to the front. Ere this reaches you we hope to have had our first skirmish”.

Cpl Secombe was amazed at the pyramids and the Sphinx.

“The old sphinx is worth giving the glad eye to, for it still bears its coat of some dye,” Cpl Secombe wrote.

“It seems to have soaked right into the stone, and many of the old carvings are coloured or stained in the same way, and are really pretty when given a coat or two of varnish.”

Cpl Secombe was in awe of irrigation around Cairo and the range of produce grown.

“The Nile Valley itself is one huge mass of irrigated land,” Cpl Secombe wrote.

“Yanco is only a fool to it.

“Any vegetable under the sun can be grown here and they are of a far superior quality to any grown in Australia.”

– Ken Grimson