AHEPA, the Australian Hellenic Educational Progressive Association, and the Australian Hellenic Educators’ Association organized an event on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the Catastrophe of Smyrna.
The speaker of the event, Johanna Hislop from England, presented personal legal evidence of her grandfather, Charles Dobson, on The Smyrna Holocaust, 1922. Born in New Zealand in 1886 into a well-known family of surveyor engineers, Charles Dobson made the decision to join the Anglican Church.
Hislop, presented the history of Smyrna from April to September 1922 using photos, letters and official reports from her grandfather.
In 1914, as a Chaplain-Captain, Dobson was among the first men in the Main Body of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force to sail to Egypt. His unit, the Otago Mounted Rifles, reached Gallipoli in late May 1915. One story is certainly known of his time there. After the battle for Hill 60, he accompanied Chaplain William Grant in the trenches, helping the wounded until stretcher bearers came.
In November 1915, according to his war file, he was in the 1st London General Hospital, and it is known that he met Eleni Georgoulopoulos that same year in London. He spent much of 1916 in England, still not fit to go to the front, though he was on duty on a hospital ship and at Brocken hurst Hospital for the periods July – August and November of that year.
In March 1917 Dobson was in France with the 2nd Auckland Regiment of the New Zealand Infantry. He was wounded twice in 1917, first in June, and again in October at Broodseinde in Flanders. In April 1918, he was mentioned in dispatches: “Special mention in dispatches by F M Sir Douglas Haig for distinguished and gallant service and devotion to duty during the period September 25th 1917 – February 24/25, 1918” Meanwhile, he had been appointed Assistant Principal Chaplain to the New Zealand Chaplains Department with the rank of Major in December 1917.
In 1924 he was appointed Chaplain to St George’s, the Anglican church of the British Embassy in Lisbon. That same year he traveled to London where he was received with thanks by King George V for his part in Smyrna. During his visit there, he appeared in court as witness in a trial concerning the outbreak of the fire in London.
(Source: GREEK GENOCIDE)
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