ANZAC Memories

The sixth child of August Drosen, a Prussian emigrant to Australia and his wife Elizabeth Watson, George Adolphe Drosen was born in Williamstown Victoria Australia in 1881.

By trade a labourer, George enlisted in the A.I.F along with his younger brother Ernest in July of 1915 as a result of the Victorian Government's great recruiting drives of the period. It is interesting that he gave his name as George Drosen not listing his second name of Adolphe due most likely to the anti-German feeling of the time.

Initially assigned to the 13th reinforcements of the 6th Battalion, Drosen embarked from Melbourne Victoria per His Majesty's Australian Transport A64 on the 29th of December 1915. After disembarking in Egypt he was transferred to the 46th Battalion at Serapeum Egypt, as a result of illness and the general reorganization of the AIF after the Gallipoli campaign.

On the 2nd of June 1916 the 46th Battalion embarked at Alexandria Egypt per the transport Kinsfauns Castle for Marsailles, France to join the B.E.F on the Western Front.

Thrown into the Battle of the Somme, George Drosen's military career was short lived. On the 10th of August 1916 he was killed in action while on night patrol at Pozieres, France. He was survived by three brothers and a sister back in Australia.