Lieutenant General Sir Sydney Fairbairn Rowell KBE CB 1894-1975

He graduated in the first class of the Royal Military College Duntroon at the beginning of World War 1, being medically evacuated from Gallipoli and becoming an instructor at the Officers' Training School collocated at Duntroon. In the postwar army, he filled a variety of staff appointments and joined the 2nd AIF after the outbreak of World War 2.

During that war, he served in the Middle East on HQ 6th Division, was Brigadier General Staff on 1st Australin Corps, and returned to Australia as DCGS, then GOC 1st Australian Corps in New Guinea. Here he had a falling out with Commander in Chief Blamey, who had been sent to New Guinea by over-agitated Prime Minister Curtin and General Macarthur. The presence of Blamey and Rowell trying to exercise command through the same headquarters was impossible, unless Rowell consented to be Blamey's chief of staff, which he refused. He was reverted in rank and banished to inconsequential postings in the Middle East and UK.

In the postwar era, with Blamey gone, it was inevitable that a professional soldier of his experience should rise towards the top: he became VCGS then Chief of the General Staff in 1950.