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Chester Wilmot
Reginald William Winchester Wilmot (21 June 1911 - 10 January 1954) was an Australian war correspondent who reported for the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation during the Second World ...view moreReginald William Winchester Wilmot (21 June 1911 - 10 January 1954) was an Australian war correspondent who reported for the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation during the Second World War. After the war he continued to work as a broadcast reporter, and wrote a well-appreciated book about the liberation of Europe.
He was born in Brighton, a suburb of Melbourne, as the son of Reginald “Old Boy” Wilmot, a well-known sports journalist. He attended Melbourne Grammar School and then studied history, politics and law under Sir Ernest Scott at the University of Melbourne, where he resided at Trinity College and became interested in debating.
Following graduation in 1936, he went on an international debating tour. One of the stops was in Nazi Germany where he went to a Nuremberg Rally. He began to work as a legal clerk in 1939 and, at the outbreak of WWII, joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. He was sent to the Middle East in 1940 and reported from North Africa, Greece and Syria. He was in Tobruk during the siege of 1941. When Japan entered the war, he returned to Australia, then went out to cover the war in the Pacific. He reported from Papua during the Japanese invasion in 1942, including the Kokoda Track campaign, where he walked the whole length of the track.
On his return to Sydney, he wrote a book about his experiences in Tobruk, and narrated a documentary film called Sons of the ANZACs. In 1944, he transferred to the BBC, reporting for D-Day. After war end he remained in England and wrote articles on the recent war, as well as a book about World War II, The Struggle for Europe (1952).
Wilmot was part of a television commentary team for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II during Christmas 1953. He was en route back to Britain from that assignment on BOAC Flight 781 when his plane, a Comet 1, broke up following explosive decompression over the Mediterranean Sea; all aboard were killed. He was 54 years old.view less