Gundula Holbrook
Nurtured the legacy of her husband, a hero of the Great War
GUNDULA HOLBROOK, who has died aged 106, was a last link with stirring events of the First World War. On the ski slopes in 1952, when the Austrian Gundula Bleichart met Norman Holbrook, she was fascinated to hear that, in the year of her birth, Holbrook had won the VC.
She learnt that on the morning of December 13 1914, Lieutenant Holbrook – who was then 26 – commanded the submarine B-11, when, despite treacherous currents, he dived under five rows of mines to enter the Dardanelles. There, in Sari Siglar Bay, he torpedoed and sank the Ottoman navy’s ironclad Mesudiye, which was guarding the minefield.
In spite of shallow water – where he bumped along the bottom, scraping mine mooring wires, was fired upon from the shore and attacked by patrol boats – Holbrook brought B-11 back to the safety of the Aegean Sea. After a last, nine-hour, submersion, B-11 was filled with stale air and was so low on battery power that Holbrook had to rely upon the outgoing freshwater current to carry him into open waters.
Holbrook’s was the first naval VC to be gazetted in the First World War. The following year, 1915, amid a wave of anti-german feeling, the name of the New South Wales town of Germanton, once known as Ten Mile Creek, was changed to Holbrook.
A dozen other names of politicians, senior admirals and generals, including Asquith, Jellicoe and Kitchener, were considered, but the residents decided that Holbrook was more in keeping with the young nation whose soldiers were now fighting on the shores of the Dardanelles. In September the shire clerk wrote to Norman Holbrook informing him of the honour: it became and remains the only town to be named after a VC winner.
Gundula Helene Feldner was born on November 1 1914, daughter of an Innsbruck lawyer, Alois Feldner, and Gretel, née Kofler, whose family still own the Grand Hotel in Kitzbühel, in the Austrian Tyrol. Educated privately in Switzerland, Gundula married an Austrian doctor, Raoul Bleichart, in 1939, but by 1941 the marriage had fallen apart under wartime conditions.
Postwar she travelled widely, and married Norman Holbrook in 1952; in 1956 they visited the town of Holbrook for the first time, and there followed intermittent visits, while the town, which was nowhere near the sea, became known as the “submarine town”.
In 1971 a model of B-11 was installed in a park there, and after Norman died in Stedham, West Sussex, in 1976, Gundula retired to Austria, donating to the town of Holbrook her husband’s medals, including his VC and his midshipman’s chest, which was filled with personal artefacts.
On Anzac Day, April 25 1986, the freedom of the town was given to the Royal Australian Navy’s submarine squadron. In 1988 a bronze statue of Gundula’s husband was erected at Germanton Park in Holbrook, and in 1994, when the Oberon-class submarine HMAS Otway was decommissioned, the boat was broken up and transported in sections by road to Holbrook, where it was intended to be rebuilt as a submarine memorial.
When Gundula Holbrook learned that the scheme had stalled, she wrote a personal cheque which galvanised the community into completing the project. In 1997 she paid her last visit, and was made an honorary citizen. “I think this is the most important thing that has ever happened to me,” she said. “I don’t feel like a visitor anymore, now I am a resident.”
She had also helped to turn the town from a stopover on the day-long drive between Sydney and Melbourne, into a place of destination which receives some 200,000 visitors each year. There, where she is remembered as being down to earth, articulate, possessed of a sharp mind and a nice smile; her hologram in the museum narrates her husband’s story. Gundula Holbrook, born November 1 1914, died December 31 2020