Lieutenant General Sir Edmund Francis Herring, (2 September 1892 – 5 January 1982) was a senior Australian Army officer during the Second World War, Lieutenant Governor of Victoria, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria. A Rhodes scholar, Herring was at New College, Oxford, when the First World War broke out and served with the Royal Field Artillery on the Macedonian front, for which he was awarded the Military Cross and Distinguished Service Order. After the war he carved out a successful career as a barrister and King's Counsel. He also joined the Australian Army, rising to the rank of colonel by 1939.
During the Second World War, Herring commanded the 6th Division Artillery in the Western Desert campaign and the Battle of Greece. In 1942, as a corps commander, he commanded the land forces in the Kokoda Track campaign. The following year, he directed operations in the Salamaua-Lae campaign and Finisterre Range campaign. Herring left his corps to become the longest-serving Chief Justice and Lieutenant Governor of Victoria, serving for three decades. In the latter capacity, he was patron of many charitable organisations.
Edmund Francis Herring, known as Ned to his family, was born in Maryborough, Victoria, on 2 September 1892, the third of five children of Edmund Selwyn Herring, a solicitor, and his Irish-born wife Gertrude Stella Herring, formerly Fetherstonhaugh. He was educated at Maryborough College and High School and at Melbourne Grammar, where he excelled at tennis and cricket, and was both School Captain and Dux in 1910. While at Melbourne Grammar, he served in the Commonwealth Cadet Corps, reaching the rank of sergeant.
In 1911, Herring entered Trinity College, the Church of England residential college at the University of Melbourne, where he played cricket and tennis. In 1912, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to the University of Oxford in England. There, he joined the Officers Training Corps in 1913. In November of that year he enlisted as a trooper in King Edward's Horse, a cavalry unit in the British Army.
King Edward's Horse was mobilised in August 1914, but was not immediately sent overseas. In December 1914, Herring was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery, and was posted to B Battery, 99th Field Artillery Brigade of the British 22nd Division. The division moved to the Western Front in August 1915, but was there only a month before being transferred to the Macedonian front, where it served for the rest of the war.
In the Battle of Doiran in April 1917, Herring served as an artillery observer, directing artillery fire in support of the 22nd Division's attack from a front line observation post on Pip Ridge. There was a furious artillery duel. Twenty minutes after Captain Thomas Winwood took Herring's place as forward observer, the observation post took a direct hit from an enemy shell, killing Winwood. Herring succeeded Winwood as battery captain, and was promoted to acting captain in April 1917. For his courage under heavy shellfire, Herring received an immediate award of the Military Cross (MC), the citation for which reads:
For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. As F[orward].O[bservation].O[fficer]. throughout the operations he carried on in very exposed positions under heavy shell fire. His information proved of the utmost value.
After three years' service, Herring was granted three weeks' leave in Australia in October 1917. He returned to Maryborough, where he met Mary Ranken Lyle, the daughter of the mathematical physicist Thomas Lyle, then a medical student at the University of Melbourne, on New Year's Day 1918. The two became constant companions and agreed to correspond regularly.
Herring departed for Salonika in February, returning to duty there in March 1918, and was promoted to acting major on 24 October 1918 on assuming command of B Battery, 99th Field Artillery Brigade. For his service as a battery commander, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order. He reverted to lieutenant on ceasing to command the battery on 22 January 1919.
When the war ended, Herring wished to return to Australia and see Mary before resuming his studies at the University of Oxford in October 1919. Mary wrote back pointing out the impracticality of this idea; though she would be disappointed not to see him, he should remain in England and complete his course at Oxford first. The university had awarded him a wartime Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in 1915; the Rhodes Scholarship Trust allowed him to resume his scholarship, and he studied for a Bachelor of Civil Law (BCL) degree. Since it had been five years since he had been awarded his BA, he was entitled to a MA as well, and graduated with both degrees in July 1920. After a holiday in Britain and France with his sister Kathleen, he arrived back in Melbourne on 26 November 1920.
Herring was admitted to practice in Victoria as a barrister and solicitor on 1 March 1921 and signed the roll of counsel of the Victorian Bar on 8 June of that year; Mary graduated with her Bachelor of Medicine and Surgery (MB BS) and became a resident surgeon at Royal Melbourne Hospital. The two were married on 6 April 1922, and had three daughters, Mary Cecile (Molly), born in 1924, Judith Ann (Judy), born in 1926, and Margaret Lyle, born in 1933. Herring worked as a barrister, and lectured in law at the University of Melbourne. He became a King's Counsel on 25 February 1936. Mary worked as a physician at antenatal clinics.
Herring joined the Australian Army on 1 October 1922 as a legal staff officer in the part-time militia, with the rank of captain. On 1 August 1923 he transferred to Australian Field Artillery. He was promoted to major on 1 July 1925, lieutenant colonel on 1 July 1929, and temporary colonel on 1 August 1939, commanding the 3rd Division Artillery.
Herring was involved in politics throughout the 1930s. He was elected to the Melbourne Club in 1927, a year before Sir Thomas Lyle became its president. He joined the Young Nationalists, an organisation founded by Robert Menzies and Wilfrid Kent Hughes. Along with many senior army and ex-army officers, he was also a member of the clandestine far-right wing paramilitary organisation known as the White Guard, White Army or League of National Security. Composed primarily of former soldiers, the White Guard saw themselves as defenders of order who stood ready to stop a Catholic or Communist revolution in the wake of an emergency like the 1923 Victorian Police strike. After failing to gain United Australia Party preselection for the Victorian Legislative Assembly seat of Prahran in 1931, he ran as an unendorsed candidate (i.e. one lacking formal political endorsement) for the seat of Brighton in 1936. He gained 12,258 votes, losing by just 528. Herring also joined the Christian service organisation Toc H in 1925 and became its Victorian Area Commissioner in 1936.
On 6 October 1939, Herring was informed that Major General Sir Thomas Blamey had decided to appoint him as Commander, Royal Artillery, of the 6th Division, of the new Second Australian Imperial Force (AIF) being raised for service overseas. A week later, Herring was promoted to substantive colonel and temporary brigadier, and given the AIF serial number VX15. His first task was to organise his new command, which was equipped with World War I vintage 18 pounder guns and 4.5 inch howitzers. Herring left for Palestine on 15 April 1940, along with the 6th Division's commander, Major General Iven Mackay and his headquarters. Training was difficult as the old ammunition was in short supply. His command was only partially reequipped with the new 25 pounders before being committed to the Western Desert campaign in December 1940.
At the Battle of Bardia, Herring controlled all 120 guns used in the division's attack, in which the infantry were supported by Great-War-style barrages. After the victory at Bardia, Herring's gunners supported the attack on Tobruk. More than half of his guns were British, and some were commanded by regular British officers who were sceptical of the ability of an Australian Militia officer. War Correspondent Chester Wilmot noted that:Herring has a quiet, easy manner and his last war service has given him an understanding of the British to which they were quick to respond. After Bardia and Tobruk those officers who had been most skeptical were his strongest champions. In building up the artillery plan, Herring brought to bear the same thorough, relentless logic and attention to detail with which he had so often built up a legal argument.