Cirrus@Austlit

'For Australian Jewish History, the story of Henry Topal began when he traveled to Australia in 1914, the first of many trips that would take him across the globe and involve a life full of vicissitudes. When he arrived in Australia in 1914, and almost immediately applied for to join the Australian Infantry Force, Henry Topal claimed that he had spent two years in the Royal Army Medical Corps Militia and five years as a sick berth attendant with the Royal Navy, serving on HMS Canopus, including service in conjunction with the Messina earthquake in 1908 and then in Somaliland in 1909. He had been born in London on 9 January 1889 to Simon and Rebecca Topal of 16a Stepney Green Dwellings in the parish of Newtown, London. According to a letter that he wrote in 1925 to Dr Raphael Cilento, then Director Public Health in Rabaul, he had qualified and trained as a Sick Berth Attendant in the Royal Navy at the Haslar Naval Hospital in Portsmouth before commencing service in the Royal Navy...' (Introduction)