Walter Edmond (Edmund) Smith, MC & Bar, ED (30 March 1895 – 1976) was an Australian Army officer and industrialist who fought in both World Wars.

[citation needed] Shortly after the outbreak of First World War, Smith enlisted in the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (AN&MEF).

Ridley, who had been shot through the neck during the Battle of Fromelles, became a street preacher and was instrumental in converting Sydney identity, Arthur Stace, to Christianity.

[citation needed] On 23 October 1939, just after the outbreak of the Second World War, Smith was promoted to the rank of brigadier and appointed commander of the Australian 14th Infantry Brigade, a militia unit with members drawn mainly from rural New South Wales and Canberra.

[citation needed] The brigade's War Diary records that a week before the Battle of the Coral Sea of 4–7 May 1942, it was ordered on 29 April to move from Tomago near Newcastle to Greta in preparation for embarkation to Port Moresby, New Guinea.

[Note 5] The Battle of the Coral Sea saw the Japanese suffer a heavy naval defeat, which forced them to refocus their efforts on securing Port Moresby by an overland attack across the Owen Stanley Range along the Kokoda Track from beachheads in the Buna–Gona–Sanananda area of north-east Papua New Guinea.

[citation needed] The Anglican Bishop of New Guinea from 1936 to 1962, Sir Philip Strong, was in Port Moresby in April 1942 and recorded in his diary: "Went to the Rectory ...

Numerous attempts were made to humiliate me ... [but] I fought back, and in most of the violent clashes with high authorities I managed to wriggle out of the trouble and leave them ... in the wrong...[8]Smith strongly criticised Army supply and Intelligence failures.

[10] Peter Brune in his popular book, Those Ragged Bloody Heroes, says: "The Army reinforced Port Moresby with a poorly trained and ill-led 14th Brigade...".

[12] Author Raymond Paull quoting Lieutenant General Sydney Rowell says: "Had ... the 14th Brigade been sufficiently well trained ... there is no doubt that the enemy would have been prevented from penetrating the Owen Stanley Range".

[4][5] Four brigade members, Ken Laycock,[14] Frank Budden,[15] Stan Brigg,[16] and Colin Kennedy,[17] later published accounts of the New Guinea Campaign.

Numerous attempts were made to humiliate me ... [but] I fought back, and in most of the violent clashes with high authorities I managed to wriggle out of the trouble and leave them ... in the wrong.

Some months later I received a telegram placing me on the Reserve of Officers list thus ending my military career – unhonoured and unsung without even a "thank you" or a letter of appreciation ... for a lifetime of loyal and enthusiastic service encompassing two world wars.

I was greatly hurt and very bitter ... on my return to civilian life at this cowardly and unjust treatment...[8]On 16 January 1943, in a letter home Smith wrote: HQrs 14 Aust Inf.

As you have no doubt gathered from some of my previous letters I have not been removed from my command, but have had the units of my Bde taken from me one by one ... [H]ad I been forward during the recent ops, I would have been made the scapegoat for many things.

[24] Raymond Paull says: "...the Allied victory crowned a futile, bloody slaughter"[26] while Collin Kennedy wrote that "By the time Gona fell the total cost for the Australians was shattering".

In 1968, the firm received the first significant New South Wales state decentralisation grant, and moved about 450 kilometres (280 mi) north to the coastal city of Coffs Harbour.