Richard Edmond Courtney

Lieutenant Colonel Richard Edmond Courtney CB VD (8 September 1870 – 21 October 1919) was an Australian Soldier in World War I. Courtney's and Steel's Post Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery is named after a position in the Anzac sector named after him during the Battle of Gallipoli.

He was born in Castlemaine, Victoria and educated at Melbourne Church of England Grammar School. He enrolled into Melbourne Law School in 1889 and qualified as a solicitor.

He was the Lieutenant-Colonel in command of the 14th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force at Gallipoli. He was mentioned in dispatches twice in November 1915, and gazetted with the CB in the same month. Invalided to England he was placed in command of the Weymouth Base Depot. He returned to Australia, arriving in March 1916 and his appointment with the AIF was terminated on 22 May 1916 shortly before he appointed acting commandant for Western Australia 10 June, a post he held until to 15 February 1919. Following the Armistice he became Chief Clerk of the Victorian Branch Repatriation Department. He died of a brain haemorrhage in 1919, in Melbourne.