Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

 
THOMPSON  Norman William  #4250  15th/ 47th Battalion
 
Norman Thompson was born in Beechworth, Victoria but his family soon moved to Wagga Wagga in time for Norman to attend school. He worked as a blacksmith’s striker or farrier. In a letter written by his wife, Katherine, she states that he left Wagga in October 1914 to look for work.
 
Norman presented himself for enlistment in Brisbane on 31st August 1915. Enlistment papers record that Norman was 5’10” tall and had a 41” chest; which for the time placed him in the higher ranges of the male population. He gave his address as Caboolture and stated his occupation as groom. Strangely Norman did not name his wife Katherine as his next of kin; rather his sister Isabel. At enlistment, Norman lied about his marital status, claiming he was single. He made no allotment of his pay to be either held in trust or to be paid to his wife and infant son. These circumstances are not unique as it is well documented that men have often joined the armed forces during wartime to escape a marriage. In the case of the First World War, men often enlisted under an assumed name as well which made it almost impossible for the authorities to trace.
 
After a period of time in camp at Enoggera, Norman boarded the Kyarra in Brisbane on 3rd January 1916 bound for Egypt. The list of men who boarded the Kyarra (the embarkation roll) was an official list of men who had joined up. Embarkation rolls were produced for every ship which departed Australia and since the rolls were printed and stored in each military district, offered a way of tracing enlistees.
 
Katherine was obviously anxious to track down her husband. She wrote to the military authorities asking for information about Norman, no doubt suspecting he had enlisted but she admitted she did not know if this had been in NSW or Queensland. It was not until the publishing of the embarkation rolls that Norman could be identified, by which time of course, he had already left the country. Norman also provided his family with a clue to his whereabouts when he sent a cable from Cairo to his uncle, a harbour pilot in Port Adelaide, asking for five pounds. The uncle ignored the request.
 
Armed with the information in the embarkation rolls, the authorities were willing to have Katherine listed as Norman’s wife and next of kin; provided she could produce a wedding certificate; which she duly did. Unfortunately, the authorities could do nothing about the fact that Norman had not made any allowance for Katherine and baby Roy financially.
 
Norman meanwhile had landed in Egypt on 19th February 1916. He had arrived at a time in which the AIF was going through a doubling in size which was achieved by splitting existing battalions, such as the 15thwhich was Norman’s original unit, to make a reconstituted 15th and a new sister battalion; the 47th. Norman was transferred to the 47th on 1st April.
 
It is widely agreed amongst military historians that when the 47th was being created, the commander of the 15th Battalion Lt. Col. John “Bull” Cannan took the opportunity to divest himself of underperforming officers and NCOs. The 47th would suffer from poor leadership and discipline for the next two years. The 47th was one of the last battalions to leave Egypt for the western front. In a rush to bring the battalion up to strength before boarding the ship in Alexandria, men who were in the detention barracks or VD wards were added to the 47th’s roll; producing a bunch of “toffs, street loafers and wasters all mixed together”. The 47th also managed rather embarrassingly to insult the Prince of Wales as he inspected the battalion at Tel el Kabir.
 
The “Caledonian” set sail from Alexandria with the 47th on board on 2nd June, bound for Marseilles. During the 7 day voyage, the officers and senior NCOs discovered they could obtain alcohol on board on credit, which for some turned the voyage into one long drinking session. Sergeant Major Franz Koch was paralytic on arrival in France and was summarily dismissed. After a 69 hour train journey the battalion detrained at Bailleul and went into billets. The first pay day in France resulted drunken brawls fuelled by “bottled lightning, five francs a time.”
 
The 47th as part of the 12th Brigade was called up to its first major action at Pozieres on 7th August 1916. The German trenchlines on the crest of the ridge above the village of Pozieres had been taken at great cost by the 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF. It was then the job of the 4th Division to hold the positions gained. In doing so the men of the 4th Division had to endure a relentless artillery bombardment. It is recorded that on 11th August, Norman Thompson was killed in action. A note in his file indicates that he was buried 500 yards North East of Pozieres but such hastily dug graves stood little chance of remaining undisturbed and by the time that graves were being consolidated at the end of the war, Norman’s final resting place had been lost.
 
Norman, like over 10,000 other Australians who lost their lives in France and have no resting place, is commemorated on the tablets of the Australian National Memorial at Villers Brettoneux. In November of 1916, Katherine Thompson was granted a war widow’s pension of two pounds per fortnight with an additional one pound for young Roy Curtis Thompson. In 1919 Katherine applied for a housing loan under the War Service Homes Scheme.