Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

He enlisted under the alias of William Gribble

#6248 GRIBBLE William (aka William Cameron)                  9th Infantry
 
William Gribble stated he was born at Coonabarabran NSW. There is very little evidence in the official files of his early life. At the time of his enlistment on 17th January 1916, William gave his address as Stanmore outside Woodford where he was presumably working on a farm or grazing property. He stated his age as 18 ½ and named his sister Florrie Gribble of South Grafton as his next of kin. William reported to the Rifle Range Camp at Enoggera to begin his military training in the 11th Depot Battalion.
 
After being assigned to several reinforcement drafts, William was finally placed in the 20th reinforcements for the 9th Battalion and boarded the “Clan McGillivray” in Brisbane for the voyage to England on 7th September 1916. The reinforcements landed at Plymouth in Devon on 2nd November and proceeded to the 3rd Brigade Training Battalion at Fovant. On 21st December, William and the rest of his reinforcement draft crossed the English Channel to the large British Training and Transit Depot at Etaples in France. On 30th December, William began his journey by train to Bazentin where the 9th Battalion was in billets providing working parties for trench and communication improvements.
 
For the rest of that winter, the 9th Battalion as part of the 3rd Brigade provided working parties, interspersed with periods of rest and the opportunity to visit the divisional baths for uniform cleaning and new underwear. In the beginning of February, the battalion moved to the area around Albert where serious training for the coming battles of 1917.
 
The Germans had spent the winter constructing an elaborate and formidable line of defence to the rear of the Somme battlefields which became known as the Hindenburg Line. In the spring of 1917, German forces began to withdraw to this new position and the British forces began a cautious advance across frozen ground in pursuit of withdrawing German forces.
 
On 22nd February, the 9th Battalion moved up to the front to relieve a British unit. The war diary records that the sector was very quiet and the battalion commander decided to send out a patrol to gauge the state of the German defence. The intelligence provided indicated that the German positions had been abandoned. On 25th February 1917, two companies of the 9th Battalion moved forward to establish outposts positions with the intention of linking them with a new trench line. While the companies were moving across the open ground, the Germans launched an intense artillery barrage. It was probably at this time that William was killed. The intensity of the shell fire forced the 9th Battalion men back leaving their dead behind. William Gribble’s remains were never recovered.
 
After William’s death, several letters addressed to Florrie Gribble, William’s sister, were returned to Base Records marked address unknown. It was not until 1923 that a Mrs Cameron writing from Willoughby NSW responded to a letter from Base Records stating that she was William’s mother and that William had enlisted under an assumed name; stating that his real surname was Cameron. She wrote he was her only son and “he was only a baby when he ran away to war.” No documentary evidence was provided to support the claim of the Cameron name and so medals issued were in the name of Gribble, as is William’s entry in the Australian War Memorial’s Roll of Honour.
 
In 1938, some 20 years after the end of the First World War, the Australian Government constructed the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux on the Somme battlefield. The memorial was dedicated by the newly crowned King George VI. The memorial records the names of over 10,000 Australian soldiers who lost their lives in France and have no known grave; William Gribble among them.