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"WEBSTER.- Died from wounds in Palestine, 8th November. Lieut. Tom Webster, 5th Light Horse, eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Webster, Sarum, Bell, aged 26 years, after 3 years' service." - from the Brisbane Courier 18 Dec 1917 (nla.gov.au)

Son of William and Sarah Webster, of Pebble Hall, Theddingworth, Rugby, England.

Births Dec 1891   WEBSTER Tom Ashborne 7b 609

He is remembered on the Theddingworth War Memorial.
 
 
Theddingworth is a village and civil parish in Leicestershire, England.

The parish includes the neighbouring hamlet of Hothorpe, which lies across the county boundary in Northamptonshire.

Theddingworth lies about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) west of Market Harborough on the road to Lutterworth. It is on the north bank of the River Welland, which forms the county border with Northamptonshire. 

 
# 328 WEBSTER Tom              5th Light Horse Regiment
Tom Webster was born at Mercaston Hall in Derbyshire, England in September 1891. His parents, William and Sarah, were descendants of a long line of tenant farmers who had managed the farm. The family moved to Market Harborough where young Tom attended Market Harborough Grammar School.
It is possible that Tom arrived by himself in Queensland on the “Kaipara” in June 1911 as part of a group of workers hired by rail contractors. In the first decade of the 20th Century, the Queensland Government embarked on an ambitious program of branch line construction in the south east region of the state. There was so much building going on that there was insufficient local labour available and contractors were forced to recruit their workforce from overseas, particularly the United Kingdom.
Tom presented himself for enlistment at the Dalby courthouse on 28th October 1914. He stated his age as 23 years and occupation as grazier. It is unclear if Tom was actually the holder of a grazing block or an employee but in in 1917 his mother sailed to Queensland and gave her address as “Sarum” Bell. There is a Sarum Road between Bell and Kumbia and this may have been the location of Tom Webster’s grazing block.
 
Tom was formally admitted into the AIF as a Trooper in “C” Squadron of the 5th Light Horse Regiment which was being formed at Enoggera. The 5th LHR had begun accepting recruits in September of 1914. On 12thDecember 1914, the 5th LHR began loading onto trains at Newmarket railway station which would take the men and horses as far as Wallangarra on the Qld / NSW border. At Wallangarra, the light horseman and their horses had to detrain and transfer to a wider gauge NSW train. Regulations at NSW border crossings required that the animals had to be dipped to ensure that they were not carrying any pests such as ticks. The toxic mixture used in the dip caused a number of horses to become sick and the war diary records that some in fact died or had to be put down by the veterinary officer. In fact, the war diary records that horses were still suffering from the effects of the Wallangarra dip during the voyage across the Indian Ocean.
 
After the Wallangarra fiasco, the 5th LHR travelled on to Sydney and went into temporary camp at Liverpool before boarding the transport “Persic” on 21st December. The ship had a brief stopover at Albany WA before continuing across the Indian Ocean to disembark the regiment on 1st February. The regiment proceeded to camp at Maadi where the 5th joined the 6th and 7th Light Horse Regiments to make up the 2nd Light Horse Brigade. Training began at squadron level before progressing to regiment and finally brigade manoeuvres over the next three months. It was envisaged that the Light Horse would be employed as a defensive force to meet a possible Turkish threat to the vital Suez Canal.
 
The bulk of the AIF Infantry Brigades spent the first three months of 1915 in Egypt training for an expected landing at the Dardanelles in Turkey. When the landing took place on 25th April, the conditions and topography faced by the Australians immediately presented problems for the Anzac commanders. Reinforcements were needed to press forward beyond the first line of ridges. On 18th May, less than four weeks after the landing at Anzac Cove, the 5th Light Horse, having left their horses behind in Egypt, landed at Anzac Cove and went into the firing line at Pope’s Hill as much needed reinforcements.
 
On 24th May, the light horsemen witnessed an unusual sight when a ceasefire was declared for 12 hours all along the Anzac front so that each side could retrieve and bury their dead. Fighting resumed in earnest at 5:00pm. In August the 5th LHR was involved in the attack against the Turkish trenches at Lone Pine. In October, the regimental war diary recorded that of the 477 who had landed in May, only 154 originals remained on the peninsula (500 reinforcements kept the regiment sustained) and of those only 87 had been there continuously. Tom Webster was one of those fortunate 87, having avoided sickness, wounding or replacement. Tom was promoted to corporal on 7th December 1915. The 5th Light Horse remained on Gallipoli until the very end of the campaign with the last detachment leaving in the early morning of 20thDecember.
 
On Christmas Day 1915, the 5th Light Horse disembarked at the docks in Alexandria and proceeded by train to their old camp at Maadi where they were greeted by a number of reinforcements who had been held back from Gallipoli, once evacuation was planned. The men were particularly pleased to be reunited with their horses. The end of the Gallipoli campaign brought about the end of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force but the Ottoman forces still posed a serious threat, particularly to British interests in Egypt and the Middle East.
 
The Light Horse was attached to the new Egyptian Expeditionary Force as part of a Mounted Division. Their first task was the defence of the Suez Canal which was a vital communication corridor. The Turks made several attempts to capture the canal by crossing the Sinai desert from secure bases in Palestine. In March 1916, Tom was promoted to sergeant. All incursions across the Sinai were repulsed by a mixture of British Infantry, West Indian and Indian Army regulars and mounted troops from Australia and New Zealand. The 5th Light Horse took part in its first major action at Romani on the Mediterranean coast in the Sinai in August 1916. From that point on, the Turks abandoned their thrust across the Sinai and withdrew to fortifications around the Palestinian city of Gaza. At the conclusion of the Sinai campaign, Tom was promoted to the rank of Staff Sergeant Major in November and again promoted to Warrant Officer 1st Class in January 1917.
 
Once the Sinai was secure, the British forces planned a move into Palestine which would open up the road to Jerusalem and ultimately the Jordan Valley and Damascus. The first attempts to break into Palestine were made at Gaza in March and April of 1917 but the Turks holding a line which ran from Gaza on the coast to the railway at Beersheba were able to repulse all efforts to dislodge them. On 13th July 1917, Tom was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant. In September of 1917, he was sent off to the school of instruction to learn about the Hotchkiss Machine Gun. Hotchkiss Machine Guns were the standard heavy machine gun of the French and the United States Armies. Unlike the standard British heavy MG, the Vickers, the Hotchkiss was considerably lighter being air cooled rather than water cooled and was much simpler mechanically, having only 32 parts. It was considered to be an ideal weapon for the Light Horse as the gun could be broken down quickly and transported on pack horses. It is possible that when Tom returned to his squadron, he directed selected troopers in the gun’s operation.
 
The British had been hammering away the Gaza defences for most of 1917 without success. In October, a radical plan was put in place whereby the standard infantry and artillery assault would be launched as a feint while mounted troops circled around the eastern flank of the line at Beersheba. This was the famous charge at Beersheba on 31st October 1917. The charge was carried out by the 4th and 12th Light Horse Regiments.
 
As the front was being rolled back from Beersheba in the first weeks of November, the 5th Light Horse was directed to take up positions on the Beersheba Hebron Road to cut off any reinforcements coming from the north. The war diary of the 5th LHR records only minimal enemy activity for the period with one officer and two troopers wounded on 7th November. The officer was Lieutenant Tom Webster. Tom was taken to the 1stLight Horse Field Ambulance where he subsequently died of a gunshot wound the following day. He was 26 years old.
 
Tom was buried on the side of a wadi named Tel abu Dilakn. His grave was well marked and compass bearings taken to make finding the grave easy. Tom’s mother, Sarah, was living at Bell and when she was informed of her son’s death, she cabled base records in Melbourne to enquire if Tom’s father in England had been informed. Several of Tom’s colleagues wrote to Sarah at Sarum giving details of his death. Sarah Webster had been named as the sole beneficiary of Tom’s will and presumably she remained at Bell until the estate was settled.
 
At the end of the war, the Imperial War Graves Commission began the process of consolidating isolated graves from the various battlefields into larger permanent cemeteries. Tom Webster’s remains were reinterred in the Beersheba War cemetery. His parents chose not to have a personal inscription placed on his headstone but erected a memorial stone in the cemetery at Theddingworth in Rugby.