Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Stanley Rowlinson (Service Number 648) was born about 1877 at Moss Side, Manchester, England. He had served in the Boer War. He worked as a temporary labourer in the Tramway Maintenance Branch in Sydney and Suburbs.

He first enlisted for service in the Great War with the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force which was recruited immediately on the outbreak of the war and which travelled to the islands north of Australian to seize German possessions. Rawlinson enlisted at Sydney on 1th August 1914, giving his ‘trade or calling’ as ‘labourer’ and his wife, Alice, living in Liverpool Street, Hyde Park as his next of kin. At this stage of his career his service number was 914. He also claimed service with the 63rd Company of Infantry in the South African War. By 18th January 1915 the mission of the AN&MEF was complete and its members were discharged on return to Sydney.

Virtually immediately, Rawlinson enlisted in the AIF at Liverpool on 4th March. The details were the same, except that he now claimed his military experience in New Guinea as well. Allotted to the 19th Australian Infantry Battalion, Rowlinson embarked HMAT ‘Ceramic’ at Sydney on 25th June 1915 and after what must have been a brief stopover in Egypt joined the British Expeditionary Forces at Gallipoli on 16th August. His time there was without incident and he returned to Alexandria through Mudros (on the Greek island of Lemnos) on 7th January 1916.

On 18th March he left Alexandria again to travel to the British Expeditionary Force on the Western Front in France, passing through Marseilles on 25th March. In July he was Absent Without Leave for three days and failed to appear to parade. He received 20 days of Field Punishment No. 2. On 15th September he was wounded with shrapnel in his right shoulder and at first admitted to the 5th Australian Field Ambulance and then to the No. 2 General Hospital at Boulogne, where the wound was described as penetrating his chest and his condition as dangerously ill. He survived a few days and died at 4.15am on 13th October 1916. He was buried in the Wimeraux Communal Cemetery near Boulogne.

Reports of his death in the Australian Red Cross Society Wounded and Missing Enquiry Bureau files include advice that the wound occurred near Ypres and that his nickname was ‘Rollo’.

Pensions were granted to his widow, Alice (£2 per fortnight), his daughter Phyllis (£1 per fortnight), his son William (15/- per fortnight), and another daughter Madge (10/- per fortnight).

- based on the Australian War Memorial Honour Roll and notes for the Great Sydney Central Station Honour Board.