Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Births Jun 1875   TEMPLEMAN Walter Bourn 7a 341.

He was 42 and the son of Henry and Eliza Templeman.

# 7326  TEMPLEMAN  Walter                                     9th Battalion
 
Walter Templeman was the youngest of 12 children born to Henry and Eliza Templeman in the village of Market Deeping near Peterborough, Lincolnshire UK in 1876. Soon after Walter was born his father died. Walter’s mother was assisted with the care of her younger children by Walter’s elder sisters, particularly Martha. In 1883, when Walter (shown as Wallace on the passenger list) was 8 years old, Eliza Templeman emigrated to Queensland with 6 of her children on the “Duke of Buckinghamshire”. According to correspondence from Martha about her brother, Eliza died a few years after arrival in Queensland and the care of Walter was taken over by his eldest sister.
 
Several of the Templeman brothers settled around Landsborough and Maleny and for a time, Walter was farming with his brother Arthur at Delaney’s Creek near Woodford. Walter also worked as a coach driver and carrier, probably delivering mail and goods from the railway stations on the Woodford Line or Main North Coast Line.
 
In the second half of 1916, the AIF in France had suffered enormous casualties in the Somme campaign. As the casualty lists in the daily papers grew ever longer, recruiting in Australia stalled. The Australian Government was under increasing pressure from Britain to lift recruiting to maintain strength in the AIF, preferably through conscription. The plebiscite to decide the matter was scheduled for October 1916 and was narrowly defeated. Perhaps in this charged atmosphere, Walter felt compelled to answer the call to arms.
 
Walter presented himself to the Brisbane Recruiting Depot in Adelaide Street opposite Central Railway Station (the site of today’s Anzac Square and Shrine) on 6th November 1916. Walter advised the recruiting officer that he was 41 years old (the upper age limit for enlistment was 45), single, of Landsborough. His occupation was coach driver and he had previously been refused military service due to asthma. Walter named his sister, Martha Prentice of Spring Hill, as his next of kin.
 
Walter reported to Enoggera Camp where he was quickly inducted into the 24th reinforcements for the 9thBattalion. He was granted a period of home leave where he probably caught up with his brother Arthur. After only a short period of training at Enoggera, the 24th reinforcements travelled by train to Sydney where they embarked on the “Ayrshire”. The troopship sailed from Sydney via South Africa, Sierra Leone and then on a wide arc out into the Atlantic to avoid German submarines. After three months at sea, the reinforcements disembarked at Plymouth in south west England. From there the reinforcements took a train to the 3rdBrigade Training Battalion located on Salisbury Plain not far from Stonehenge. For the next three months, Wally as he had become known to his fellow reinforcements spent time in training interspersed with periods in Fargo Military Hospital with influenza.
 
At the end of July, Wally crossed the English Channel to France and the huge Australian infantry depot at Havre. While at the depot, Wally was charged with breaking out of camp and being out of bounds for which he received a harsh penalty of 7 days Field Punishment #2 (soldier to be placed in shackles for two hours a day), but after just three days punishment, he was ordered to make his way to the billets of the 9th Battalion. The punishment was squashed.
 
Wally marched in to the 9th Battalion lines near Hazebrouck on the French/ Belgian border on 11th August 1917. The 9th Battalion, as part of the 3rd brigade of the 1st Division AIF was in the middle of an intensive training program for forthcoming action in what was referred to as 3rd battle of Ypres. The 9th Battalion was a well drilled fighting unit with an excellent pedigree stretching back to Gallipoli. It may have been difficult for Wally to keep up with the strenuous physicality of infantry life due to his age and recent illnesses. One 9thBattalion member writing to the Red Cross about Wally stated that he had been assigned as batman a kind of officer’s butler, to a Lieutenant Cameron,.
 
The 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF would spearhead the first of a series of short contained battles beginning at the ramparts of the ruined city of Ypres and moving roughly east in a bite and hold strategy, each of which built upon the success of its predecessors. The battle which became known as Menin Road began on 20th September and all objectives up to the green line were achieved. The 9th battalion was relieved by a British regiment for a short rest while two other AIF divisions took Polygon Wood a few days later. The taking of Polygon Wood opened up the battlefield for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Divisions AIF as well as the New Zealand Division to advance to the next objective, the Broodseinde Ridge and the villages of Zonnebeke and Passchendaele.
 
The attack against Broodseinde took place on 4th October 1917. It was to be the last success of the Flanders Campaign as soon after, heavy and relentless rain flooded the approach tracks and roads which were churned into a sea of mud which trapped men, animals and machines. The approach to the front was so difficult that men burdened down with over fifty pounds of equipment in sodden uniforms and greatcoats took several hours to reach the firing line, by which time they were exhausted and fed up. Enemy artillery, firing from drier and stable high ground harassed the trenches in which the Australians sheltered miserably. The 9th Battalion held the front-line position occupied on 4th October for the next seven days during which time Wally Templeman was reported to be missing, and then wounded and missing. He had certainly been wounded as a number of witnesses attested to having seen him wounded by shell fragments and taken to a dressing station. After that, there was no further sighting of Wally or his grave. It is most likely that he died of his wounds at the dressing station and may have been buried in the mud nearby; but this could never be verified. Several letters from Martha Prentice to the authorities and the Red Cross Wounded and Missing Enquiry Service were unable to provide any further information.
 
Eventually, at a court of inquiry convened on 8th April 1918, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, determined that Private Walter Templeman had been Killed in Action on 10th October 1917, aged 42. When medals were being distributed to the families of war dead, Walter’s eldest surviving brother, William Templeman of Conondale, signed for his brother’s victory medal and empire medal.
 
Walter Templman’s remains were never located. He is one of 56,000 men, including 6,178 Australians, who served in the Ypres campaign and who have no known grave. Their names are inscribed on the Portland Stone Tablets under the arches of the Menin Gate Memorial to the Missing in the City of Ypres (now Iper), Belgium.
The commemoration of the Menin Gate Memorial on 24 July 1927 so moved the Australian war artist Will Longstaff that he painted 'The Menin Gate at Midnight', which portrays a ghostly army of the dead marching past the Menin Gate. The painting, which now hangs in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, toured Australia during the 1920s and 30s and drew huge crowds. Since 1928, with only a brief interval during the German occupation in the Second World War, the City of Ypres has conducted a ceremony at the Menin Gate Memorial at dusk each evening to commemorate those who died in the Ypres campaign. The ceremony concludes with the laying of wreaths, the recitation of the ode, and the playing of the Last Post by the city’s bugle corps
 
Walter Templeman is commemorated on several memorials in the Landsborough and Maleny districts as well as the Woodford Methodist Roll of Honour. A tree and plaque to his memory was planted in the Woodford Avenue of Honour.