BOOMER, Neil Livett
| Service Number: | 686 |
|---|---|
| Enlisted: | 17 December 1914 |
| Last Rank: | Trooper |
| Last Unit: | 2nd Light Horse Brigade Machine Gun Squadron |
| Born: | Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, 3 July 1892 |
| Home Town: | Wagga Wagga, New South Wales |
| Schooling: | Not yet discovered |
| Occupation: | Veterinary Assistant |
| Died: | Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 21 November 1979, aged 87 years, cause of death not yet discovered |
| Cemetery: |
Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens and Crematorium, NSW |
| Memorials: |
World War 1 Service
| 17 Dec 1914: | Enlisted AIF WW1, Trooper, 686, 5th Light Horse Regiment | |
|---|---|---|
| 21 Dec 1914: | Involvement Private, 686, 5th Light Horse Regiment, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '2' embarkation_place: Sydney embarkation_ship: HMAT Persic embarkation_ship_number: A34 public_note: '' | |
| 21 Dec 1914: | Embarked Private, 686, 5th Light Horse Regiment, HMAT Persic, Sydney | |
| 8 Nov 1916: | Transferred AIF WW1, Shoeing-Smith, 2nd Light Horse Brigade Machine Gun Squadron | |
| 11 Jul 1917: | Embarked AIF WW1, Farrier, 686, 2nd Light Horse Brigade Machine Gun Squadron, per A15 Port Sydney | |
| 20 Oct 1917: | Discharged AIF WW1, Trooper, 686, 2nd Light Horse Brigade Machine Gun Squadron |
Help us honour Neil Livett Boomer's service by contributing information, stories, and images so that they can be preserved for future generations.
Add my storyBiography contributed by Chris Buckley
Neil was born in 1892 in Kinning Park in Glasgow, Scotland, the fifth of ten children of James Boomer (born 1858 in Glasgow, Scotland) and Elizabeth Livett (born 1861 in Glasgow, Scotland). James was an Iron Turner. Neil arrived in Sydney, NSW in 1908 on board the Mrayshire and settled in Wagga Wagga, NSW where he was working as a Veterinary Assistant. He enlisted in the AIF in 1914, serving as a Trooper, Shoeing Smith and Farrier (Service No: 686) with the 5th Light Horse Regiment and 2nd Light Horse Machine Gun Squadron. He was Discharged in 1917.
Ian Hodges in his 2017 Theis (He belonged to Wagga: the Great War, AIF and returned soldiers in an Australian country town' describes Neil (p66) reaching Gallopoli in May 1916 and three months later in August, being evacuated with enteric fever (typhoid) so severe that he spent the rest of the year in hospital in Malta and was later sent to England. 'Decades after the War, he told a doctor that he had suffered from enteric, typhus, and dysentry and was struck in the head by shrapnel while being evacuated in August 1915', Neil's service record states only that he suffered from enteric and was evacuated.
Neil returned to Wagga Wagga in NSW where he took up Farming and in 1919 married Laura May Cox (born 1887 in Oberne, NSW), Following Laura's death in 1951, Neil made a visit to Scotland, then continued farming in the Wagga Wagga Region until the late 1960s when he retired to Bondi Junction in Sydney NSW. In 1969 Neil married Ruby May Dudley (born in Yorkshire, England in 1890) in 1969. Ruby had served with the Royal Flying Corps at Gatterick Garrison in Yorkshire, England during WWI. Neil died in 1975 in Sydney NSW, and Ruby in 1988