Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

487 Corporal, 3rd Battalion, Australian infantry, the Australian Imperial Force. Killed in action 23rd July 1915 age 26, Shrapnel Valley, Gallipoli. Buried Shrapnel Valley Cemetery.
William Edwards Brooks was the son of George and Mary Ann Brooks, The Moorings, Trent, Dorset, England. William’s father, George, was a senior police officer who lived in various locations in Dorset before retiring to Trent (the village of his birth) with his family. William was born in Portland, Dorset in 1889. In the 1911 census he is shown as a postal clerk in Weymouth, Dorset, lodging with widow Joan White. At some point thereafter he emigrated to New South Wales where he obtained employment as a telegraph operator in the Post Office in Port Macquarie and also in Collarenebri.
On 26 August 1914, just a month after war broke out, William enlisted in “C” Company of the newly formed 3rd Bn Australian Infantry at Kensington, NSW.
The 3rd Battalion was among the first infantry units raised for the Australian Imperial Force during the First World War. Like the 1st, 2nd and 4th Battalions it recruited from New South Wales and, together with these battalions, formed the 1st Brigade.
The battalion was raised within a fortnight of the declaration of war in August 1914 and embarked from Sydney just two months later on 20 October 1914 on HMAT “Euripides”. After a brief stop in Albany, Western Australia, the battalion proceeded to Egypt, arriving on 2 December 1914. The battalion took part in the ANZAC landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 as part of the second and third waves and served there until the evacuation in December.
The eight month campaign in Gallipoli was fought by Commonwealth and French forces in an attempt to force Turkey out of the war, to relieve the deadlock of the Western Front in France and Belgium, and to open a supply route to Russia through the Dardanelles and the Black Sea The Allies landed on the peninsular on 25-26 April 1915;the 29th Division at Cape Helles in the south and the Australian and New Zealand Corps north of Gaba Tepe on the western coast, an area soon to become known as Anzac. Shrapnel Valley was an essential road from the beach up to the Anzac front and took its name from the heavy shelling it was given by the Turks on 26 April 1915. Wells were sunk there and water obtained in small quantities, and there were camps and depots on the south side of its lower reaches. Gun positions were made near its mouth. The cemetery was made mainly during the occupation, but some isolated graves were brought in from the valley after the armistice.
In the main hall of the General Post Office in Sydney there is a Book of Remembrance with the names of all the postal workers, including William Edward Brooks, who were killed during the war.