Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

August Nicolai was born in Kronsdorf, near Tanunda to August Hermann Nicolai and Alwine Emilie Sonntag along with his two brothers, one of whom died as an infant. He worked as a labourer and moved around wherever the work was to be found, and with the outbreak of war, August was working in and around Edithburgh on the York Peninsular.

With the news of the Gallipoli campaign stirring up recruiting sentiment, August made his way to Adelaide to the Currie St recruiting office to enlist, before being sent to Sydney to conduct his Pioneer training at Moorepark. Whilst in Sydney he met and married Lily May Pride of Redfern, before being “diagnosed with VD” and was sent to Milson Island in the Hawkesbury River for months of quarantine for what turned out to only be psoriasis.

In June 1917, August finally embarked for England where he completed his training at Fovant before joining his unit on the Western Front in early 1918. The 1st Pioneer Battalion were at Godezonne Farm, Belgium when August and other re-enforcements arrived and they were quickly put work in the construction of gun points and artillery dugouts, as well as digging out collapsed trench systems, laying out wire entanglements and repairing shelled roads. All of this done under constant artillery and air attack as they were thrown into the deep end.

After about six months in the line, and with the restructuring of the ANZAC forces and redistribution of troops, 100 men of the 1ST Pioneer Battalion were transferred to the 6TH Infantry Battalion in September 1918, which at the time was behind the lines and luckily remained so until the armistice.

On his return to Australia in 1919, August returned to a welcome parade in Edithburgh and a return to civilian life. His marriage to Lily had not lasted the war and his last remaining family member, his brother Carl had died just before the war broke out, he now had no immediate family left.

It is not known why he left Edithburgh but August next turns up at Macclesfield working as a woodcutter and labourer. There is no further mention of August until a death notice is placed in local newspapers in 1930, with his name incorrect. It is unknown he had decided to go by another name in a new district of if there was a simple misunderstanding of his name due to his living circumstances. His last years of life with the deaths of his family members, a failed marriage and the immeasurable toll of time spent on the Western Front come into context with his death notice in the Southern Argus on 10 April 1930:-

“About ten days ago, Mr. W. Nicholson a returned soldier, who had been employed as a woodcutter in the district for some years, found to be missing from his home. Thinking he may have gone away temporarily, nothing more was thought about him as the door had been padlocked. On Saturdays, it was usual for him to do the marking at the rifle range, but his non-appearance increased the anxiety of his whereabouts. On Sunday morning a search-party was organized, and his dead body was found about a mile away, near a log. He was wearing an overcoat, and underneath him was a double-barrelled shot gun, containing one live cartridge and a spent one. There were several cartridges in his pocket. The cartridge had entered the face, and blown nearly half the head away. His body will be buried in the military cemetery at Keswick.”

Being in the midst of the Great Depression and having no immediate family, there were no funds to deal with Augusts’ burial, and he was taken to the Meadows General Cemetery and laid to rest in an unmarked grave.

Eighty seven years after the death of August the local Meadows community, having been made aware of the unmarked grave, raised the funds to place a headstone on his grave and ensure that his service will forever be remembered.