Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Corporal William Jospeh Gillies (Service No:3332) enlisted in the AIF at Cootamundra on 25 July 1915 as a Private, and was attached to 1st Infantry Battalion when he embarked with his Unit on 5 October 1915 from Sydney for Egypt on board HMAT A32 Themistocles. On 22 March 1916 Private Gillies embarked from Alexandria for Marseilles on board the Ivernia for service on the Western Front. Private Gillies wrote a letter home on 1 December 1916, vividly describing events at Pozieres in July that year - 'Fancy a thousand guns firing! It was a pretty sight but a deadly one also .... Our boys behaved splendidly but we had a lot of casualties in the charge .... we hadn't gone 200 yards when a high explosive 5-9 shell landed near us. I was between the other two men. They were both killed. I was wounded in the left arm That was on 25th July, exactly 12 months from the day I had enlisted.... For six days and nights we had no sleep, and what with the terrific shell fire we received our nerves were shattered. Many men went mad, and dozens are suffering from shell shock. No one but the Infantry know what war really is .... I have had six days of what I can call real hell. No one who has not been near the firing line can realise what a terrible thing war is .... It is lovely in France now. The wheat and oats are all ripening, and the fields glitter with daisies and red poppies, the same as they grow wild back home' (Trove; 1916). Promoted to Corporal in 1917, he served with 63rd Infantry Battalion, returning to France with 1st Infantry Battalion and was WiA for the second time (GSW chest) on 18 September 1918. Corporal Gillies embarked on 4 January 1919 from England for Melbourne on board HT Morvada, and was attached to 1st Infantry Battalion at Discharge on 6 July 1919.

Bill was born in Narrandera, New South Wales in 1893, eldest of two children of Joseph William Gillies (b1861 at Aukin's Gap, Victoria) and Elizabeth (Beth)   Fisher (b1873 in Narrandera, New South Wales). Joseph was a Station Hand at Berrigo Station in 1893 when he and Beth married in Narrandera. The couple divorced in 1899, and Beth remarried in 1902 to William Joseph Kelly (aka Kendall; b1870). William, a Miner in Lockhart and Wyalong, died in 1917 and Beth settled in Wyalong where she was a Shopkeeper.

Bill was a Farm Labourer at Jackson's Holes via Lockhart when he enlisted in the AIF, and following his Discharge worked as a Shearer in northern New South Wales and QLD (Springfield Station). In 1924 in Burrowa, New South Wales he married his first wife Dorothy Recordia Plummer (b1897 in Tamworth, New South Wales). Bill and Dorothy settled in Sydney, where Bill worked as a Salesman and Labourer. Following Dorothy's death in 1930, Bill moved to Wyalong in the early 1940s, where he was a Grocer. In 1948 in Sydney, Bill remarried to Violet (Merle) Pearl Tovey (b1916 in Sydney, New South Wales). Bill and Merle settled in Sydney, where Bill worked as a Labourer and Cleaner. Bill died in 1967 and Merle in 2007.