Thomas Stanley EMMERSON

EMMERSON, Thomas Stanley

Service Number: 5775
Enlisted: Not yet discovered
Last Rank: Private
Last Unit: 9th Infantry Battalion
Born: Charters Towers, Queensland, Australia, 1897
Home Town: Blackbutt, South Burnett, Queensland
Schooling: Blackbutt State School, Queensland, Australia
Occupation: Teamster
Died: Nephritis, Woodmans Point Quarantine Station Western Australia , Quarantine Station, Woodman Point, Perth, Western Australia, Australia, 22 February 1919
Cemetery: Perth War Cemetery and Annex, Western Australia
NC1. 6, Quarantine Station, Woodman Point, Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Memorials: Australian War Memorial Roll of Honour, Blackbutt War Memorial, Nanango War Memorial
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World War 1 Service

4 May 1916: Involvement Private, 5775, 9th Infantry Battalion, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '9' embarkation_place: Brisbane embarkation_ship: HMAT Seang Choon embarkation_ship_number: A49 public_note: ''
4 May 1916: Embarked Private, 5775, 9th Infantry Battalion, HMAT Seang Choon, Brisbane

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Biography contributed by Ian Lang

# 5775 EMMERSON Thomas Stanley             9th Battalion
 
Tom Emmerson was born in Charters Towers to Thomas and Louisa Emmerson. The family moved to Blackbutt on the Brisbane Valley rail line in time for young Tom to attend Blackbutt State School. As a young man, Tom played cricket and football and was a member of the town band. Tom had worked on the family cattle farm but by the time of his enlistment, he stated he was employed as a teamster. In the early years of the 20th Century, Blackbutt was the centre of a large timber industry and there were several mills in the district with the largest mill being state owned. It is more than likely that Tom Emmerson was working as a teamster in the timber industry.
 
Tom took the train from Blackbutt down the Brisbane Valley Line to Ipswich and then on to Brisbane where he walked in to the recruiting depot in Adelaide Street on 7th January 1916. Tom had just turned 19 and was rather slightly built being 5’6” tall and weighing just 130 lbs. Tom named his mother, Louisa of Blackbutt as his next of kin.
 
Tom was placed into a depot battalion at Enoggera where he began rudimentary military training. During the early months of 1916, the Australian Army was flush with recruits who were located in staging camps in Egypt. Once the Anzac Force was withdrawn from Gallipoli to Egypt, the army embarked on an expansion program; effectively doubling the AIF in size by drawing on an experienced core of Gallipoli veterans to be supplemented by reinforcements from the camps. There was no immediate need for the reinforcements in the camps in Australia to be shipped overseas and as a consequence men such as Tom Emmerson did not embark for overseas until the 4th May when he and a number of reinforcements for the 9th Battalion boarded the “Seang Choon” in Brisbane. The embarkation roll shows that Tom allocated 3/- of his overseas daily pay of 5/- to his mother. The reinforcement arrived in Egypt in June by which time most of the restructured AIF had been deployed to the Western Front in Northern France. On 9th August 1916, Tom embarked on a transport at Alexandria and sailed for England where he and his mates were marched into the 3rd Brigade Training Battalion at Perham Downs.
 
For a young man from the quiet country town of Blackbutt, being in close proximity to London was perhaps a temptation he could not ignore. On 31st August, Tom went AWL and was apprehended by the Military Police in London. After having his pay docked as punishment, Tom settled down to the training regime at Perham Downs, remaining in England throughout the winter. On the 10th April 1917, some 15 months since he enlisted, Tom was posted overseas from Perham Downs and joined the 9th Battalion in the field.
 
The 9th Battalion was one of the four battalions that made up the 3rd Brigade of the 1st Division of the AIF. When Tom marched into the battalion lines, the 9th was in the front line at Lagnicourt in what was referred to as 2nd Bullecourt. By the end of July, the 9th was relieved and went into billets around Bapaume before relocating to Belgium for the planned offensives there during the summer and autumn of 1917.
 
The 1st Division spent several months in Flanders taking on reinforcements and training for the coming battles which collectively became known as the 3rd Battle of Ypres, or more commonly, the Battle of Passchendaele. The first action that Tom was probably involved in was the battle of Menin Road on 20thAugust 1917 when the 1st Division advanced just over a kilometre to clear Nun’s Wood (there was no wood, just a few splintered tree trunks). One month later, the 9th was back in the line at Broodseinde Ridge floundering in the mud which effectively put an end to the Ypres campaign.
 
During the winter of 1917/18, the five divisions that comprised the AIF went into billets around Poperinghe for a lengthy period of relaxation, reorganisation and sports. Brigades were also rotated in and out of the front line as part of a holding force. In early March 1918, there was concern in the British High Command of a possible German offensive to be launched in the spring. The intelligence at the time indicated that the Ypres salient was the most likely place for the offensive and from February onwards, the men of the 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF spent more time at the front. On 6th March, the 9th battalion was in the reserve lines at Hollebeke, just south of Ypres, when the Germans launched a sustained gas attack which lasted four hours. Ten officers, including the battalion commander Lt Col Mullen, and 150 other ranks had to be evacuated due to the effects of gas. Tom Emmerson was one of those evacuated.
 
Tom was taken to the Colchester War Hospital via hospital ship and train to recover from the gassing. He was never to return to the front. For the next seven months, Tom moved from base to base in England convalescing. He went AWL on two occasions and upon his return reported to the VD hospital at Bulford. Tom’s records are incomplete and there is no indication if he went before a medical board, which would have been the normal course of action, before being returned to Australia for discharge.
On 2nd January 1919, Tom boarded the Hospital Ship Karmala for Australia. There is no notation indicating when Tom reached Australia but it is likely that he was taken off the Karmala at Freemantle and placed in the Woodman Point Quarantine Station around 29th January 1919. Louisa Emmerson received a telegram on 29th January stating that Tom was seriously ill with nephritis (inflammation of the kidneys). It must be assumed that either Tom had the condition before leaving England or developed the symptoms while at sea.
 
Toms file contains no record of his death, and certainly no death certificate. He died at Woodman Point, south of Freemantle, on 22nd February 1919 and was buried in the Quarantine Station Graveyard. Tom’s father wrote to the authorities concerned that his son’s last resting place should be appropriately honoured.
 
Probably at the beginning of World War 2, the remains of WW1 servicemen buried at Woodman Point were exhumed and included in the Perth War Cemetery, part of the Karrakatta Cemetery in the Perth suburb of Nedlands.

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