Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Oliver Thomas was the son of Peter and Margaret Oliver, born in Cairns, and resident of Townsville, Queensland. His parents had passed away long before the war started.

He joined the 15th Battalion on the Western Front during October 1916. On 1 February 1917, near Gueudecourt, the 15th Battalion attacked a section of the German front line known as Stormy Trench. The party consisted of 150 men and six officers, or one and half companies. The attack started at about 7.00 p.m. on a frontage of 500 metres. Although the enemy trenches were only 100 metres from the Australian lines, inadequate artillery support and poor overall planning caused the attack to fail. A German counter attack at 11 p.m. was beaten off. In the face of relentless German shelling of the captured trenches, and a stronger German counter attack at 4.30 a.m. the Battalion was forced to retire. Although 52 German soldiers were captured, the 15th Battalion’s casualties were 37 men killed, over 20 captured by the Germans and over 80 wounded.

Thomas was one of the men badly wounded in the attack and he was left in the German lines with severe grenade wounds to his legs. He was first reported as wounded and missing on 1 February 1917. It was later discovered that he had died of his wounds in a German field hospital at Graincourt, three days later on 4 February 1917. Graincourt was about 25 kilometres behind the front at Gueudecourt. The Germans buried him in a marked grave in the cemetery at Graincourt, and sent all the details to Allied authorities, in the form of a German death card.

In 1923 Thomas Oliver’s remains were reinterred in the Ontario Cemetery, Sains-Les-Marquion, France, which is about 8 kilometres from where he was originally buried. His medals and entitlements went to an older brother, Alexander Oliver.