SHELDEN, Emil John
| Service Number: | 20920 |
|---|---|
| Enlisted: | Not yet discovered |
| Last Rank: | Sapper |
| Last Unit: | 2nd Divisional Signal Company |
| Born: | Prahan, Victoria, Australia, 1 October 1896 |
| Home Town: | Not yet discovered |
| Schooling: | Not yet discovered |
| Occupation: | Bank Clerk |
| Died: | Deepdene, Victoria, Australia, 3 November 1972, aged 76 years, cause of death not yet discovered |
| Cemetery: |
Boroondara (Kew) General Cemetery, Victoria |
| Memorials: |
World War 1 Service
| 21 Nov 1917: | Involvement Sapper, 20920, 2nd Divisional Signal Company, --- :embarkation_roll: roll_number: '6' embarkation_place: Melbourne embarkation_ship: HMAT Nestor embarkation_ship_number: A71 public_note: '' | |
|---|---|---|
| 21 Nov 1917: | Embarked Sapper, 20920, 2nd Divisional Signal Company, HMAT Nestor, Melbourne |
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Add my storyBiography contributed by Maree Woods
Emil Shelden was born on October 1st, 1896 in the Melbourne suburb of Windsor. He was the oldest of the two sons of John William Shelden and Julia Cecilia Brown, who also had three daughters.
Emil was a bank clerk when he enlisted on June 28th 1987 and his service record shows he had served for two years in the Citizen Force as a Signaller and was therefore assigned to the 2nd Division Signals Company and attended Signals School at the Broadmeadows training camp. Emil, together with his younger brother William, embarked on the “Nestor” on November 21st 1917. They disembarked in Alexandria on December 15th and marched into the Tel el Kebir training camp between Cairo and the Suez Canal before reaching Southampton on January 24th.
Emil was then dispatched to the Parkhouse depot near Tidworth in England. The Army Service Corps, Engineers, Signallers and Army Medical Corps were all located at this depot. The AASC Training Depot at Parkhouse was a particularly busy establishment. The depot not only trained and despatched 150 ASC reinforcements per month and conducted specialist officer and NCO training, it was also responsible for providing the supplies, transport and barracks services support for the AIF in the UK. Emil spent six weeks in isolation at the Clapham Hospital before disembarking at Abbeville in the Somme region on September 22nd 1918. Abbeville was the headquarters of the Commonwealth lines of communication. He returned to Australia on the “Takada” on July 18th 1919.
Emil returned to the State Savings Bank in various Melbourne suburbs including Spotswood, Deepdene, Newport, and was the Manager in Koroit and lived in the bank building, near Warrnambool.
In April 1926 Emil became engaged to another St Kilda local, Dorothy Eileen Martin. They were married in 1929 and had at least five children.
Emil died on November 3rd 1972, aged seventy-six, and is buried in a family plot at the Boroondara General Cemetery in Kew in Melbourne.
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