Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

William TONES #5416 26th Battalion

Bill Tones was born in Samford to John and Nora Tones. There is no Roll of Honour Circular so it is difficult to draw any conclusions about how he came to be living at Oakfield, Kilcoy where he described himself as a dairy farmer.

Bill enlisted in Brisbane on 31st January 1916. He was 25 years old and named his father as next of kin. Bill sailed for overseas on 8th August 1916 as a reinforcement for the 26th Battalion. He spent 3 months in the Australian training depot at Rollestone in England and finally joined his battalion on 12th February 1917. It had taken Bill over twelve months from his enlistment to make in to the Western Front.

The 26th Battalion, part of the 7th Brigade of the 2nd Division AIF had first seen action at Pozieres in July and August 1916. By February of 1917, the battalion was rotating in and out of the front line in the vicinity of Bapaume. The winter was extremely harsh, particularly for the Queenslanders of the 7th Brigade who had to endure snow and ice, influenza and calf deep mud. In spite of the dreadful conditions, the British command continued to order small offensive operations which had no strategic value.

On 26th March 1917 the 26th was ordered to attempt to capture an enemy trench at Lagincourt. This would have been Bill’s first experience of action as he had only been with the unit six weeks. The men stood up and advanced from the jumping off tapes before dawn. Several witnesses informed the Red Cross that they saw Bill wounded in the hip. The trench that Bill was sheltering in was soon retaken by the German counterattack. Some witnesses, including some who had been taken prisoner, claim they saw German soldiers carrying a wounded man in a ground sheet from the area where Bill had fallen. Certainly a significant number of men were taken prisoner that day, and some may well have been wounded. At the instigation of Bill’s aunt, Miss Smyth of Oakfield, Kilcoy; the Red Cross even wrote to soldiers from Bill’s company who were prisoners in Germany.

The authorities originally recorded Bill as wounded, suspected of being a POW. However as the months past and Bill’s name failed to appear on the POW lists from Germany, a court of inquiry determined that Bill had been killed in action on 26th March 1917.

It is open to conjecture as to what happened to Bill. The most likely explanation is that he died of his wounds soon after falling into German hands. The German authorities often buried prisoners who had died soon after capture in unmarked graves and this may be the case here. John McAtee and Alex Moore, whose names also appear on the Kilcoy Memorial meet a similar fate.

With no known grave, Bill Tones is commemorated on the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux, in the company of 10,000 other Australian servicemen who died in France and have no known grave.