Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

#253 SHELTON William Haswell  9th Battalion
 
William Shelton was born at Harrisville in the Fassifern Valley south of Ipswich. His family were farming at Milora and young Bill and his siblings attended school there. Lured by the prospect of good farming and grazing country in the South Burnett, the family moved to Murgon and established themselves on a property at Merlwood. At some stage, Bill Shelton took up a selection block at Merlwood which he may have farmed with his brother, Clifford.
 
Soon after the declaration of war in August 1914, recruiting for the volunteer Australian Imperial Force began. William Shelton, and at least eight other young men from the Murgon district, took the train together to Gympie, the nearest recruiting centre. The nine Murgon boys were all single, in their early to mid-twenties and came from a farming background. It is obvious that they all knew each other, perhaps through membership in the Cloyna or Murgon Rifle Clubs.
 
On 2nd September 1914, Bill and his mates enlisted in Gympie and were given travel warrants to take the train to Enoggera where they were taken on as recruits into “B” Company of the 9th Infantry Battalion; where they were given successive regimental numbers. George stated his occupation as farmer and named his father, Henry of Merlwood as his next of kin.
 
The 9th Battalion was the first Queensland battalion to be raised in 1914 and recruits came from as far away as Cairns, Charters Towers and Northern New South Wales. Uniforms and equipment were issued and rudimentary training begun. The Brigadier of the 3rd Brigade travelled to Brisbane to inspect the troops in early September. The battalion paraded through the streets of Brisbane prior to boarding the transport “Omrah” at the Pinkenba Wharf on 24th September 1914. The “Omrah” departed Brisbane the next day. The nine Murgon Boys are listed on the embarkation roll with successive regimental numbers.
 
From the outbreak of the war, the Australian Government was greatly concerned with the German presence in the Western Pacific; particularly the ships of Admiral Graf von Spee’s China Squadron which has slipped out of the home port of Qingdao and was somewhere in the vastness of the Western Pacific. Until the location of von Spee’s fleet could be established, coastal shipping along the eastern seaboard of Australia was potentially at risk. The Australian convoy containing the AIF would have to wait in southern ports until the location and destination of the German cruisers could be established.
 
The “Omrah” made it into Port Phillip Bay unharmed and the battalion disembarked from their transport in Melbourne and spent from the 1st to the 16th of October in training, with the other battalions of the 3rdBrigade. On the 17th October, the battalion was inspected on the Melbourne Town Pier by Prime Minister Andrew Fisher. Fisher was well known to the Murgon Boys as he was their local member, having worked in mining in Howard and Gympie before entering Parliament as the member for Wide Bay. The Battalion then re-embarked on the “Omrah” and sailed for King George Sound, Albany to rendezvous with the rest of the first division transports before sailing for Egypt on 1st November.
 
During the voyage, one of the convoy escorts, HMAS Sydney, encountered the Light Cruiser Emden which had detached itself from von Spee’s squadron and had been creating havoc in the ports of India and Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Emden was despatched with superior fire power at the Cocos Islands and the convoy continued unmolested. The convoy arrived at Suez on 29th November and sailed through the Suez Canal to Port Said and then on to Alexandria where the battalion disembarked and marched into the Mena Camp on the outskirts of Cairo.
 
The three brigades of the AIF, some 1500 men, set about engaging in a training regime first on company and battalion levels and then brigade manoeuvres.  The work was hot and dusty but one saving grace was that Mena was so close to Cairo that men could easily take a tram into the city, whether they had a pass or not, to sample the delights on offer. To the Murgon Boys, none of whom had much experience of the world beyond their farms, Cairo and its exotic environment must have presented a memorable spectacle.
 
As the months at Mena passed, it became obvious that the Australians were being trained to become part of the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force. On the 1st March 1915, the 9th Battalion and the other three battalions of the 3rd Brigade boarded transport ships for a journey across the Adriatic to the Island of Lemnos where the invasion force for the Dardanelles was being assembled. When the 9th arrived in Mudros Harbour on 7th March, the battalion disembarked and set up camp on the harbour shore from which position, the troops began to practice boat and landing drills.
 
The command of the entire AIF had been assigned to General William Birdwood (known universally as Birdie). Birdwood’s plan for the landing on the Gallipoli shore just north of Gaba Tepe was for the 3rd Brigade to be the covering force (first ashore) with the 9th Battalion taking up position on the far right of the line, closest to Gaba Tepe and the Turkish artillery emplaced there. The 9th Battalion men boarded the battleship HMS London late on the 24th April. The ships carrying the covering force slipped silently out of Mudros Harbour and headed for their designated station off the Gallipoli coastline. The men from “A” and “B” companies, who would be in the first wave climbed down the scaling ladders to a destroyer which would take them closer in shore before boarding lifeboats which in turn would be towed by steam launches to within a few hundred yards of the beach. All of this was achieved in complete silence and when the first of the 9thBattalion men waded ashore around 4:30am, there was very little opposition from the Turkish defenders. Bill Shelton was one of the first men to set foot on the Gallipoli shore along with the rest of the Murgon Boys.
 
The 9th had been given the task of advancing as far as a third ridge across the peninsula. No reconnaissance had been possible prior to the landing and the possibility of reaching the first day’s objective was exposed as being a mere folly.
 
Nevertheless, small groups of men took it upon themselves to charge uphill without waiting for orders from officers or senior NCOs. Many of those groups probably managed to progress well beyond the first ridge but were unable to hold the positions due to a lack of reinforcements. Rather than retreat, they held their positions until they were over run. Most of those men were not seen again. One such casualty was #253 William Shelton.
 
The Australian authorities in Melbourne were singularly unprepared for the number of dead, wounded or missing in those early months. Reliance was placed on cabled communications which provided little information and families were simply informed that a loved one was missing or killed. The absence of reliable information created a vacuum which was often filled with speculative reports, supported by letters from the front. There is evidence that Bill’s family were aware of one story that he had been taken prisoner and was in hospital; no doubt relayed by one of the Murgon Boys in a letter home.
 
Examination of this claim by the authorities revealed that indeed a Private Shelton had been taken prisoner but this person was from a different battalion and had a different first name.
It was not until a final list of prisoners of war, held by the Turks, was available that a final determination on the fate of Bill Shelton could be made. A court of Inquiry conducted on 5th June 1916 in France, more than a year after the event, finally declared that William Shelton had been killed in Action on 25th April 1915. His remains remained undiscovered.
 
William Shelton is listed on the memorial tablets of the Lone Pine Memorial to the Missing. He is one of 3,200 Australians who lost their lives at Gallipoli and have no known grave. William’s family may have never known he was commemorated there as his brother, Clifford, wrote to the military authorities in 1938 to enquire if William was listed on the Villers Bretonneux Memorial which had been dedicated that year. William’s name is located not far from the name of another of the Murgon Boys, George Pringle, who died of wounds and was buried at sea.
 
Clifford Shelton wrote to the authorities again from his home at Norman Park in Brisbane to apply for the Gallipoli Medallion, on behalf of his deceased brother, which had been struck in 1967 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings.

Son of Henry and Elizabeth Selina Shelton of 'Merlwood', Murgon, QLD. Brother of Clifford Henry Shelton who returned to Australia on 18 October 1917 having served with the 26th Battalion

Medals: 1914-15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal