Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Horace William Colston Sparkes was born on 27th June 1890 in Plympton, South Australia. He was the only son of seven children to James and Susan Sparkes. Sparkes grew up at 27 Kensington Road, Norwood and attended Wellington Road Primary School and Norwood Primary School. At the age of 15, Sparkes left school to help his father in the family grocery store. Soon after Sparke was awarded one of only six full scholarships to study at the South Australian School of Mines which is now part of the University of South Australia on the corner of North Terrace and Frome Road. Sparkes attended the school on Sundays. Sparkes played A-Grade cricket for East Torrens Cricket Club and played social tennis. Sparkes was a member of the Congregational Church.

Sparke’s descendants believe that early in 1915 he tried to enlist in the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) to fight in World War 1 but was rejected; with a height of 5 feet 6 inches (1.7 metres), a weight of 126 pounds (57 kilograms) and of medium build, it is believed he was not strong enough to be in the Infantry. Family anecdotes indicate that after he was rejected by the AIF, he joined a gymnasium and began body building. On 8th of November 1915, he re-applied to the AIF and passed his medical exam. He was enlisted at the age of 25. Sparkes enlisted with his brother-in-law, Arthur Robinson, who was married to Edith Jessie Robinson, Sparkes’ eldest sister.

Sparkes had a first aid certificate which he had earned while doing a course with the South Australian Railways. The Infantry discovered this and deployed him as a stretcher bearer and not a soldier. Horace’s deployment to hospitals instead of the front line was something that he was said to be ashamed of for the rest of his life. His family have said that he refused to march in ANZAC day marches for this reason.

Sparkes left Australia on the 25th of March 1916 aboard the HMAT Shropshire bound for Egypt with six other South Australians, including his brother-in-law. The pair arrived at the Australian training camp in Tel el Kebir near Cairo in Egypt on 24th April 1916. Horace Sparkes’ and Arthur Robinson’s regimental numbers were only two digits apart - 9985 and 9983. This means it is likely that they signed up on the same day and must have been standing in line next to each other.
On 23rd May 1916, Sparkes was ‘taken on strength’ to the 1st Australian Stationary Hospital in Ismailia, a city in Northeast Egypt, not far from the training camp.

After 3 months in Ismailia, 24th August 1916, he marched with the Royal Army Medical Corps (a specialist corps in the British Army) from Ismailia to Mustapha, Alexandria, Egypt, which housed a British Convalescent Depot.
Sparkes then sailed to Gallipoli with the 1st Australian Stationary Hospital to care for the wounded soldiers. After Gallipoli was evacuated, he embarked on the HMAT Warilda bound for the United Kingdom on the 14th of September 1916. Sparkes arrived in London on 23rd of March 1917 and was sent to serve in the Australian Auxiliary Hospital in Dartford. Soon after, Sparkes, travelled to Watford in Kent on the 4th of October 1916 and was admitted to hospital with a severe fever for 20 days. After recovering from his fever, Sparkes was ‘taken on strength’ to the 3rd Australian Auxiliary Hospital in Dartford where he would spend the rest of his service. This was where some of the sickest men from the frontlines came.

From what we know, Sparkes was a nurse or ambulanceman at the hospital. The 3rd Auxiliary hospital was mainly used for treating wounded Australian soldiers and used buildings from the ‘Orchard Hospital’ built on land from the Joyce Green estate. The hospital was only a few hundred meters from the Thames River, and had been built to treat Smallpox patients before the war. Smallpox patients were previously treated on hospital boats in the river to keep them isolated from the rest of the population.
Sparkes served under the command of Lt Col H Arthur Powell who ran the hospital operations. He added an operating theatre to the hospital and significantly extended and improved the buildings. In 1917, the Australian Red Cross took control of the Red Cross store which provided all soldiers in the hospital with things that they needed like chocolate and cigarettes. Each patient was given 30 cigarettes a week!

We know from letters sent by patients in the 3rd Auxiliary Hospital that London was under constant attack from German bombers while he was there[1], although the hospital itself (which was about 25 miles East of London) wasn’t directly targeted.
The hospital had approximately 1200 beds and between October 1915 and December 1918, it had treated 56,441 troops.

Towards the end of winter Sparkes contracted influenza and was admitted to hospital on the 10th of February 1919 for three weeks.

In Dartford, Sparkes played cricket for the 3rd Australian Auxiliary Hospital team. During one of these games, he got a hat-trick. According to Sparkes’ family, part of the reason he was never sent to the front lines was because the Hospital administrators admired his cricketing ability and wanted to keep him as part of their team. The cricket ball with which Sparkes’ got a hat-trick was presented to him and his family is still of possession of this ball. The ball carries a shield with the engraving “No.3 A.A.H.C.C H W Sparkes HAT TRICK Vickers Ltd Erith 1918.”
Throughout most of his service Sparkes was a private, which was an ordinary soldier or worker. On the 2nd of March 1919, he was appointed lance corporal, a senior non-commissioned rank in charge of a small group of privates.

When the war ended in November 1918, the Dartford Hospital, like many other auxiliary hospitals, was still full of patients. Sparkes remained in England to care for these men until they were well enough to be discharged. Finally, on the 22nd of November 1919, more than 12 months after the end of the war, Sparkes boarded the HMAT Aeneas bound for Melbourne. He arrived in Melbourne on the 9th of January 1920. Once back on home soil he remained in the AIF for a further 24 days before being discharged on the 30th of January 1920.

Sparkes received three medals for his service in the AIF during World War 1. He was presented with the Victory Medal, a medal awarded to all soldiers who fought for the Allies, the British War Medal, which was given to those soldiers who had fought for a minimum period of service, and the 1914/15 Star which was granted to military personnel who served between 5th of August 1914 and 31st of December 1915.

When Sparkes arrived back in Adelaide, the family grocery store had been sold so he needed to find work. He sat the Commonwealth Public Service exam. He scored 1540 points out of a possible 2200 in the exam and was accepted as a 5th Class Clerk at the State Land Tax Office. This eventually became the Australian Land Tax Office and then The Australian Income Tax Department.

Sparkes was married in Sydney in 1925 to Daisy Myrtle Stutter who was also a clerk. She was born in Oberon NSW. Two years later, Daisy gave birth to their only child, Peter Gordon Sparkes, on the 10th of May 1927. Like his father, Peter went on to serve his country and fight with the Royal Australian Airforce in World War 2. Sparkes continued to work in the Commonwealth Public Service as a senior assessor until his retirement. Sparkes’ wife died, aged 79, in 1968. Sparkes died the following year on the 26th of April 1969 in South Australia at the age of 78. He was cremated at Centennial Park Cemetery in Adelaide.