Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Thomas Baker, Born May second, 1897 was brought up in Smithfield South Australia. Thomas went to Saint Peters college and loved sports. He additionally had a love for aviation.  Preceding the war, he served in the Cadet Corps. On the 29th of July 1915, Baker joined the AIF (Australian Imperial force), designated to the first Fortifications of the sixth Field Ordnance Unit. His training was finished in Adelaide. It was on the 22nd of November 1915 that he left Melbourne on his mission to serve in the great war.

Baker was appended to the 16th Field Gunnery Unit on the 26th of December 1915 in Toura. The battery prepared in Egypt and after that set out to France on the seventeenth, they left to participate in the main battle of Somme (battled between July 1, 1916 – November 18, 1916). The battle for Pozieres and Mouquet Farm needed ordnance trades, Baker and the sixteenth Battery managed to power through the two battles. Guedecourt was assigned to be the HQ for the AIF that winter, on the eleventh of December, 1916. He was swapped out to a Forward scout group close Guedecourt to support the accuracy of weapons with just a field telephone for communication. Thomas was under substantial fire by some riflemen that took out his telephone, he repaired the harmed telephone line, and repaired communication. This act earned him a Military Award, to which he later earned the Military Bar in an occasion the next year.

In Messines on the evening of the 21st of June 1917, Baker had been reconnected to his Battery after he recovered from trench fever. The disguise on the No. 1 pit had burst into flames, putting around 300 rounds of shells of high explosives in threat at around 3:30 pm. B.S.M. Creek had requested volunteers to help him in putting out the fire, to which Baker and three other men reacted to instantly. Every one of the five men put out the fire utilizing water assembled from a nearby well and in shell openings. Baker and the three other men, including Darker, Cleric, and McSweeney, were each granted the Military Decoration Bar for this demonstration. 

In August 1917, Baker had started to look at a career in the Australian Flying Corps, after witnessing syncronized aerobatic pilots in real life. In September 1917 he was exchanged to a workman position for the A.F.C., before long, he experienced flying and prepared for the No. 5 Flying Squadron in Britain.

He finished his first solo trip in 1918. Thomas went on leave from his preparation in Britain from the 31st of August, re-joining on the fifteenth of September. He graduated on the fifteenth of June 1918 as a pilot of a Sopwith Camel and was then commissioned as a Second Lieutenant for the No. 4 fighting Squadron. Baker in the four months of battle Between June 23rd and November fourth Thomas had shot down 12 enemy aircraft in his Sopwith Camel and his Sopwith Sharpshooter. In October,  Baker wrecked two unfriendly aircraft, after two weeks his flying skills excelled, earned him his Distinguished Flying Cross. His last flight was on the fourth of November, over the city of Ath, Belgium, where he and a partner were in battle when Thomas was tragically shot down and revealed lost without a trace. His demise was later confirmed and grieved by his squadron and family. Thomas was given several awards after death, such as the Flying Cross on the 23rd of May, 1919.

Biography written by Ashton Joshy, Aberfoyle Park High School, SA attached as a document. Winning entry for 2022 Premier's Anzac Spirit School Prize.

Thomas Charles Richmond BAKER, DFC,MM* (1897-1918)

Last to Fall

Thomas Charles Richmond Baker (1897-1918), was born on 2 May 1897 at Smithfield, South Australia; these days a northern suburb of Adelaide.  In 1915 it was farming country.

He was the eldest son of Mr Richmond Baker, schoolmaster and farmer, and his wife Mrs Annie Martha, née Gardner.

He was educated from 1911 at the Collegiate School of St Peter, Adelaide (St Peter’s College), where he won the Farrell Scholarship.  He was an accomplished athlete and rowed, played tennis and football.  He was also was a member of the cadet corps.  On leaving school in 1914 he joined the Adelaide branch of the Bank of New South Wales as a clerk.

He served in the 11th Field Company Engineers in the militia.  His address on enlistment was 113 South Terrace Adelaide.  His by then widowed mother subsequently moved to 55 Park Terrace Unley.

Thomas Baker joined the AIF on 29 July 1915.  Allocated to the 1st Reinforcements of the 6th Field Artillery Brigade, he undertook basic training in Adelaide before proceeding to Seymour in Victoria to conclude his artillery training.  He embarked on 22 November 1915 from Melbourne aboard the HMAT Persic for the Middle East

In due course he was assigned to the 16th Batteryof the 6th Field Artillery Brigade, using the ubiquitous 18 Pounder horse-drawn field gun.  He and his colleagues along with most of the rest of the AIF,  travelled from Egypt to Marseilles, France, and then by rail to northern France, arriving in time to take part in the first battle of the Somme at Pozieres.

Having survived the massive artillery duels around the fighting for Pozieres and Mouquet Farm, the AIF found itself near Guedecourt for the winter.  As a gunner he won his first Military Medal on 15 December 1916 in an action near Gueudecourt.  He was part of a Forward Observer team sent forward to direct the fire of the guns using a field telephone for communication.  He repeatedly repaired broken telephone lines while under heavy fire. Shortly after this incident he was awarded a Bar to his Military Medal when he put out a fire in a gun-pit containing ammunition.  Most men would have run for their lives.

Though a competent gunner, Baker directed his attention to his hopes of joining the Australian Flying Corps. Aerial combat captured his imagination. In August 1917 he remarked that he was 'almost green with envy' on seeing Allied aviators in action.

He managed to secure a transfer as a mechanic in September 1917 to the A.F.C.  He was identified and selected for flying training and sent to England to No. 5 Training Squadron in the UK, near Oxford.  He ‘went solo’ in March 1918.  On 15 June he graduated as a Sopwith Camel pilot and next day, he joined No. 4 Fighter Squadron as a Second Lieutenantwith the sum total of 57 hours 40 minutes flying time.  The life span of 'rookie' pilots was notoriously brief but mostly not as spectacular as Tom Baker's career proved to be.

In a spectacular but tragically brief combat flying career lasting just four months, Thomas Baker's mark was immediate and profound.  Between 23 June 1918 and 4th November (just one week short of the Armistice), he shot down a total of 12 enemy aircraft.  Several of these victories were against the highly effective and dangerous Fokker DVII biplane fighter.  See the link listing his adversaries.

He was clearly in his element; often he closed extremely close to the enemy he was pursuing. 

He had been promoted lieutenant on 27 June 1918.  But while life in the Flying Corps was exciting it was also very dangerous and on the 4th November he and a colleague were both lost over the town of Ath in Belgium. Their victor was a very experienced German Ace himself; Rittmeister Karl Boller, with 36 victories.  Baker was buried in the communal cemetery, Escanaffles, Belgium, alongside his colleague.

His demise along with two other pilots from No. 4 Squadron that day, plus four Engineers from the 1st Tunnelling Company (made famous by the movie 'Beneath Hill 60') and a Gunner taking part in the same operation, the crossing of t he Sambre-Oise Canal, were the last members of the AIF to be killed in action in the Great War, just a week before its end. 

Tom Baker was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and promoted to Captain,  both posthumously.  His D.F.C. citation is attached as a link.

There is an intriguing photographic self-portrait – perhaps one of the earliest “selfies”, taken by pointing his camera at a mirror, while he was undergoing flight training. 

For such a young man he had displayed great qualities of leadership and personal courage.  He was said to have a forceful but pleasant personality, of his flying skill there was no doubt and he was a steady, respected flight-leader. Like so many of his peers one can only speculate what might have become of such a remarkable young man had fate not robbed him of that opportunity.

A stained-glass window is dedicated to his memory at St John's Church of England, Halifax Street, Adelaide, and he is commemorated on a Memorial at Smithfield South Australia.

Sources

J. McCarthy, Australian Dictionary of Biography 1979  John McCarthy, 'Baker, Thomas Charles (1897–1918)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/baker-thomas-charles-5111/text8539, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 2013.

Compiled by Steve Larkins Nov 2013  (one of the earliest profiles published on this site)

His true date of birth could be 25th April 1897