Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

#2152 BRINKWORTH Thomas                        2nd Light Horse / 14th Battalion
 
Tom Brinkworth was born in the township of Chippenham in Wiltshire England to parents George and Sarah Brinkworth. He attended school at Lowden Church of England School and then worked as a nurseryman in a local business.
 
In 1907, at the age of 17, Tom emigrated to Queensland. He went to work for the Queensland National Pastoral Company. QNP was one of a number of pastoral companies established with British and Australian capital, which took advantage of the growing market in beef cattle. It is possible that Tom was recruited by agents in England to work on one of the company’s holdings. Since Tom is listed on the Nanango War Memorial, it is likely that the station on which he worked was in the Nanango district. By the time that Tom enlisted in late 1915, he was the station manager.
 
Tom walked in to the Brisbane Recruiting Depot on 9th December 1915. He stated his age as 25 years and occupation as station manager. Tom named his father of “Frogwell” Chippenham as his next of kin. On the basis of Tom’s skills of horsemanship developed mustering on the Nanango station, Tom was taken into the 15th Reinforcements of the 2nd Light Horse Regiment. On 2nd March 1916, the reinforcements boarded the “Commonwealth” in Brisbane, landing in Suez some six weeks later where the reinforcements went into the remounts camp at Moascar. In June, Tom was reassigned to the 13th Light Horse.
 
After having been in action at Gallipoli in 1915, the Light Horse were reacquainted with their horses and deployed into the Sinai Desert to meet a Turkish threat emanating from Palestine. The 13th Light Horse was surplus to the requirements of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force and the decision was made to assign the 13th LHR to the Western Front in France where the regiment was combined with a cyclist battalion.
 
Unlike the desert war being waged in the Sinai and later Palestine and Jordan, the western front offered little scope for the Light Horse to be employed as mounted infantry and the troopers found themselves performing traffic management, security, prisoner escort and occasional ceremonial duties. Not exactly what Tome had enlisted for.
 
Tom took a period of leave in England in August 1917, during which he went home to Chippenham to see his family. He had not seen them for almost seven years. Upon his return to the continent, Tom resumed his duties with the 1st ANZAC Light Horse. On 26th September 1917, Tom transferred to the infantry; the 14thBattalion.
 
The 14th Battalion was a Victorian Battalion, part of the 4th Brigade of the 4th Division AIF. The battalion was known throughout the AIF as “Jacka’s Mob”, a reference to Private Albert Jacka who was the first Australian to be awarded a Victoria Cross in WW1. Jacka went on be awarded a Military Cross and bar to the MC.
 
Tom served with the battalion through the latter half of the Ypres Campaign where he was slightly wounded but remained on duty. The Ypres Campaign came to an inglorious halt at Passchendaele in November 1917 when the British forces (including the Australians) became bogged in the Flanders mud that halted movement and rendered machinery and transport totally inoperable. As winter came down, there was no more opportunity for offensive action. The Australian forces, comprising five divisions, went into winter billets in the rear areas around Poperinghe in Belgian Flanders.
 
The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in October 1917 precipitated an end to fighting on the Eastern Front. A peace treaty between Germany and Russia released up to sixty German divisions which, once re-equipped and re-trained, could be used to press home a distinct advantage on the Western Front.
 
The British Commander, General Haig, was fully expecting a German assault in the spring of 1918 but he guessed incorrectly that the main thrust would be aimed at the Ypres salient in Belgium. When Operation Michael began on 21st March, the main assault was aimed along the line of the Somme River, the scene of so much fighting and hard-won victories in 1916.
The British 5th Army, which was holding the line astride the Somme was unable to hold the German onslaught which in some places amounted to a five-time numerical advantage. As the British retreated, often in disarray, the German Stormtroopers retook all of the gains made by the British in the Somme campaign and were within a few days of capturing the vital communication city of Amiens. If Amiens fell, Haig might well have lost the war; the situation was deadly serious.
 
Haig ordered his most successful and battle-hardened troops, four of the five divisions of the AIF in Belgium to race south to establish a defensive line in front of Amiens. One of the first units to be deployed was the 14th Battalion which journeyed south from Belgium on 24th March 1918 to take up defensive positions at Allonville, close to Amiens. After stabilising the defensive lines during April, the 14th was relieved and went into a rest camp in the Foret de Mai forest.
At the end of April, the 4th Brigade was sent across the Somme to the Villers Bretonneux sector to relieve the hard pressed battalions which had successfully halted the German advance south of the Somme. In May the 14th Battalion was withdrawn back to the Allonville region for a well earned rest. There was time for swimming in the Somme and cricket matches between companies. On 26th May, Lt Gen William Birdwood (known as Birdie to the troops) visited the 14th Battalion to say goodbye (he was being replaced as Australian Corps Commander by Lt Gen John Monash) and to present a number of medals and commendations.
 
On 30th May, Tom Brinkworth received a visit from his brother Claude whose British unit was stationed nearby. In the evening of the 31st May 1918, two large calibre shells fired from some distance behind the German lines landed on two barns in which men from two companies of the 14th Battalion were sleeping. There were almost 80 casualties, of whom 13 were killed. One of those killed was Tom Brinkworth.
 
Those killed were buried in adjoining plots at the Allonville Communal Cemetery Extension. When Tom’s name appeared on the casualty lists in the Brisbane papers, Mr Snelling, General Manager of the Qld National Pastoral Co, wrote to the authorities to confirm that the T Brinkworth listed was his employee. Mr Snelling was also named as the executor of Tom’s will in which he named his brother Herbert as his sole legatee.
 
The Brinkworth family chose not to include a personal inscription on Tom’s headstone at Allonville. He is commemorated on the Australian War Memorial, the Nanango War Memorial and the Rood Screen War Memorial, St Andrew’s Anglican Church, Chippenham.