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Sidney Harold Colley, born 11 November 1897, was one of 5 children and the youngest of 3 sons of Charles and Sarah Ann Colley of Elsmore, Inverell. When he enlisted at Inverell on 29 November 1915 he gave his occupation as blacksmith (probably employed in one of the many tin or other mines in the Elsmore area rather than being a farrier or stand-alone blacksmith). His army number, 38, shows that he was among the first to enlist.

A few days later, on 8 December 1915 Sid, as he was known, joined others who had enlisted with him in Inverell, and some other men who had travelled by train from Walgett, Burren Junction and Wee Waa and together started out on the 281 mile recruitment march from Narrabri to Newcastle, known as the March of the Wallabies. 43 men began the march in Narrabri and by the time they marched into Newcastle on 8 January 1916, 265 new recruits had enlisted.
During WWI, in rural New South Wales, route marches were a feature of volunteer recruitment drives for the Australian Imperial Force. These marches were a response to the heavy casualties suffered in the Gallipoli campaign during 1915, sending out the call for more men to replace the fallen soldiers. Between October 1915 and February 1916 nine marches started from various points in the state. The marches were also known as “snowball marches”, the hope being that more and more recruits would join as the group moved on, and that numbers would grow like a snowball rolling down a hill. Each march had it’s own name. There were the Waratahs, Kangaroos, Dungarees, Kurrajongs etc.
The marching recruits were accompanied by army personnel so that formal enlistment processes could be followed as new volunteers stepped forward along the route. Those marching relied on the support of the communities through which they passed for food and accommodation, which was often enthusiastically provided. A re-enactment of the Wallabies March was held on the 75th anniversary in 1990/91.

The initial plan had been for the Wallabies to march on to Sydney after Newcastle, but on the day of their arrival in Newcastle, 8 January, this last stage was cancelled by the military authorities who now wanted to use the Wallabie recruits as the basis of a new locally-raised battalion, with their tented camp based at Maitland Showground. They became the 34th Battalion but soon became known as “Maitland’s Own” reflecting the majority of the new battalion’s personnel coming from Maitland – many of whom had been coal miners, but overlooking the fact that the nucleus of the new battalion was the original Wallabies from North-West New South Wales. Sid Colley was assigned to A company of the new 34th Btn. By 23 February the men at the Showground camp had grown in number to 1125 so, on 10 March, the battalion was moved to a larger tented camp at Rutherford. The Maitland Mercury later reported:
“But all too soon their training would come to an end and the camps at the showground and at Rutherford that had become their home away from home would be no more.
Tough as nails and patriotic to the bone, Maitland’s Own set off from Farley railway station to Sydney on May 1, 1916. At 4pm the next day the 34th Battalion bade farewell to Australia’s soils and set sail for England on board the transport ship Hororata”

Between arriving in Sydney on 1 May (where the battalion was reviewed in Moore Park by General Gustave Mario Ramaciotti) and the sailing of HMAT A20 Hororata on the next day, Sid Colley was able to marry Martha Sylvia Maud Robinson from Inverell, in Drummoyne, Sydney. Their daughter, Rita Alice, whom Sid was never to see, was born on 29 October 1916 in Inverell.

The 34th Battalion arrived in Devonport, Plymouth, England on 23 June 1916, via Alexandria in Egypt where they transferred to the troopship SS Aragon for the final leg of the voyage. From Plymouth the battalion travelled by train to Amesbury in Wiltshire where they arrived at midnight, when they then had to march 3 miles to their huts at Larkhill Camp on Salisbury Plain. Here there followed 5 months of intensive and hard training alongside other components of the 9th Brigade of the 3rd Australian Division, including route marching, trench digging, bomb practice, musketry and general camp routine. The training finished off with six days’ battle practice and field work at the “Bastard Trenches”.
The 34th Battalion left Larkhill on 21 November, wearing their newly issued colour patches of (Oval) Purple over Green (replacing the old gold on shoulder straps presented by the Ladies of West Maitland) and, after marching through Amesbury, entrained there for Southampton.

The Battalion sailed from Southampton on the SS Arundel, arriving in Le Havre on 22 November 1916. Disembarkation began first thing in the morning and the Battalion marched to their camp arriving at 2 o’clock in the afternoon. It was a hard slog marching over cobblestones and carrying heavy loads, notwithstanding the many route marches carried out during training at Larkhill.

Over the next 6 months Sid Colley and his Maitland’s Own comrades became used to life in the trenches, sometimes standing almost waist deep in icy water leading to many cases of trench foot, keeping their heads down, rebuilding trenches damaged by enemy shelling, replying to enemy machine gun and rifle fire, and taking part in nightly patrols into no-man’s land. The battalion’s first casualty was at sunrise on 3 December when Private 148 William Peck was sniped with an explosive bullet through the forehead.

The Battalion was relieved on 18 December 1916 and marched into Armentieres for a welcome Christmas break. The rations for Christmas Day were apparently plentiful with each man being given 1lb of pudding and a quart of beer. On 25 January the 34th returned to the front line to relieve the 36th Battalion in the Houplines Sector. Conditions here were very similar to the previous sector – heavy shelling, night time patrols etc. On 6 February the battalion was relieved by the 36th. The pattern of a few weeks in the trenches followed by a spell in billets away from the front line continued through the first half of 1917.

Everything changed on 6 June when Sid and his comrades in the 34th and other components of the 9th Brigade left billets fully equipped for the assembly trenches of what was to become the Battle of Messines, marching in the order “D”, “A”, “C” and “B” Companies. All went well to begin with but at a point called Gunners Farm the enemy began firing gas shells and masks had to be put on. A number of men were gassed and a number lost their way in the darkness and smoke. Many could not see at all and had to be led back by comrades – in many cases it was literally the blind leading the blind. All this was before the planned assault had even started and after the gruelling march the first members of the Battalion only reached the Assembly Point 30 minutes before zero hour, while the last company arrived only 10 minutes before zero – which was set at 3.10am on 7 June.

7 seconds before zero hour batteries along 4 miles of the Allied Front opened fire. The ground itself swayed violently as if an earthquake had taken place and in many instances the men were thrown together. The sky was brilliantly illuminated by the explosives and terrific artillery fire, but their sound could not be heard over the intense machine gun barrage. Men of the 34th Battalion left the trenches immediately and without showing fear. There was a number of casualties on the parapet owing to the heavy enemy fire, and the reserves behind the first wave suffered considerable losses because of heavy shelling. The weather was hot and sultry and everyone was feeling the effect of their tiring march to the launch point, but the advance continued.

The Battalion passed through the 35th Battalion in the vicinity of the enemy’s original front line. Enemy fire had been very severe up to this point and many Australians were lying on the ground. A halt in the barrage gave the company commanders a chance of checking their compass bearings, defining their limits, and getting into position for the next advance, when the men gained their objective in fine style and then began consolidating their position. By 8.30am on 7 June the 3rd Division had gained the crest of the Messines Ridge and was well dug-in along the front providing good protection against a possible counter-attack. The 34th Battalion was positioned around Grey Farm. The farm, now merely a low pile of bricks that were the ruins of the farm buildings had been known to contain a number of German dugouts and shelters, and had been a strong point in the German second Line. It was screened by a low hedge. On reaching the hedge the 34th Battalion had been met by a hail of machine gun fire from the concealed German positions beyond. They pushed through the hedge and located one of the guns. Creeping forward along a ditch one of the German gunners was killed, a second surrendered and the remainder lay dead around the machine gun position. Three other machine gun positions were identified and successfully dealt with. With Grey Farm in their possession, the men of the 34th Battalions had reached their battle objective.

At some point during the 5 hours of the assault Sid Colley was killed. The circumstances are not know and, like so many of his comrades killed at Messines, his body was not found, so he has no known grave. Instead, he is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres, Belgium. At Inverell his name was recorded on the Methodist Church Honour Roll, The Inverell Honour Roll and on the Cenotaph. His name is also on the Long Plain Memorial Hall Honour Roll where a tree was planted in his memory in August 1923.

Following Messines, the 34th was rotated between manning the front line and conducting training in rear areas, before joining the Battle of Passchendaele on 12 October. Maitland’s Own, disbanded in May 1919.

Sid’s widow, Martha Sylvia Maud (Robinson) married again in 1925 to Herbert James Ryman. They had three children. She died 31 July 1971 in Budgewoi, NSW. Sid’s daughter, Rita Alice, married Robert Walker Woolridge in 1936. She died in West Ryde, NSW 15 November 1978.

Sources:
Inverell Times
Maitland Mercury
Wikipedia
The Harrower Collection
Australian War Memorial
34th Battalion War Diary
In The Footsteps Battlefield Tours
Ancestry.co.uk