Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

William Coleman was working as a labourer and living in Townsville prior to enlisting in the Australian Imperial Force on 15 November 1915. He was allocated to the 20th Reinforcements of the 15th Infantry Battalion. At the time, the 15th Battalion was at Gallipoli and the ‘20th Reinforcements’ was the 20th group of soldiers who would go to join the 15th Battalion. For the majority of 1916, William trained in Brisbane, probably at what is now Gallipoli Barracks in the Brisbane suburb of Enoggera. There he would have learnt basic soldiering such as drill and rifle shooting and of course physical conditioning such as long route marches.

He sailed for England with the other men of the 20th Reinforcements of the 15th Battalion on the Clan McGilvray on 7 September 1916 and arrived at Plymouth, England on 2 November. By this stage, the 15th Battalion was fighting in France and William, along with the rest of the reinforcements, proceeded to Codford and joined the 4th Training Battalion where the troops undertook advanced training to prepare them for the fighting on the Western Front. Codford is adjacent to the Salisbury Plain in southern England, and thousands of men from throughout the Commonwealth trained there before going to France and Belgium. The British Army uses the Salisbury Plain for training to this day.

Private William Coleman sailed for France on 28 February 1917 arriving at the large British Army camp at Etaples on the French coast. A few days later he joined the 15th Battalion in the field at Ribemont in France. At the time the 15th Battalion was training for upcoming attacks against the Hindenburg Line and was under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Terrence McSharry from Brisbane.

Although it was Spring, the weather was bitterly cold, and the ground covered in snow. After just four weeks in the field Coleman was evacuated with trench feet on 31 March 1917 and eventually to hospital in England. This meant that he missed the Battle of Bullecourt in April. The Battalion suffered heavily during this unsuccessful battle. 383 men were either killed or wounded, from a strength of about 900, so William Coleman was lucky to be in hospital at the time.

He went back to France in mid-August and rejoined the 15th Battalion in early September 1917. At this time, the Battalion was in the Ypres Salient area in Belgium, taking their turn at occupying the frontline trenches and preparing for the next attacks. In late September, the men of the 15th participated in the Battle of Polygon Wood. The battle was successful, but the battalion lost 163 men killed, wounded, or missing.

After Polygon Wood the 15th Battalion moved back out of the trenches for some rest and refitting. In mid-October they moved back to the trenches. By this time, the front had moved to the slopes of the small ridgelines in front of Passchendaele with the mud-filled trenches that we associate with the Ypres Salient and the terrible winter of 1917/18. After a week in the trenches, the Australians were withdrawn and moved to the rear where they rested and trained. Even though the troops were resting, life remained hard. The troops did lots of route marches, work parties and other training and the weather was so severe that at times training was cancelled.
In January and February 1918, the 15th Battalion rotated between the trenches and the rear areas. In March 1918, the Germans launched a major attack against the British front near St Quentin. Their aim was to take the important logistics centre of Amiens and split the Western Front where the French and British armies came together. The 15th Battalion, along with most of the Australian troops in Belgium were rushed southwards to France to help to block the advance and save Amiens. The main body of the 15th boarded buses in Neuve Eglise at 7am on 26 March and arrived at Hebuterne the following day at 3pm. There they occupied the new front line positions ad prepared to repel enemy attacks. The men were shelled by enemy artillery and held their ground against enemy assaults.

The German offensive was stopped and the troops settled into trench life again through April, May, and June. In late May General John Monash had taken over the Australian Corps and developed a plan to move the enemy off the high ground in the vicinity of Le Hamel.
The Battle of Hamel on the 4th of July 1918 was very successful in achieving all objectives in just 93 minutes and is well documented in the annals of Australian military history. The 4th of July was also William Coleman’s last day fighting the war. The 15th Battalion’s objective in this battle was a strong German position known as Pear Trench. Some of the fiercest fighting of the battle took place at Pear Trench and it was in this fighting that William Coleman received a burst of machine gun fire that wounded him in his left buttock and his right thigh. Evacuated through the casualty clearing stations and military hospitals in France, he was then boarded on a ship for England on 10 July and admitted to the 3rd Auxiliary Hospital at Dartford. He received treatment there until late October when he moved to the convalescent depot at Sutton Veny.

The Armistice brought hostilities of the First World War to an end on 11 November. Being one of the wounded, William Coleman was on an early list to return to Australia and embarked on the ship City of Exeter on 22 January 1919 and arrived in Australia 2 March 1919.

Private William Coleman was awarded the 1915/15 Star, The British War Medal, and the Victory Medal.