Volunteers of Essendon and Flemington, 1914-1918

 

Keddie T    Sgt    856    Thomas               8 Inf Bn    24    School teacher    Single    Pres       

Address:    Murrumbeena, Howard St   

Next of Kin:    Keddie, James, father, Howard St, Murrumbeena   

Enlisted:    18 Aug 1914       

Embarked:     A24 Benalla 19 Oct 1914   

 

Relatives on Active Service:

Keddie-B-J-Pte-4833  brother

Keddie-O-W-Pte-4834  brother

 

Sergeant/Private Thomas Lee Heard Keddie

 

Rod Martin

 

 

Thomas Keddie.  Education Department of Victoria.

 

At the the time of his enlistment on 8 August 1914, twenty-four-year-old Thomas Keddie was teaching at a school in San Remo, Victoria.  His certificate of attestation included the statement that he was a lieutenant on the unattached list with a junior cadet instructor’s certificate.  This probably led to him being given the rank of sergeant ten days after enlistment.

 

Tom was just under 177 centimetres tall, weighed seventy-three kilos and had blue eyes and dark brown hair. Before becoming a teacher, he had lived with his father in Howard Street, Murrumbeena.  Upon joining up, Tom was assigned to 8 Infantry Battalion. After training at Broadmeadows, he was a member of the first contingent to sail for Europe after the war began, embarking on A24 HMAT Benalla at Port Melbourne on 19 October 1914.

 

(Birtwhistlewiki.com.au)

 

Troops boarding HMAT Benalla (right) and HMAT Hororata, Port Melbourne,

19 October 1914     (AWM C02793)

 

The ships headed for Albany in Western Australia, there to join the first convoy to head off to the war.

 

Diagram of the gathering of ships in King George Sound, Albany, October 1914. 

HMAT Benalla was the fifth ship up in the first row.      (Rod Martin)

 

On 1 November, the convoy sailed, ostensibly for Europe via the Suez Canal.  While in the vicinity of the Cocos Islands, the escort HMAS Sydney (1) detached itself to head for the islands because the German raider SMS Emden had been reported in the area.  Sydney found Emden, battering it with its superior firepower and forcing its captain to beach it on North Cocos Island.  Thus the convoy received its first taste of war.

 

While the convoy was en route, the British and French governments decided to adopt Winston Churchill’s idea and attempt to knock German ally Turkey out of the war by attacking and seizing Constantinople (now Istanbul) from the sea.  If this proved to be too difficult (as it did), it would use troops to invade the Gallipoli Peninsula and then move overland to Constantinople.  As the Australian and New Zealand contingents were heading in the direction of Egypt, it was decided to land them in that country and use them for that purpose, if it was found to be necessary.  Accordingly, Tom and his compatriots were taken to Alexandria and disembarked there on 3 December.  They then moved to a specially constructed camp at Mena, in the shadow of the Giza Pyramids, just outside Cairo.

 

The Australian camp at Mena, late 1914                   (AWM P00117.001)

 

The men trained at Mena until 3 January 1915, when 8 Battalion moved to Ismailia, on the Suez Canal.  The Turks occupied Palestine and the Sinai Peninsula and there was a fear that they would attack westwards and try to take control of the canal.  The men entered the trenches in two locations but, on 11 January, the battalion was ordered back to Mena. 

 

There were no further entries in the war diary for the remainder of January and February, and the diary for March 1915 has been lost.  However, Wikipedia tells us that

 

The Ottoman Empire attempted to capture the Suez Canal between January 26  and February 4, 1915.  The British Empire-protected canal was a strategic location for the British, as it served as a line of communication and a military base.  The attack failed due to the strongly held defences and alert defenders.  The Turkish forces suffered approximately 1,500 casualties, including around 700 prisoners.  

 

Wikipedia tells us further that the offensive ended before 8 Battalion could see any action.  However, the attack was a near-run thing.  The Turks reached as far as the east bank of the canal and attempted to cross it.  Three boatloads of Turkish troops did actually reach the other side, but were quickly repulsed.

 

Captured Turkish pontoons at Ismailia, February 1915                          (William Dawe) 

 

8 Battalion remained in Egypt for the remainder of February and all of March.  During that time, on 28 February, Tom’s rank was reduced from sergeant to private.  No reason for this demotion is given in his record - something unusual in itself.  It may have coincided with the expansion of the battalion as more men arrived from Australia, and a surfeit of non-commissioned officers eventuated.  However, we have no real way of telling.  How Tom may have reacted to this we do not know.

 

On 4 April 1915, 8 Battalion left Mena Camp for Alexandria, there to board a ship bound for the Greek island of Lemnos, in the Mediterranean.  The decision had already been made by the British to attempt to knock Turkey out of the war by capturing Constantinople.  Australian and New Zealand troops, along with British and French contingents, would be used in the event of the need for an assault on the Gallipoli Peninsula.  While at Lemnos, the troops practised beach landings from boats.  Then, around 24 April, they were conveyed to the waters off Gaba Tepe, Gallipoli, in preparation for a dawn landing on the twenty-fifth. The plan was for steamboats to tow the whaleboats full of troops close to the shore, and they would then row the rest of the way.  However, chaos ensued at the allotted time as strong currents carried the whaleboats further north than was intended, and bunched them together off a narrow beach (later named Anzac), backed by steep cliffs covered with dense scrub.  Turkish forces were located at the tops of the cliffs.  The men landed in confusion, but were ordered to drop their gear and head up the cliffs as fast as they could. They actually captured more territory that day than they did for the rest of the eight months that they were on the peninsula.

 

Replica of a Gallipoli boat, Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance.     (Rod Martin)

 

Sometime during that first day, Tom was wounded in the leg.  He was evacuated to a hospital ship, and then conveyed to England.  In June, he was reported as being in a hospital in Manchester. After a stay there of several months, he was diagnosed with neurasthenia (an ill-defined medical condition characterised by lassitude, fatigue, headache and irritability, associated chiefly with emotional disturbance).   He was shipped back to Australia on the S.S. Suevic on 8 October, arriving home on 19 November 1915.  Once he was back in Melbourne, Tom was discharged from the army on 29 December, assessed as being medically unfit.  It seemed that his war was over.

 

However, Tom was not deterred by this setback.  Less than six months later, he re-enlisted as a private, joining 20 Reinforcements of 14 Battalion on 20 June 1916.  Sadly for him, he was admitted to 5 Australian General Hospital in St. Kilda Road, Melbourne only ten days later, suffering from a gastric ulcer.  His military service had obviously ended, and he was discharged as unfit for active duty soon after.

 

Tom later applied for an army pension, but his application was rejected on the grounds that his incapacity was not the result of  ‘’warlike operations’’.

 

It appears that Tom returned to teaching.  In 1920, he wrote to the war department from the state school in Byaduk, requesting that his 1914-15 Star be sent to him at that address.

 

Ancestors.familysearch.org tells us that he married Sarah Hickleton in 1918 and they had two daughters. He died in Melbourne in 1954 at the age of sixty-four.  Sarah died in the same year at the age of fifty-six.

 

 

Sources

 

Australian War Memorial

Birtwhistlewiki.com.au

Education Department of Victoria

en.wikipedia.org

https://ancestors.familysearch.org

Lenore Frost

National Archives of Australia

Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne

William Dawe

                      

 

Education Department's Record of War Service, 1914-1918

 

Ascot Vale State School "Noble Deeds".

 

Keddie, Thomas, Private Born 17th Feb 1890.  Enlisted 14th Aug 1914,  He was a school teacher before his enlistment.  He served in the infantry at El-fer-dan on the Suez canal in 1915, and also at the landing on Gallipoli.  After the war he again became a Victorian S S teacher.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

War Service Commemorated

Ascot Vale State School

Ascot Vale State School Noble Deeds

Education Department's Record of War Service