01/09/2021
Writing to his mother at Maryborough, Victoria, 31st August 1915, Pte. Thomas George Thwaites, 5th Battalion Australian Infantry, described some of his recent experiences on the peninsula.
"Things have been a bit, lively here since 4th August. We have been in the fighting line getting on for three mouths. The last four [weeks?] we haven't even had a spell out in the supports, so you can imagine how we are feeling. A letter is the only luxury we have to look forward to. We get a bit lively when we know our mail is in, and we are right for three or four days, We get a mail about every three weeks, and after that is finished all we have to do is mope about the trenches listening to the shells screaming over our heads or flying around our trenches. Occasionally the Turks get a big howitzer shell into our trench; then there are a few more names added to the death roll. They always give us a good shelling during meal hours. I have been buried a couple of times, and bruised a little, but I am still able to shoulder my arms. It pleases us to see the recruits rolling in we only wish there were a few more of them over here; we might have a. chance of getting a spell then. We have plenty of flies to worry us in the day time, and at night they just about eat us alive. They are all sizes and all colors you can see them skirmishing in and out the sand bags." [1]
He had been wounded – a bullet wound in the right thigh – on 13th May 1915, and evacuated to Alexandria for treatment, returning to the peninsula on 1st July 1915.
After landing in France, he transferred to 6th Australian Field Ambulance on 29th April 1916 with which unit he was killed in action on 6th November 1916.
Buried in Thistle Dump Cemetery, High Wood, Longueval, he was the 20 year-old son of Thomas Thwaites and Charlotte E. Fleming, of 607 Armstrong Street, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia, originally of Maryborough, Victoria.
[1] 'Maryborough and Dunolly Advertiser' (Victoria), 27th October 1915.
