Sapper David Hilton, 15th Field Company, Australian Engineers

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Sapper D. Hilton 15th Field company, Australian Engineers

Australian War Memorial

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David Hilton was born in August 1878 in Dundee, Scotland. Known as “Davey”, he was one of three children born to David and Catherine Hilton. 

Davey found work as a plumber until 1913, when he emigrated from the United Kingdom to Australia at the age of 34. He settled in Melbourne, and began working as a plumber for the Metropolitan Gas Company. He also joined the Collingwood Rifle Club. David fell in love with Eva Christina Gillespie, an immigrant from Ireland who had arrived in Australia in 1912. The two married in 1915, and moved into a Victorian style worker’s cottage in Northcote. Their only son, David Craig Hilton, was born on Christmas Day 1915.

Davey enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 25 February 1916, aged 37. During his medical examination, the officer noted that he was missing the top joint of the second finger on his right hand. This did not cause any issues with his eligibility for service, and his enlistment was accepted. Davey was assigned to engineers reinforcements with the rank of sapper, and started training at Seymour.

After more than six months of training, Sapper David Hilton left Sydney on the troopship Ceramic on 7 October 1916. He arrived in Plymouth, England, on the 2nd of November, and began further training in the Australian camps in Wiltshire. On 22 November he marched into Number 3 Camp Parkhouse, where he would spend the winter.

Davey proceeded overseas to France from Folkestone on 18 March 1917, over a year after his enlistment. He spent two weeks at the Australian General Base Depot in Etaples before being assigned to the 5th Division Engineers on 7 April 1917. Four days later, Davey was taken on strength of the 15th Field Company Engineers in the field around Beaulencourt, France.

Field Engineers took on a variety of support tasks, including the preparation and supervision of the construction of defensive and gun positions, the excavation of trenches and dugouts, the preparation of command posts, road and bridge construction and route maintenance, signalling, and managing water supply.

The 15th Field Company remained in the Somme Valley in France throughout spring and into summer, undertaking a variety of engineer work and training drills. At the end of June, Davey was sent on a week-long course at gas school, where he learned how to correctly use masks and other equipment in response to gas attacks, as well as how to attack with gas. He returned to his company, now based at Amiens, on 28 June.

By mid-September, the 15th Field Company had moved to Belgium, where the Australians were preparing for their first major involvement in the Third Battle of Ypres. The company moved to the front line on 25 September, ahead of the planned attack. The infantry attack began the next day, supported by overwhelming artillery fire. Members of the company were on the front line with the infantry, and were subjected to a heavy enemy barrage from the beginning of the battle at 5:50 am.

During the fighting on 26 September 1917, Sapper David Hilton was killed in action.

He was 39 years old.

His body was never recovered from the battlefield. A note in his service record from October 1922 stated that “Although exhaustive searches and investigations have been made with the object of locating the grave of [Sapper David Hilton], it has not been possible either to locate his actual burial place or obtain any information which might indicate his probable original or present resting place.” His name is listed on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres, alongside more than 6,000 Australians who served in the Ypres campaign and have no known grave.

Davey’s wife and brother submitted multiple commemorative notices to local Victorian newspapers in the wake of his death, in loving memory of their “dear husband and daddy” and beloved brother. Several of these notices contained memorial poems, including the following, inserted by Davey’s brother on the first anniversary of his death:

Although you have fallen, dear Davey, 

And sleep in a hero’s grave.

Your name will live for ever 

With the bravest of the brave.

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