Private William Michael Walsh, 9th Battalion, AIF
Australian War MemorialWilliam Michael Walsh was born in 1894 to Michael and Mary Walsh of Ramornie, near Grafton in northern New South Wales.
His parents died when he was a baby, so he and his siblings spent their formative years living with his Aunt Mary in South Grafton. He attended a public school and then boarded at Holy Cross College in the Sydney suburb of Ryde before returning to Grafton to work as a clerk at the Australasia Bank.
Walsh enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force in Roma, Queensland, in July 1915, and after a period of training at Enoggera he embarked for Egypt with a reinforcement group for the 9th Battalion. When he arrived the Gallipoli campaign had ended, and the AIF effectively doubled in size as it prepared to take part in the fighting on the Western Front.
Walsh did not arrive on the Western Front until August 1916. After landing in Marseilles he was immediately hospitalised with tuberculosis at the nearby British Stationary Hospital.
He remained there for three months before succumbing to the disease on 15 December. He was just 22 years old.
William Walsh was originally buried at St Pierre Cemetery but today rests in the Mazargues War Cemetery at Marseilles. A small epitaph on his headstone reads: “May he watch with Christ, and rest in peace.”
Several months after William Walsh’s death, his younger brother Vincent died of shrapnel wounds while serving with the 41st Battalion near Messines.
Aaron Pegram, Historian, Military History Section
Image: Saint-Pol-sur-Ternoise, France. c. 1917. A British Army stationary hospital in the snow. (Donor British Official Photograph D775)
