Private Eric Robert Wilson and Samuel Charles Wilson, 53rd Battalion, AIF Part 2
Australian War Memorial3534 Private Samuel Charles Wilson, 53rd Battalion, AIF
KIA 19 July 1916
Photograph: P05445.001
4887 Private Eric Robert Wilson, 53rd Battalion, AIF
KIA 19 July 1916
Photograph: P05445.002
In Australia Mr and Mrs Wilson received the news that one of their sons was wounded. Three days later word came through that another was missing, and that evening a wire came that the last son had been killed in action.
Private Jim Wilson had been wounded, shot through the neck and later rescued from no man’s land by British stretcher-bearers. He was evacuated to hospital and took some months to recover. He returned to active duty, although his military discipline suffered in the months after Fromelles, and he returned to Australia in 1919.
Private Sam Wilson was killed during the battle of Fromelles. As a bomber, he was last seen keeping a party of Germans at bay before being overwhelmed. His last act was to pull the pins on several Mills bombs and throw them between himself and the attacking Germans.
Private Eric Wilson was reported missing after the battle, and his name eventually came through on German casualty lists as having been killed in action. The bodies of both Eric and Sam were recovered by the Germans and buried in a large burial pit at Pheasant Wood.
The local newspaper reported that Mr and Mrs Wilson:
bore up wonderfully well under their heavy burden of affliction … Mrs Wilson proved herself a worthy mother of fighting men. Stifling her emotion with Spartan firmness, she said, with Christian resignation, “When my three sons left me, I placed them in God’s hands, and His will must be done.”
Mrs Wilson died in February 1919, while James was on his way home.
In 2009 the burial pits at Pheasant Wood were exhumed in a major archaeological project. The bodies of Sam and Eric Wilson were identified as part of this process, and today the brothers are buried side by side in the newly created Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery.
Their names are listed on the Roll of Honour on my right, among more than 60,000 Australians who died while serving in the First World War. Their photographs are displayed today beside the Pool of Reflection. Samuel is on the Western side of the Pool and Eric is on the Eastern side.
Dr Meleah Hampton
Historian, Military History Section
Sources:
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“Obituary: Mrs George Wilson”, The Port Macquarie News & Hastings River Advocate, 8 February 1919, p. 5.
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“Casualty list”, The Port Macquarie News & Hastings River Advocate, 9 September 1916, p. 2.
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AWM Last post ceremony link below
