Lance Corporal Colin Golden Thompson, 13th Australian Infantry Battalion

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Group portrait of the NCOs of the 13th Battalion

Australian War Memorial

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Colin Thompson was born on 29 August 1894 in Bukkulla, in the New South Wales North-West Slopes region. He was the eldest of at least 13 children born to Walter Golden Thompson and his wife Alice.

The family remained in the Inverell area throughout Colin’s childhood. He and his siblings attended the local state school in Ashford. After his schooling, Colin found work as a motor driver.

Colin Thompson enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force on 28 October 1916 in Armidale, New South Wales. He was allotted to reinforcements of the 13th Battalion. Less than a month after his enlistment, Private Colin Thompson departed Sydney on troopship Beltana on 25 November 1916, bound for England.

Thompson’s early months in the Australian Imperial Force were defined by frequent bouts of illness. He was admitted to the ship’s hospital in early January. After arriving in Devonport at the end of January 1917 and marching into the 4th Training Battalion at Codford, Thompson was admitted to Parkhouse Group Hospital with mumps in early February. He recovered and returned to the training battalion in late February, only to be readmitted to the hospital in early March with tonsillitis. After two more stays in hospital, Thompson returned to the 4th Training Battalion in April.

Thompson proceeded overseas to France on 13 August 1917, nearly a year after he enlisted. He spent the rest of the month preparing to enter the field at the 4th Australian Divisional Base Depot, and was taken on the strength of the 13th Battalion on the 1st of September 1917.

The battalion passed the remainder of the year in training behind the lines and frontline trench duties in northern France and the Ypres sector of Belgium. It was an uneventful winter for Thompson who was promoted to lance corporal in early 1918.

The 13th Battalion returned to the Somme in mid-March, as part of allied attempts to stop the German Spring Offensive. At the beginning of August, the battalion were manning the front line between Amiens and Arras.

On 6 April, the trenches occupied by the 13th Battalion were shelled by German artillery. Private Colin Thompson was hit by a shell fragment and killed instantly.

He was 23 years old.

His remains were buried in an isolated grave in the field, and his comrades erected a small cross to mark the place. After the war, his remains were exhumed and re-interred at Euston Road Cemetery in Colincamps, northern France. His Imperial War Graves headstone bears the inscription selected by his grieving family: “Call not back the dear departed, anchored safe where storms are over."

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