Thomas Oliver Gardner

Thomas Oliver Gardner was born in 1881 in East Melbourne, where he lived with his family before enlisting. When he joined the AIF on 1 September 1914, he stated his occupation was as a miner. Yet a love of travel also saw Thomas odd-jobbing away from Melbourne, including in Queensland, Tasmania and New Zealand. Recruited into the 7th Battalion, he trained at Broadmeadows military camp in Melbourne before embarking for Egypt.

Thomas served at Gallipoli from the early days of the campaign, though influenza saw him hospitalised in Malta in June and then convalescing in England before returning to Gallipoli in August. He rested at Sarpi on Lemnos for a period in September 1915, where, he notes in a letter home that the food was a vast improvement on what was available at Gallipoli. In early March 1916, he was transferred to 5th Pioneers Battalion and was promoted to corporal. He served out much of the rest of the war in France.

Thomas’s service record suggests he often experienced ill health, including rheumatic fever and troublesome back pain. But by 1918, he was hospitalised with neurasthenia; he was not only war-weary from three years’ active service but exhibiting a range of debilitating symptoms associated with shell-shock. He was initially considered temporarily unfit for service and given six months’ leave. He departed England for Australia on the Malta in July 1918. Three months later, in October, he was discharged from the AIF as medically unfit for service due to neurasthenia.

In November 1918, barely a month after being discharged, Thomas was drowned in Kangaroo Lake during a day trip with friends. He was aged just 37.