KNOWN TO GOD

BURIED at the Australian War Memorial are the remains of an Unknown Soldier who represents all Australians who have been killed in war.

That an Unknown Soldier is interred at our national memorial ( pictured above) is also an acknowledgment that it is impossible to accurately account for all of the men and women who served in World War I.

History shows that not every man or woman who died on the battlefield is able to be identified. Some records detail witness evidence that those enlisted were in the area at the time of an attack. Others simply went missing.

It can also be said that the filing of paperwork for those enlisting in huge numbers more than a century ago was also less than perfect at times.

One of those unknown, yet known, soldiers was Charles Henry Wallace Thom ( right) whose portrait hangs on the wall in the old Civic Club in Charters Towers.

Originally known as the Londoners’ Club, it had an exclusively male membership at the turn of the last century and most of those members were influential and prominent people in the town at the time.

Thom first arrived in Charters Towers in 1910 to survey the land for the government.

He returned in 1911 and worked as a mining surveyor until 1913 before moving on.

Thom was back in his home town of Maryborough when he enlisted for service in the 1st Australian Infantry Force (AIF). This was only two weeks after war was declared in August 1914.

Lieutenant Thom landed at Gallipoli in July and died there on October 29, 1915, aged 28.

He died while attempting to rescue Australian soldiers who had entered a tunnel soon after a mine had been fired off.

Five, including Thom were overcome by a build up of gases in the gallery and suffocated.

As The Northern Miner reported Thom’s body was later found: “Lying across the body of the man he went to rescue from the poisonous fumes, and he actually had his arms around him. Charters Towers sh should feel proud of the officers th they have sent to the front.”

Thom’s photograph hangs with o other war heroes in the billiard ro room at the Civic Club.

Beside him are the portraits of well known and more well regarded Charters Towers connected sold diers.

They include Robert Huxtable, to town clerk Sam Harry, and John Walsh; all Charters Towers men who also served in the Great War.

Also there is the portrait of Major Hugh Quinn after which Quinn’s Post at Gallipoli was named.

While Thom is as large in portrait and presence as these other three, he is barely known locally today.

This is largely because his enlistment papers were misfiled and only found in the past few years.

He’s not named on the Charters Towers war memorial, because until recently Thom wasn’t actually listed with the Australian War Memorial.

He was even missed in the largest tally of serving men and women researched by Charters Towers author Les Halvorsen, who has identified more than 3000 who had a connection to Charters Towers through either that person’s birthplace, place of enlistment or family’s place of residence.

Charles Thom encapsulates the spirit of the city’s Unknown Soldier: the one of many who were brought to ground who embodied the many other serving men and women not referred to or worse, not yet known about.

“Although we cannot claim Thom as one of our men,” said a report in The Northern Miner from 1916, “he lived amongst us and proved a good citizen in many ways during his sojourn there.”