Colonel Light Gardens was farmland James Hall drilled with mates in 27th Battalion in readiness for WW1

BEFORE he sailed off to war, James Hall drilled and trained and camped in Colonel Light Gardens – which in 1915 was Mitcham Army Camp and not much else.

James Hall Private James Hall, who served in World War I with the 27th Battalion, with wife Maud.

BEFORE he sailed off to war, James Hall drilled and trained and camped in Colonel Light Gardens – which in 1915 was Mitcham Army Camp and not much else.

The camp was set up in April 1915 on Grange Farm, bounded in part by today’s Grange, Goodwood and Springbank roads.

Hall was in the 27th Battalion commanded by Unley mayor Lieutenant Colonel Walter Dollman.

The 27th – known as “Unley’s Own” – landed at Gallipoli on September 12, 1915.

Arriving after the major Gallipoli battles, the battalion suffered relatively light casualties before it was withdrawn with the rest of the force in December.

Hall, a machine gunner, then fought on the Western Front where he was shot three times in three years.

Somehow he survived the war to return to work with Adelaide City Council. He died in 1971, aged 81.

Today, granddaughter Barbara Morrow, from Lower Mitcham, walks the family dog where Hall trained 100 years ago.

Mrs Morrow started researching her grandfather three years ago and was in awe of what she learnt.

“He didn’t talk a lot about it to family so we were not fully aware of what he had been through,” she says. “We are extremely proud.”

This story is part of Messenger’s 100 Years, 100 Days, 100 Stories project, which profiles 100 South Australian World War I heroes as the nation builds up to the centenary of the Allied landing on Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.