100 days of heroes: Mother’s anguish over soldier son Ernest Woolley’s war grave far away in Egypt

THE name Gallipoli was not yet familiar to Australian ears when Private Ernest Woolley succumbed to his wounds in May 1915.

World War I soldier Ernest Charles Mawley Woolley is commemorated at tree #62 on the Soldiers' Memorial Avenue in Hobart

THE name Gallipoli was not yet familiar to Australian ears when Ernest Woolley succumbed to his wounds in the Greek Hospital in Alexandria, Egypt, in May 1915.

“Died of wounds received at the Dardanelles,” is the notation in his service record, using the place name in more common use at the time.

Six months earlier, Ernest was a 25-year-old orchardist at Flowerpot in the Channel district where he had lived all his life except for a few months in Victoria. His father Edward was a ship’s captain who died in China in 1910.

DAY 5: PRIVATE CLAUDE CLARK

Born at Flowerpot in 1888, Ernest signed up with the 12th Battalion at Claremont on December 1, 1914, naming his widowed mother Florence as his next-of-kin, living at 2 Macquarie St, Hobart.

Just weeks before his death he would name his sister, Olive Armstrong of Middleton, as the sole beneficiary of his will.

Ernest was wounded on the beach at Gallipoli on May 13, and was evacuated to Alexandria aboard the Hospital Ship Gascon. He died at 12.30pm on May 27.

The grave of World War I soldier Ernest Charles Mawley Woolley in Alexandria, Egypt

His grieving mother paid for a marble monument on his grave at the Chatby War Memorial Cemetery in Alexandria and this would later be the subject of much correspondence when the War Graves Commission proposed replacing it with a standard memorial.

She wrote to Australia House in London: “I can never consent to the removal of the headstone over my son’s resting place. It is no mark of wealth but a living tribute of a widowed mother and sister, and the nurse who was with him at the last contributed and undertook all arrangements in connection with it, for us she said, A Christian Hero. Don’t you see I raised him carefully and prayerfully to manhood and gave him to his country for which died but now his resting place is mine to love and care for.”

Ernest’s Roll of Honour card notes that after being operated in the hospital he had asked his nurse to read to him from the Bible. “He then lifted up a weak voice in prayer for those in the ward and at home, sunk into unconsciousness and passed away. A Christian Man.”

At a meeting of the Kingborough Council on June 14, 1915, the warden, Councillor B.J. Pearsall, made special mention of Ernest Woolley, whom he had known and esteemed since the young man was a child.

Private Ernest Charles Mawley Woolley is remembered at tree 62 on the Soldiers’ Memorial Avenue. His cousins Clement and Gordon Woolley are also commemorated on the avenue.

Friends of Soldiers Memorial Avenue committee member Peter Pickering, left, planting team leader Brett Balmforth, and Leslie Woolley, 75, of Hobart, pictured several years ago next to the new tree and plaque recognising the sacrifice of Private Ernest Charles Mawley Woolley who died of wounds receivedat Gallipoli in 1915.