West Hobart soldier Frederick Lange was not yet 19 when he lost his life at Lone Pine

BOOTMAKER Frederick Lange was a month shy of his 19th birthday when he was sent in with reinforcements at Lone Pine, Gallipoli, on the morning of August 8, 1915.

World War I soldier Frederick Einar Lange in a training camp. Picture: NICOLE McNAMEE

BOOTMAKER Frederick Einar Lange was a month short of his 19th birthday when he was sent in with reinforcements at Lone Pine, Gallipoli, on the morning of August 8, 1915.

The state school boy from 81 Goulburn St, West Hobart, did not survive the day. He had enlisted that February, embarked in April, and was being mourned by his widowed mother when he should have been turning 19.

Frederick’s enlistment papers say he was born at Zeehan but his birth is recorded to have taken place at Hobart on September 10, 1896.

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Frederick, who signed his name as Fred, attended the local state school, and his papers say he was working as a bootmaker when he enlisted with the 12th Battalion in February 1915.

World War I soldier Frederick Einar Lange is commemorated at tree #36 on the Soldiers' Memorial Avenue in Hobart

As his father George had died in 1907 after a long illness, it fell to Fred’s mother Sarah to give written permission for her underage son to join up.

“I give my consent for him to go to the war. He has no father and I have to depend on him and one brother to help keep me and his little brothers,” Mrs Lange wrote.

After Fred’s death in action during the Battle of Lone Pine on the Gallipoli peninsula, his mother was granted an annual pension worth about $3300 today, which the family says helped to put Fred’s two youngest siblings through school.

A month after Fred’s death, his older brother Thomas, 23, enlisted at the Claremont camp. He served with field ambulance units and returned home safely after the war.

Fred’s death was not his mother’s only bereavement during the war as his sister Amy died in the family home in Goulburn St in February 1916, aged 22.

Private Frederick Einar Lange has no known grave but is commemorated on the Lone Pine Memorial on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey.

He is remembered at tree number 36 on the Soldiers’ Memorial Avenue in Hobart, the Hobart Town Hall, and the former St John the Baptist Anglican Church, and his middle name Einar was bestowed by his great-great niece Nicole McNamee upon her firstborn child.

World War I soldier Frederick Lange’s plaque on the Soldiers' Memorial Avenue in Hobart.