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Pte. Charles Alfred "Charlie" Wilson
Australian Army 22nd Reinforcements 5th Battalion
from:Mornington, Victoria
(d.19th February 1917)
Charles Alfred Wilson was born at Snapper Point (now Mornington), Victoria on 26th March 1892, son of Albert Edward Wilson and Anne (Absalom).
At the age of 23, he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force (5th Reinforcements of the 24th Battalion) on 14th July 1915, service number 2484. However, after 5 weeks in Egypt, Charlie experienced laboured breathing and collapsed during training. He was admitted to the 1st Auxiliary Hospital in Heliopolis on 24th November 1915, where it was discovered that he was suffering from mitral heart disease (possibly as a consequence of the rheumatic fever he had contracted 3 years prior to his enlistment). As a result, he was discharged from the Army as permanently unfit for service, and returned to Australia aboard HMHS Wandilla in December 1915.
After several months at home, Charlie re-enlisted in the AIF, hiding the fact of his former service in the Army and stating on his new application that he had been previously rejected on account of “teeth”. Knowing the somewhat precarious state of his health, he changed his civilian occupation from ‘butcher’ (as stated on his previous enlistment papers) to ‘motor driver’, and planned to transfer to the less physically-demanding Motor Transports Company of the AIF in which his brother Bert was already serving as an ambulance driver. Despite his heart condition, he was pronounced fit for active service (likely due to the AIF's desperate need for men in 1916) and duly accepted into the 22nd reinforcements of the 5th Battalion, with the new service number 6832.
With the rank of Acting Corporal, he boarded HMAT Ulysses in Melbourne on 25th of October and arrived at Plymouth on 28th of December 1916. After having joined his unit in England, Charlie was posted to the bleak Larkhill camp on Salisbury Plain and underwent training for the Western Front.
During the harsh mid-winter exercises that he described in a letter home, he contracted pneumonia and was transferred to the Fargo Military Hospital, where he died 5 days later on 19th February 1917. He is buried in the Larkhill Military Cemetery near Durrington, in Wiltshire.
Although Charlie never fired a shot in anger, he was certainly determined to do his duty for God, King and Empire, not once but twice!
