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L/Sgt. Walter Lambourne
Australian Imperial Forces 8th Field Ambulance Royal Australian Army Medical Corps
from:Sydney, Australa
Walter Lambourne, my grandfather, was born in Lambeth, Surrey on 31st of January 1883. He enlisted in the Royal Kent Artillery as a gunner. Regimental No. 5038, but transferred to the Royal Army Medical Corps on 4th of April 1900, No.13886. He served for six months in South Africa in the Boer War in the 3rd Field Ambulance before being invalided home with enteric fever. He spent over six years in Malta with the Colours and then four years in the reserves. After leaving the army, he travelled the world on various merchant ships before disembarking in Wellington, New Zealand where he married in 1911. The offer of a job took him and his bride to Sydney in 1911.
By the outbreak of the Great War he had fathered two children, but he enlisted in the Royal Australian Army Medical Corps, and was assigned to, 8th Field Ambulance. After a period of training, he left Australia for Egypt in November 1915 with the 30th Battalion. After six months in Egypt, the 30th Battalion sailed for France, landing in Marseilles before entraining for Northern France and instruction in trench warfare. In early 1917 he contracted trench fever and was invalided to England where he was admitted to Edgehill Hospital on 2nd of March 1917. After recovering, he returned to his unit in France and survived the remainder of the war, returning to civilian life in Australia in June 1919. He died in Sydney in June 1961.
