Branch of Service

Army

Conflict

World War I (1914-1918)

Date of Enlistment

13/04/1916

Date of Discharge

04/04/1919

Place of Enlistment

Goulburn NSW

Gender

Male

Place of Birth

Junee NSW

Address (at enlistment)

Morton Street, Queanbeyan NSW (previously Duntroon ACT)

Occupation

Labourer

Next of Kin

Christopher Grimes (father), Morton Street, Queanbeyan NSW

Service Number

1808

Final Rank

Private

Final Unit

35 Battalion AIF

Queanbeyan RSL Wall of Remembrance, Crawford St, Queanbeyan NSW

Ted Grimes began working at the Royal Military College, Duntroon in February 1916 and enlisted two months later in Goulburn. He was 30 years old and living in the area with his parents and family. Grimes served with the 35th Battalion in France from January 1917 and was shot in the left shoulder the following month. After treatment in England he returned to France in July but was hospitalised with scabies, rejoining the 35th Battalion in September 1917. In October 1917 he was invalided to hospital in England with a septic wrist and was also treated for lumbago. He convalesced and rejoined his unit in February 1918. On 4 April 1918 he was part of the garrison that stopped the German advance on Villers-Bretonneux. He was wounded there in a mustard gas attack on 17 April 1918 and consequently returned to Australia in December 1918 with synovitis of the left knee. Grimes was discharged on 4 April 1919 as medically unfit. By 1929 he was living in Canberra where he died on 5 June 1956 at 71 years of age. He is buried in the ex-service's portion of Woden Cemetery.

Description - height 5 feet 10½ inches, weight 168 pounds, chest 36-39½ inches, dark complexion, blue eyes, dark brown hair, Catholic, top joint missing from his right thumb. Stated that he had bleeding from his left ear after a fall in June 1915, lost his sense of smell and was slightly deaf in the left ear. Passed fit by Dr. Richardson at Queanbeyan.

Ross Howarth, 'Civilians employed at the Royal Military College of Australia, Duntroon, from 1911 to 1931', RMC Duntroon, November 2000
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)
Stories from the ACT Memorial, 'Defending Villers-Bretonneux', ACT Heritage Library www.library.act.gov.au/find/history/stories_from_the_act_memorial
Queanbeyan/ Canberra Advocate - 10 July 1916
Queanbeyan Age - 25 June 1918
Canberra Public Cemeteries http://www.canberracemeteries.com.au/cem_gravesearch.asp