Branch of Service

Army

Conflict

World War I (1914-1918)

Date of Enlistment

16/02/1915

Date of Discharge

23/08/1916

Place of Enlistment

Liverpool NSW

Gender

Male

Other Name(s)

Known as 'Ted'

Place of Birth

Parish of Wallaroo, Hall ACT

Address (at enlistment)

Hall ACT

Occupation

Storeman

Next of Kin

George Morris (father), Hall ACT

Service Number

911

Final Rank

Private

Final Unit

18 Battalion AIF

Ted Morris grew up at Hall where his mother, Lucy, died when he was a young boy. She is buried in the old St. Paul's Cemetery in Evatt. He served with the 18th Battalion and was sent to Gallipoli where he and his unit landed on 19 August 1915. After resting for a day beneath the Sphinx they moved north to Bauchop's Hill. On 22 August the men expected to enter the trenches but instead where told that they were to attack Hill 60 (the Kaiajik Aghyl - Sheepfold of the Little Rock). Morris was seriously wounded in the right leg and left elbow during the fighting. He was invalided to England via Malta for treatment before being repatriated to Australia and discharged medically unfit on 23 August 1916. The Hall community welcomed him home at the Wattle Park Methodist Church in September after which he moved to Sydney. According to the Monaro Pioneers Index he married Mildred Goodhew soon after his return home and he died in Sydney in 1948.

A letter from a former Queanbeyan man, Roger Moore, a Private in D Company, 18th Battalion, was published in the Queanbeyan Age on 2 November 1915 and describes the battle on 22 August. "We marched for 16 hours with our packs to the firing line. At daybreak we had to charge three or four times up the hill and I can tell you it was cruel. The first charge was across a clearing, and the Turks were first sweeping it with their machine guns. We took one or two of their trenches; then they counter-attacked on our right flank. They mowed us down. I had nothing to eat all day, and was 12 hours without water. The country here is sandy and hilly with thorny bushes. All the hills are entrenched and look like so many pathways."

Description - height 5 feet 4½ inches, weight 135 pounds, chest 32-34 inches, fair complexion, grey eyes, brown hair, Church of England.

Rex Cross, 'Bygone Queanbeyan', 1980
Queanbeyan Age - 2 November 1915, 28 January 1916, 15 September 1916
Leon Smith, 'Memories of Hall', 1975
NAA RecordSearch - Series B2455 (First Australian Imperial Force Personnel Dossiers, 1914-1920)
Monaro Pioneers Index - http://www.monaropioneers.com/pioneers.htm
Lyall Gillespie, 'Ginninderra - Forerunner to Canberra', 1992
Image provided by the Morris family