Frederick Thornley Poole

1892–1970

Enlisted twice within a year of the war breaking out — first in the seizure of German New Guinea, then in the AIF proper — and left Pozières in 1916 having lost his left eye; nearly three years of reconstructive treatment, including at the pioneering Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, preceded a quiet return to a market garden at Engadine, south of Sydney.

Lived: 77 years

Frederick Thornley Poole was born in 1892, his birth registered in the Glen Innes district (reg. 14147) to William Poole and Frances Poole — matching this family exactly, and giving him, in the middle, his own father’s name. One certain glimpse of him as a young man survives outside his own service record: when his sister Daisy married Andrew George Batchelor at Coolongolook in October 1913, the local paper’s account of the wedding records that the bride "was accompanied by her brother (Mr. Fred Poole)" — Frederick himself, giving her away (see her own chapter).¹

Barely a week after Australia entered the war, Frederick enlisted — not in the AIF, which did not yet exist, but in the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force, the small force hastily raised to seize Germany’s Pacific colonies. He joined on 12 August 1914, service no. 875, giving his trade as "chemist’s assistant," his birthplace as near Grafton, and his next of kin as his mother, "Mrs Frances Helen Poole, 44 Young Street, Annandale" — the same Annandale address two of his brothers, Joel John and Thomas Charles, would later give on their own service and police records.² The A.N.&M.E.F. seized German New Guinea within weeks; Frederick served out his engagement there itself (his record notes a bout of influenza among his ailments) and was discharged, time expired, on 18 January 1915, after 161 days’ service — for which he later received the 1914–15 Star.

He did not stay out of uniform for long. Twelve days after that discharge, on 30 January 1915, Frederick enlisted again — this time in the AIF proper, as Private, service no. 1786, C Company, 4th Reinforcements, 3rd Battalion. His new attestation paper gives his birthplace more precisely as the parish of Grafton, near the town of Dalmorton — the very mining township where his own father had once been Warden’s Clerk (see the main chapter) — and his trade as "salesman." A cross-reference card later prepared by Base Records, stamped "MORE THAN ONE PERIOD OF SERVICE," formally links the two enlistments beyond any doubt — confirming the red-ink note on his first attestation paper.³ He embarked from Australia on 17 March 1915 and was taken on strength at Anzac — Gallipoli — by the end of May. A bout of influenza saw him evacuated sick to Malta that July, hospitalised at St Andrew’s, before he rejoined his unit back at Anzac on 10 September 1915; he was still there for the peninsula’s final evacuation that December. Egypt followed, and then, on 22 March 1916, embarkation for the Western Front: he disembarked at Marseilles on 28 March, was appointed lance corporal within the week, and was promoted temporary corporal, then full corporal, in France by July.⁴

That promotion came on 8 July 1916 — nineteen days before Corporal Poole was wounded in action, on 27 July 1916, in the fighting around Pozières. His casualty form is blunt: "G.S.W. [gunshot wound] Left Eye, Destroyed." He was admitted to No. 3 Australian General Hospital at Rouen the next day, evacuated to England aboard the hospital ship Aberdonian, and admitted to the Cambridge Hospital, Aldershot, on 28 July 1916, with what his record calls a "G.S.W. Face (Severe)."⁵

What followed was nearly three years of reconstructive treatment. In August 1917, over a year after he was wounded, Frederick was transferred to Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup — the specialist facial-injuries hospital built around the pioneering plastic surgeon Harold Gillies, where thousands of the war’s most severely disfigured men underwent the staged, repeated operations that a ruined face and a lost eye demanded. His record shows him admitted and discharged there again and again over the following eighteen months — March 1918, May, October, November — each stay followed by a spell of furlough before he was due to "report Queen’s Hospital" once more; in October 1918 he was briefly reprimanded for overstaying a night’s leave, a small, human moment amid it all. He was finally discharged from Sidcup on 27 February 1919, embarked for home on the Kildonan Castle three weeks later, and was discharged from the AIF at Sydney on 11 July 1919 — holder, like his brother Thomas Charles, of the 1914–15 Star, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.⁶

By the late 1920s — a decade on from Pozières — Frederick was living at Beatrice Street, Ashfield, and it was from there that he applied for a Special Lease of Crown land at Heathcote, in what was then bush country south of Sydney, newly being opened up along the railway line to what would become the suburb of Engadine. The lease — just over nine and a half acres, County Cumberland, parish Heathcote — was granted from 1 June 1929 for the stated purpose of "residence and vegetable, and nursery garden," at an annual rent of £5, on condition that he live there continuously as his sole home for its whole term.⁷ He worked the land there for the long term: NSW electoral rolls trace him at Engadine from 1930 (still describing himself as a "salesman") through at least 1946, settled by then into the trade of "gardener" that gives this page its name.⁸

Frederick Thornley Poole himself died on 2 June 1970 (NSW BDM reg. 20185/1970, district Liverpool), and was buried or cremated at Rookwood Memorial Gardens and Crematorium — aged seventy-seven, not "about sixty," as this page previously and wrongly assumed. His own death notice describes him as "late of Cabramatta, formerly of Engadine" — Cabramatta being, by coincidence or not, the same suburb his brother Thomas Charles Poole was living in at the time of Thomas Charles’s own death the following year. The earlier "1952" error traced back to a same-named deceased-estate index card for a "Fred Poole," a garage attendant of somewhere reading like "Moama," who died in October 1952 — a different, unrelated Fred Poole, on the evidence of occupation and address alone; the 1970 record, matched directly against his 1892 birth registration, is by far the safer identification. His death came the year before his youngest brother Thomas Charles Poole’s own death notice named him, correctly, as "Frederick (deceased)."¹⁰

For Context

Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup

Trench warfare produced a wound pattern medicine had rarely seen at scale: men crouched below the parapet with their heads exposed, so facial injuries were extraordinarily common, and often severe enough to shatter jaws or destroy eyes and noses while leaving a man otherwise alive. Existing surgery could close such a wound but had little answer for rebuilding what was lost. The New Zealand-born surgeon Harold Gillies pushed the British Army to treat these cases together, in one specialist unit rather than scattered through general hospitals — and in August 1917 that became Queen’s Hospital, built around Frognal House at Sidcup, in Kent, with over a thousand beds eventually devoted to the work. More than 5,000 men passed through it over some 11,000 operations.

Gillies’ signature technique, the tubed pedicle flap, rolled a strip of skin — often from the chest or shoulder — into a tube, leaving one end attached to its own blood supply, and walked it across the body in stages until it could be shaped into a new nose, lip or cheek; a single reconstruction could take a year or more of repeated operations. Sidcup became known locally for its blue-painted park benches, a signal to townspeople that a badly disfigured patient might be sitting there and shouldn’t be stared at — one of the first places anywhere to treat facial disfigurement as a psychological burden as much as a surgical one. The techniques worked out there under Gillies became the foundation of modern plastic surgery, carried into the next war by surgeons he had trained, his own cousin Archibald McIndoe among them. Frederick, wounded at Pozières in July 1916 and at Sidcup from August 1917 into early 1919, belonged to that first, defining generation of patients.

The Record

Sources & References

1
Birth, and his sister’s wedding

NSW BDM birth index: Poole, Frederick T, reg. 14147/1892, district Glen Innes, father William Poole, mother Frances Poole. Manning River Times and Advocate, 11 October 1913, "Orange Blossoms," "Batchelor—Poole": "…She was accompanied by her brother (Mr. Fred Poole)…" (see [[daisy]]’s own chapter for the full notice).
2
A.N.&M.E.F. service, 1914–15

Attestation Paper of Persons Enlisted for Service Abroad, Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force: Poole, Frederick Thornley, service no. 875, unit "Expeditionary Force," joined 12 August 1914; born near Grafton, N.S.W.; British subject; age 22; trade "Chemist’s Assistant"; next of kin "Mrs Frances Helen Poole, 44 Young St, Annandale"; stamped "Discharged," Discharged Section. Annotated in red ink, apparently by a later hand: "ident. with 1786 of 3 Bn." Statement of Service, No. 875: unit N.&M.E.F., 11 August 1914 to 18 January 1915 (161 days), "Discharged Time Expired"; 1914/15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal all issued.
3
AIF re-enlistment and the cross-reference card

Attestation Paper of Persons Enlisted for Service Abroad, Australian Imperial Force: Poole, Frederick Thornley, service no. 1786, unit "C Coy, 3rd Bn" (4th Reinforcements), joined 28–30 January 1915 at Liverpool, NSW; born parish of Grafton, near the town of Dalmorton; trade "salesman"; not married; next of kin "Mother, Mrs F. Poole, 44 Young St, Annandale"; previous service declared as "6 months, Naval & Military Expedition, New Guinea." NAA cross-reference card (series B2455): "A. 875 Pte Poole Frederick Thornley N.&M.E.F.; B. 1786 Cpl Poole F.T., 3rd Battn," stamped "MORE THAN ONE PERIOD OF SERVICE — SEE BELOW." Base Records Office, Melbourne, letter to the Department of Repatriation, 27 July 1933, listing documents held under both regimental numbers for "Poole F.T."
4
Gallipoli, Malta, Egypt and France, 1915–16

Statement of Service and Casualty Form (Army Form B.103), No. 1786: embarked from Australia 17 March 1915; taken on strength at Anzac by 31 May 1915; admitted sick (influenza) 18 July 1915, evacuated via hospital ship, disembarked Malta 28 July 1915, admitted St Andrew’s Hospital, Malta; taken on ration strength, Mustapha, Egypt, 23 August 1915; rejoined unit at Anzac 10 September 1915; disembarked Alexandria (with the Gallipoli evacuation) 29 December 1915; embarked ex Alexandria per HMTS Grampian 22 March 1916; disembarked Marseilles 28 March 1916. Appointed lance corporal 24 March 1916; temporary corporal 6 June 1916; corporal 8 July 1916.
5
Wounded at Pozières, July 1916

Casualty Form — Active Service (Army Form B.103): "Wounded in action," France, 27 July 1916; admitted No. 3 Australian General Hospital, Rouen, "G.S.W. Left Eye, Destroyed," 26 July 1916; transferred to England via Ambulance Train and Hospital Ship Aberdonian, 27 July 1916; admitted Cambridge Hospital, Aldershot, "G.S.W. Face (Severe)," 28 July 1916.
6
Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, and discharge

Casualty Form — Active Service, continued: transferred to Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, 29 August 1917; repeated admissions and discharges there through 1918 (admitted 20 March 1918, discharged 23 May on furlough to 4 July; admitted again October–November 1918); reprimanded for a night’s unauthorised absence from Queen’s Hospital, Sidcup, 10–11 October 1918; discharged from Sidcup 27 February 1919, reporting to the 1st Australian Base Depot 5 March 1919; embarked for Australia per H.T. Kildonan Castle from Devonport 21 March 1919; discharged AIF, 2nd Military District, 11 July 1919; awarded the 1914–15 Star, British War Medal and Victory Medal.
7
Crown land lease, Engadine, 1929–30

NSW Government Gazette, 9 May 1930 (No. 54), p. 1873, "Notification of Granting of Special Leases": Special Lease 1928-39, Metropolitan — "Poole, Frederick Thornley, of Beatrice-street, Ashfield." County Cumberland, parish Heathcote, portion 678; area 9 acres 2 roods 35 perches; purpose "Residence and vegetable, and nursery garden"; term 1 June 1929 to 31 December 1938; annual rent £5; special conditions include continuous bona fide residence on the land for the whole term.
8
Electoral rolls, Engadine, 1930–1946

Commonwealth Electoral Roll, Division of Werriwa, State Electoral District of Bulli, Subdivision of Helensburgh: 1930 — "Poole, Frederick Thornley, Engadine, salesman, M" (alone); 1936 — "Poole, Frederick Thornley, Engadine, gardener, M" (still alone); 1937, 1943 and 1946 — "Poole, Ellen, Woronora road, Engadine, home duties, F" now appears on the same rolls alongside "Poole, Frederick Thornley, Engadine, gardener, M." Other Pooles appear on nearby rolls in the same Engadine/Woronora district (e.g. John, Leslie Joseph, Marie Ellen), relationship if any unconfirmed. On whether this Ellen was his wife, see the following reference.
9
Was he ever married? An investigation, and why this page leaves it out

The "Poole, Ellen" who appears alongside Frederick on the Engadine electoral rolls from 1937 (see previous reference) was at first taken for his wife, on nothing more than shared surname and suburb. A promising lead seemed to confirm it: a Sydney Morning Herald death notice for a "Poole, Ellen De Largy," who died 9 September 1956 "at Engadine, widow of the late Frederick Poole, and loved mother of John and Genevieve (Mrs C. Bombell)." Followed up, this identification collapsed entirely. NSW BDM indexes show this Ellen was born Ellen Delargy (reg. 4868/1874, district Redfern, to John and Mary Jane Delargy) and married reg. 966/1905, district Burwood, to a "Poole Frederick P[lunkett]" — in 1905, when our Frederick Thornley Poole was a boy of thirteen. FindAGrave identifies her actual husband as Frederick Plunkett Poole, born 26 June 1865 at Bathurst, died 21 November 1910 at Point Clare aged 45 (memorial 163771327); Ellen herself died 9 September 1956 at Engadine (memorial 163771322), and the two share a single grave at Rookwood, Mortuary 1, Section 5BL, Plot 21. A second, wholly unrelated Frederick-and-Ellen Poole household, in other words, sharing only a surname, a forename and a suburb with this family. That rules out this particular Ellen, but does not, by itself, prove our Frederick had no wife at all — so his own name was checked directly against BDM marriage indexes for New South Wales (blocked by a Cloudflare bot-check wall and not pursued further), South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland: no marriage record for a Frederick Thornley Poole, under any spelling, turned up in any of them. Given that total absence, set against a demonstrated case of an entirely coincidental same-name, same-suburb pairing nearby, the balance of evidence is that Frederick most likely never married — so no wife is named in his story above, and "Poole, Ellen" of the electoral rolls is left unexplained: perhaps a relative, a boarder, or simply a neighbour on the same rural road.
10
Death, 1970 — and a corrected mismatch

NSW BDM death index: Poole, Frederick Thornley, reg. 20185/1970, district Liverpool, father William, mother Frances (matching his own 1892 birth registration exactly); FindAGrave/burial record: Rookwood Memorial Gardens and Crematorium. Sydney Morning Herald, 3 June 1970, death notice: "POOLE, Frederick Thornley — June 2, 1970 … late of Cabramatta, formerly of Engadine … aged 77 years." Cf. NSW deceased estate index card, "Poole, Fred," address reading approximately "Moama," occupation garage attendant, date of death 20/10/52, date of grant 20/2/53, administrator "E. Poole," solicitors Jones Jones & J. — the mismatched occupation and address argue against this being the same man; the 1970 record, matched directly against his 1892 birth registration, is by far the safer identification. Sydney Morning Herald, 7 June 1971, death notice for Thomas Charles Poole: "…fond brother of Frederick (deceased) and Daisy (Mrs Batchelor, Port Macquarie)…"