160 & 17937 Lance Corporal Thomas Meredith Boyd & Corporal, 2nd Field Company Engineers & 1st and 2nd Field Troops (Engineers)

Image from Coburg State School Soldiers Book. Courtesy Coburg Historical Society.

Thomas Boyd, an old boy of Coburg State School, was born in Ararat in 1891. His Irish parents John Wilson and Caroline Boyd married in Melbourne in 1889 and their first four children were born at Ararat. Two more children were born once the family had moved to Coburg – a sister in 1900 and a brother in 1905. The Boyds lived at 1 Blair St., Coburg and father John was a warder at Pentridge Prison.

At six foot tall and with previous experience in the infantry and senior cadets, Thomas Boyd must have been seen as an ideal candidate for the military. He was a gas fitter with the Metropolitan Gas Company and enlisted on 20 August 1914, one of the first men in the area to do so. 

He left with the first contingent in October 1914 and landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 with the 2^nd Field Company Engineers. He was there for three months before being hospitalised in Alexandria with severe rheumatoid fever. 

The Field Engineers were responsible for building and destroying bridges, roads and other infrastructure and local newspapers reported that on Gallipoli Thomas Boyd was involved in an accident while building a bomb shelter. Several sandbags from the bomb shelter fell on him and while being carried on a stretcher to get medical care, he was shot. 

At the same time he was diagnosed with rheumatic fever and placed on the dangerously ill list. He was removed from the list in August 1915 and transferred to England where his health further deteriorated. Although he improved again, he was returned to Australia in April 1916 and discharged as medically unfit after several months at Langwarrin Isolation Camp.

This was not the end of Thomas Boyd’s war, however. He re-enlisted in  December 1916 and again embarked for overseas service in early May 1917. He arrived in Egypt in June 1917, but again his health let him down and in December 1918 he was admitted to hospital in England with pneumonia and suspected pulmonary tuberculosis. His health improved and he arrived in France with his unit in February 1918. However, a month later he was gassed and on the sick list again until August 1918, when he rejoined his unit. At the end of October 1918 he was sent to hospital with suspected pulmonary tuberculosis and returned to Australia not long afterwards with bronchitis and influenza.

In 1920 Thomas Boyd married Rachel Cuthbert and they settled in Alice Street, Coburg. He joined the police force. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s he worked with Traffic Branch, was promoted to first class sergeant and by the 1950s, when he was in his late 50s, he was Officer in Charge of the Police Transport Branch.

Thomas Boyd died at Heidelberg on Boxing Day 1974 aged 83. He is buried at Coburg Cemetery with his wife Rachel, who predeceased him.