Dad's love beat fear of death
Evan Thompson's love for his son far outweighed his fear of death.
Almost a century before Russell Crowe was inspired by the story behind The Water Diviner, the Thompsons from Collie endured a gut-wrenchingly similar reality.
Evan and Bessie's eldest son Evan Jr was in the first wave of diggers to land at Gallipoli on what would later be known as Anzac Day.
The 22-year-old had bid his parents goodbye and left Fremantle aboard HMAT Ascanius on October 31, 1914.
The men of the 11th Battalion were among the first to answer the call to arms and they arrived in Egypt in December, eager to defend their country.
They could not have known the horrors that awaited them at Gallipoli - horrors they famously faced head-on.
On January 10, 1915 many members of the battalion took a break from training and gathered for a photograph at the Cheops Pyramid or Great Pyramid of Giza.
The West Australian is supporting a WA Genealogical Society project to name the 703 men in that iconic image. Each digger has been assigned a grid number and readers are encouraged to contact WAGS if they believe they can help.
Pte Thompson has been unofficially identified as number 480 by his great-nephew Peter Pike, 58, of Dawesville.
Three months after the photo was taken, the sleeper cutter from Collie was on his way to Gallipoli.
He lasted just over three weeks before he was shot in the groin, a serious wound which kept him out of action until late July.
Thompson returned to the front line at Gallipoli and continued fighting until the mass evacuation in December.
He was then transferred to the Western Front in April 1916 where he fought under the banner of the 1st Pioneer Battalion.
Meanwhile, back in Collie, news of his wounds had reached his parents.
As Mr Pike explained, Thompson's 46-year-old father only saw one way forward - wherever his son was, he needed to be there next to him.
He arrived in France in May.
"When word got back to Australia, his mum and dad were that bloody wild about it," Mr Pike, 58, said.
"They just said, 'This isn't good enough', so his dad enlisted and got over there to be with his boy."
It is not known whether father and son met on the Western Front - his family are still trying to prove it - but this story did not have a happy ending.
The younger Thompson was killed by a shell on October 10 that year and his father survived gas poisoning in January 1918, eventually returning to Australia a broken man.
Mr Pike said he and his brother would go to Belgium for next year's Anzac centenary and visit their great-uncle's grave in Flanders Fields.
"My youngest boy is 28," Mr Pike said. "It's hard to comprehend how young these boys were and what they did."
