Oscar Norman Thompson was my great grandfather and is the subject of today’s A to Z post. Oscar was born 25 May 1895 at Regentville, near Penrith NSW to parents Charles John Thompson and Alice Skeen. Oscar’s mother had a mammoth 13 pregnancies, with a total of 15 children born including two sets of twins. Out of these 15 children, 9 lived into adulthood. Oscar was the seventh child born, so petty much smack dab in the middle of his family. Oscar grew up in various suburbs of Penrith, but by 1915 the family were settled in the suburb of Jamisontown.

The year 1915 was a significant one in Oscar’s life as well as in the wider community. The ANZACS landed at Gallipoli and there was a huge drive in recruiting for World War I. Like so many other young Australians, Oscar enlisted. His attestation papers show his date of enlistment as 24 July 1915 and he was assigned to 5th reinforcements of the 20th Infantry Battalion. Oscar was aged 21 years and 2 months at the time of his enlistment.

All individuals enlisting underwent a physical examination and Oscar was not exception. Oscar’spapers record his height as 5 feet 7.5 inches (or 171.45cm) which is quite tall even for men today and his weight as 126 lbs (0r 57.15 kgs). At this weight, he certainly wasn’t carrying around any extra weight!! This was a physique he carried for the rest of his life, as later photos show how lean he is. What is interesting to me is that nothing is mentioned about his feet, and rumour has it that he had flat feet. Whether he did or not, he passed all the requirements to enlist in the army. From Australia, Oscar was shipped out to Egypt where he arrived on 30 September 1915. Oscar undertook training with his battalion before being transferred across to the Western Front in France.

 

Oscar was wounded multiple times whilst on the Western Front, including being shot in the head and the neck and also suffered from illness causing him to be admitted to hospital. This may have been a blessing in disguise, as Oscar’s frequent illnesses caused him to be in and out of hospitals both on the Western Front and in England. This may well have helped with his survival, enabling him to return home to Australia in mid 1919. At the time, the Spanish Flu pandemic was still continuing in waves across Australia. However, Oscar returned to a rural area full of wide open spaces which would perhaps have helped with containing the disease. All of Oscar’s immediate family survived the pandemic and life went on as normal.

In February 1920, Oscar was married to Edith Jane Hartley and the settled down and started a family. Oscar and Edith had five children together, with the first four being born in the Penrith area. However, as the Great Depression hit Australia the family was forced to move from the Penrith area to a cheaper area. As a result, they settled in Brighton-le-Sands before ending up in the inner city suburb of Ashfield.

Oscar’s health was obviously stable enough after the war for him to continue to work in his job at Sydney’s Schweppes factory, where he had been employed since the age of 15, and raise a family however as he aged his health deteriorated. As a result, Oscar died at the relatively young age of 49 years old in 1945. This may have been due to him being heavily gassed during his war service, which has since been proven to cause serious and ongoing health problems. At the time of his death, Oscar’s two youngest children were aged just 11 and 6 years old respectively.