When he volunteered in early March, 1915 from Alphington, the 19-year-old Lindsay Thomas Adams was one of just handful from the district listed as a student, in his case, Teaching at Melbourne University after completing his Matriculation at Scotch College.
His military career was also somewhat unique in that he was one who died after embarking from Australia, but without ever seeing action at the front line.
Adams was drowned when his troopship S.S. Southland was torpedoed off the Gallipoli coast en route from Egypt on 2 September, 1915. Adams is believed to have been in the forepart of the vessel which took the main impact of the explosion and was declared killed when no trace could be found of him the following day. Fourteen men were killed by the explosion and twenty two were drowned. His was one of those whose bodies were not recovered and he was commemorated on the Cape Helles Memorial at Gallipoli.
Lindsay embarked from Melbourne with his elder brother, Frederick Reginald Adams, the pair enlisting on the same day with the 6th Field Ambulance and with consecutive Service Number. Fred. was a schoolteacher at Brighton Grammar and was also aboard the Southland, surviving the incident and a couple of years in France before in an unusual situation, he was granted twelve months leave on Subsistence Pay in April, 1918 to undertake a “Soldier’s Scholarship” at the University of Manchester. After the war, he was appointed headmaster of Launceston Grammar School in 1929.
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