Coonamble NSW
1640
45th Battalion,
Tooraweenah Kookaburra
Killed In Action 20.10.1917
Private Davidson Hedley was born in Scotland and his next of kin was his father, John Hedley of Jedburgh, Scotland. He was a 21 year old labourer of Coonamble when he enlisted on January 12, 1916 at Tooraweenah and marched to Bathurst with the Tooraweenah Kookaburras. He passed the medical examination and he was described as 6’ tall, 168 lbs, chest 36”-39”, fair complexion blue eyes, brown hair and no distinctive marks noted. He was Presbyterian.
After training in Bathurst NSW, Davidson embarked from Sydney on board the HMAT Ceramic on April 14, 1916, with the 45th Battalion. After further training in Egypt and England, he joined his unit in France in August 1916, in time to fight in the Battle of the Somme at Pozieres and Mouquet Farm. In September he spent a short time in hospital with an abcess in his tear ducts and then endured a freezing winter in the trenches. He would have fought at Guedecourt and Bullecourt, and on the first day of Messines he was wounded in action with a gunshot wound to his hand. He was sent back to England for treatment and convalescence and rejoined the unit on September 2, 1917. He was promoted to Lance Corporal on October 7 and was killed in action near Passchendaele in Belgium on October 20, 1917.
His father received his effects, the Memorial Plaque, the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.
He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres, Belgium on Panel 27, and the Australian War Memorial in Canberra on Panel 139.