Joseph Stead
Name: Joseph Raymond Stead
Rank: Private
Service Number: 187
Units Served: 32nd Battalion
Personal Details: Joseph was born on November the 14th 1894 and was the 13th child of 15 to his parents Thomas Stead and Ann Elizabeth Dunhill. He was 5’4¾” and weighed 140lbs. He had brown hair, blue eyes with a tanned complexion.
Enlistment Details: Enlisted 30th June 1915 at Keswick and was posted to the 32nd Battalion, A Company as a private at the age of 20.
Details about his role in War: He embarked from Adelaide on 18 November 1915 aboard the HMAT Geelong and disembarked on December the 18th 1915 in Suez.
He spent time in hospital for having the influenza and the mumps from March the 6th 1916 to the 25th April.
He rejoined his battalion and embarked to join the British Expeditionary Force in Alexandria on the 17th of June. He disembarked the H.M.T. Transylvania in Marseilles. He then went missing on the 20th of July in France on the battalion’s first major battle at Fromelles. The attack hit the battalion hard, resulting in 718 casualties which was almost 75 percent of the battalion’s total strength.
Prisoner of War German list dated November the 4th he was shown in the list as under dead. They received his identification disc from the German’s and then reported as killed in action.
Joseph was originally buried in a mass grave near Pheasant Wood just outside of the village of Fromelles. His remains were too stay there, with those of 250 other soldiers killed in the Battle of Fromelles, until 2009, when they were exhumed by members of the Glasgow University Army Reserach Department and were then officially identified. His remains were then buried in the new cemetery at Fromelles during January of 2010.
Age at Death: 21
Memorial Details: Pheasant Wood Military Cemetery, Fromelles, France.
