Adam Gladstone Wardrop was a horse driver from Mackay in Queensland. In 1916, he saddled up one last time, rode to Rockhampton and enlisted to serve in the Great War. Wardrop left his young wife, Minnie, behind in Australia. She lived on a property on Nebo Road bordering cane fields and farm land. She would never see her husband again.

Wardrop sailed from Sydney in September 1916. He was over fifty days at sea and was unwell enough to be hospitalised the week he arrived in England.

Barely recovered from his illness, Driver Wardrop joined the 7th Australian Field Artillery and was sent on to France. In September 1917, almost a year to the day after leaving Australia, he was wounded. Driver Wardrop, the medical report tells us, suffered ‘severe exposure to mustard gas’. There were dozens of different kinds of poisonous gas used in the Great War, each designed to maim, kill or blind the enemy. Mustard gas burnt skin from a man’s body; it corroded lungs, damaged eyes, left lips and tongue swollen and blistered. Severe exposure to mustard gas meant a man would probably die. Eventually. Decades after the war, exposed men coughed up blood and phlegm and choked on their own fluids.

Adam Wardrop never returned to active service. Weakened by the effects of being gassed, he succumbed to one illness after another and was moved from hospital to hospital. But there was nothing anyone could do to help him. Fourteen months after being gassed in France, the young man complained he could barely breathe. The doctors described ‘an asthmatic condition’, a ‘pain in the chest’ and shortness of breath at even the slightest exertion. Wardrop’s pulse was weak, his skin discoloured and he had suffered ‘intermittent attacks of vomiting, diarrhea since admission’. In late 1918, he’d also contracted Addison’s Disease – Wardrop’s kidneys were failing.

Back home in Mackay, Minnie Wardrop received a series of telegrams delivered to her door in Nebo Road, each detailing Adam’s changing condition. But all she could do was wait. There were 12 000 miles of water between her and her husband.

Meanwhile, in England, the doctors made a decision. They doubted a man as badly gassed as Wardrop could survive a northern winter. Perhaps he’d breathe a little easier in the warm, humid air of Queensland; surely there, he’d have family and friends to support him. And his wife would want to be near him for whatever time they had left together. So despite the dangers of a long ocean voyage, Wardrop was carried onto the hospital ship Wandilla in March 1919 and was sent home to Australia.

In the makeshift ward between decks, a new cast of doctors were worried. In rolling seas, they scrawled unsteadily in Wardrop’s casebook:

29 April 1919 – vomiting, headache, discoloration of urine

4 May 1919 – condition much worse, epistaxis, general weakness, twitching and vomiting’

And in the early hours of the morning on 8 May, a doctor recorded the final entry:

3.26 a.m. – life extinct1

Adam Wardrop died at sea just a few days’ sailing time from Australia.

Later, Winnie received a letter from Wandilla’s Troop Commander. She must have sped through each line, reading each word hungrily, anxious for any news of her husband. ‘Everything possible in the way of medical attention was done for him . . . His end being peaceful & without pain . . .  He was buried at sea, with full military honours.’2 So many words to say so little.

Like all Australian soldiers who died at sea coming home, Adam Wardrop’s name was cast in bronze and raised on the cloistered walls of the Australian national memorial. It was carved in stone on the cenotaph at Mackay, published proudly in the local press, and printed – in archaic hand – on the King’s expression of regret and gratitude. We don’t know if Minnie found much comfort in a name. We know she lost her husband barely three years into their marriage, that she had no children and that she never remarried.

Carved in stone: Adam Wardrop’s name appears on the Australian National Memorial in Villers-Bretonneux. The memorial commemorates over ten thousand Australians who died in France and have no known grave. It also honours men like Wardrop buried at sea enroute home to Australia. Courtesy Bruce Scates.

Wilhelmina Amelia Wardrop died in Mackay in 1936, seventeen years after the body of her husband was committed to the deep.

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: This story draws on Adam Wardrop’s service dossier NAA: B2455, WARDROP ADAM GLADSTONE. The authors acknowledge the assistance of Mike and Roz Goodwin and the school students of Mackay North State High School who have carried out regular commemorations at the Australian National Memorial, Villers-Bretonneux, where Wardrop’s name is inscribed.

1 NAA: B2455, WARDROP ADAM GLADSTONE.

2 Letter from Lieutenant Colonel T.G. Wilson to Minnie Wardrop, 10 May 1919, ibid.