Trooper Leonard Francis HallPrint Page

The tree commemorates Trooper Leonard Francis Hall (9th May 1897 - 24th February 1999) who served in World War One as a member of the 10th Light Horse.

He landed at Gallipoli in April 1915, where he fought as a machine-gunner during the assault on the Nek.  He was involved in the capture of Beersheba in 1917, riding in the charge by the Light Horse Brigade of the Desert Mounted Corps.   He also was part of the Allied force led by Lawrence of Arabia that liberated Damascus in 1918.

He had enlisted in 1915 after an officer heard him playing the bugle and begged him to join up because the 10th Light Horse needed a bugler. He was just 16, so he exaggerated his age, donned an oversized uniform and sailed for Egypt, practising his bugle en route. In Gallipoli, his role was to operate a Vickers machine-gun. He fought in campaigns until the evacuation from the Gallipoli peninsula.

When he rode out to the Fremantle wharf to board his ship for Egypt in 1915, he plucked the emu plume from his slouch hat and gave it to a girl waving in the crowd. As he marched back into Fremantle four years later, a woman stepped forward saying: “Excuse  me sir, would you like your plume back?”  Hall fell in love with the caretaker of his feather, Eunice Lydiate, and they were married two years  later. They had two children, Frank and Leonore.

Between the wars, Hall worked as a grocer before starting a career with the Postmaster-General, working as a telephone technician and then as a postmaster at Hamelin  Pool, between Geraldton and Carnarvon.

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