Thomas Henry Howden was born in Keston, Kent, and came to Adelaide in May 1912 to work as a nurseryman. He joined the Adelaide soccer club where his older brother George had been playing since 1911. Tom Howden and his brother played in two winning Cambridge Cup finals for Adelaide, beating Tandanya 2-1 in 1912 and Hindmarsh 3-0 in 1913. Tom played until the close of the 1915 season, when Adelaide topped the league table in early June but then dropped away to finish sixth as players enlisted.
Tom Howden enlisted at Keswick Barracks in February 1916 and went to France with the 43rd Battalion. He was selected to attend an officer cadet training course at Trinity College, Cambridge. After successfully completing this, he returned to the “Hindmarsh Battalion” in May 1917 as a 2nd Lieutenant.
In the fierce fighting that followed he was twice wounded and then killed in action at Broodesinde, near Passchendaele on 4 October, 1917, a horrendous battlefield of deep mud which made movement almost impossible. Tom Howden was twenty six years old.
In subsequent Octobers after the war, his good friends of the Turbill family published a tribute in The Advertiser with these lines of verse: “He sailed with hope of returning His colours were chocolate and blue He died an Australian hero What more could a soldier do”.