H.J.W. Bosma could have sat the First World War out in peace if he had returned to his native Amsterdam. Instead, something of the Anzac spirit seems to have rubbed off on him and he preferred to enlist in the AIF with his Australian mates.
Born in Amsterdam in 1891, Bosma arrived in Adelaide from Java in 1910. Unlike many other non-British new arrivals he didn’t hang around at the Port, but moved to the eastern suburbs. A labourer, he could have found work building new houses, or at the Stonyfell quarry.
He played soccer for the Magill club, a promising Second Division team in 1912-13, but a struggler in 1914. They did not reform after the war. The Daily Herald reported on 1 May 1913 that “a right back has just arrived from Holland”.
An alternative scenario might have been that Bosma was not an immigrant, but a deserter from the Dutch Navy. On his naturalization papers he gave the date of his arrival in Australia as October 28 th 1910. This coincided with the visit of a Dutch squadron from the East Indies. He also stated that he came on the “De Ruyter”- the flag ship of the squadron.
Henry John William Bosma received his naturalization papers on 12 July 1915, and turned up at Keswick Barracks just three days later. His enlistment was approved on 18 August 18. Serving with the 10th Battalion in France he did five days of Field Punishment No.1 for expressing insolence to an NCO in May 1916. In the Battle of Pozieres on 19 August 19 Bosma earned a Military Medal for gallantry under fire. The Australians had captured a trench but were being picked off by a German sniper. Henry Bosma crawled 60 yards under fire and took out the sniper with a bomb, then crawled back to his trench and continued firing his Lewis gun. A week later he was fatally wounded in the same area.
His parents in Amsterdam were his next of kin, although he had been paying a weekly allotment from his salary to Miss Myrtle Keighran of Adelaide.