Roy Percival Stanley Brooks was born in the pleasant Adelaide suburb of Burnside in 1893 and was working as a “farm hand” when he enlisted in the AIF on 10th October 1916. He lived in the Magill area and played one season of soccer with the Magill club in 1913. Magill finished third in a ten team Second Division that season and seemed to have a promising future. However, they disbanded after finishing poorly in 1914 and were one of several clubs who failed to return after the war.
Private Brooks was in France by May 1917 with the 23rd reinforcements for the 10th Battalion. Whilst serving at the Front he was sent to hospital in England in late 1917 with a sprained ankle and an unspecified illness. But at Cappy on the Somme he earned a Military Medal on 28th August 1918. As a Lance Corporal he led a group of three to attack a German strongpoint with bombs, killing all the defenders. Although wounded whilst performing this act of bravery he was back with his unit by the end of the year, and was not returned to Australia and discharged until June 1919.
In May 1920 Roy Brooks married Ethel Mabel Hall at the Methodist church at Torrensville. In 1940 he was still living in the Magill area when he applied for a Marine Store Collectors’ licence – allowing him to collect bottles and glass containers. He was 77 when he died in 1970.