Walter Harold Thompson was born near London, and like his friend and fellow MTT conductor Syd Weatherlake, played for the Tramways soccer team in 1914.
Thompson joined the AIF on 10 December 1914, aged 25, and reached Gallipoli with the 4th reinforcements for the 10th Battalion in June 1915. By November he was in hospital at Gibraltar with a serious illness. Although he reached England the following year, he was destined never to reach France, seeing out his war at base depots and hospitals.
He was returned to Australia in December 1917. Walter Thompson and his chum Syd Weatherlake were mentioned in a letter to the editor of The Advertiser published on 13th November 1917. They had told the writer of the letter that “it was disgraceful that such a small percentage of men from the MTT had enlisted”. They were evidently supporters of conscription. The MTT staff who had not enlisted were perhaps afraid of women taking their jobs.
Thompson married Amy Wales at St David’s Church, Burnside, on 18 September 1918. He died at the Masonic Nursing Home at Somerton Park in 1980, at the good age of 91. His last job was as a bank messenger.