Albert Edward White died at the age of 102 in 1997, 81 years after he was sentenced to death. The court martial summary stated:
When on active service. Deserting H. M. Service in that he at Charlton Trench on 4th November 1916, after being warned for duty in the trenches absented himself from 25th Battalion until apprehended at Ouerean on 11.11.16. Punishment Awarded: DEATH.
The decision was sent up the line to the G.O.C. of the Fourth Army, who decided a month later to downgrade the sentence to 10 years in prison. This was later downgraded further to 2 years. White was sent to prison in January 1917, where he stayed until November, at which point his sentence was suspended and he was sent back to his unit.
While contemporary records do not state why White absconded, he gave a hint in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald in 1995. White had simply not wanted to go to war. “I went because most of my cobbers went. Mates from my soccer team went, the goalkeeper went, not that I bloody wanted to go.”
He and his mates played for an unknown Brisbane soccer team. There were over 60 teams in Brisbane in 1914, but only the top division clubs received more newspaper coverage than a simple listing of fixtures and results. We only know of his Brisbane soccer career through his 1995 interview. If White did not want to be in Gallipoli (“a bastard of a place”), neither had he been taken with Australia (“a bloody awful place”) when he first arrived. He was only 17 when he was dragged halfway around the world by his older brother Jim. White hatched a plan to return to England to play professional football, but Jim put a stop to such fancies.
Instead, White met Eileen Campbell, little knowing their relationship would last over 60 years. White enlisted in February 1915 and was assigned to the 25th Battalion. He would go on to fight at Gallipoli, the Somme and Pozieres, before his active service was ended by a gunshot wound to the hand in June 1918. He began the return journey to Brisbane in December, where Eileen found him walking down Queens Street and gave him a kiss. They married in 1921 and were together until her death in 1977. Twenty years later, pneumonia and a broken hip did what the Turkish and German armies and his own officers had not managed during the war.
White died as the last remaining Queenslander to have fought at Gallipoli.