Thomas Jaggs played for Kangaroo Point-based club Wellington before the war, alongside his younger brother George.
A small and possibly unimportant mystery pertains to Thomas (Henry) Jagg’s war, and those of the rest of the 11th Reinforcements of the 9th Battalion. The reinforcements were drawn from Queensland enlistments in mid-1915, with Jagg joining in August. At the time the 9th Battalion was fighting in Gallipoli, and it can be presumed that was the expected destination of the new troops when they embarked in mid-October.
This is reinforced by the report of a meeting of the Queensland British Football Association published by the Daily Standard on 19 February 1916. During the meeting, the president, S. I. Ross, stated Jaggs, long-time player for the Kangaroo Point-based Wellington club, had been injured in Gallipoli and was being treated in an English hospital. The problem comes from Jaggs’ military record, which does not mention any injury to until 1917. Nor is there any mention of being marched into Gallipoli.
In fact, a glance through of records of many of the troops of the 11th reinforcements shows no updates covering any arrival in Egypt, the Middle East or elsewhere, and many have their first entry as February 1916 or later, when the troops were folded into the 49th Battalion. There is even a question whether the reinforcements even reached Gallipoli in time for the evacuation between the 8th and 20th of December. Could a troop ship leaving Australia on 15 October would arrive in time to take part? Did records go missing during the chaos of mass troop withdrawals which coincided with the arrival of reinforcements?
Jaggs, meanwhile, was transferred to the 49th Battalion and fought until receiving serious injuries in Messines on 16 July 1917. He received a severely fractured skull and a bullet in his buttock. While both healed well enough, Jaggs was still left with headaches and dizziness, plus metal fragments around his hip joints. This led to his discharge on 12 August 1917. Jaggs died in 1963.