William James Gibbons was an Adelaide soccer player who disappeared without trace at Gallipoli.
Born in Gravesend, Kent, he was in Adelaide by 1911 when he was noted as playing for the Cambridge club, continuing in 1912 when the “Cantabs” changed their name to Tandanya. By the end of the 1912 season he had joined the short lived Warilda club.
With experience in the British Territorials Gibbons enlisted in the AIF in August 1914, a 34 year old married labourer with no children. He landed at Anzac Cove with the 10th Battalion on 25 April 1915. During the confusion of the following few days he simply disappeared. He was not reported as killed or wounded, neither was he on the list of prisoners that the Turks provided.
A board of inquiry in June 1916 finally moved his status from “missing in action” to “killed in action”, but no details of the inquiry were noted on his service record.