Regimental Sergeant Major Thomas Barlow KDG

From the chaos of Waterloo to the streets of early Melbourne, Thomas Barlow’s courage and service continue to inspire…a legacy worthy of a permanent memorial.

This website is dedicated to honouring Regimental Sergeant Major Thomas Barlow of the 1st King’s Dragoon Guards, a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo and early settler of the then Port Phillip, Australia (now Melbourne).

Today, his grave at Melbourne General Cemetery remains unmarked.

We are fundraising to create a permanent memorial to Thomas Barlow.

Funds raised will be used to design, build and install the monument, and to prepare the site so his service and life can be properly recognised and remembered.

Thoughts on a monument to a Waterloo veteran in Melbourne

Professor Tony Pollard (Academic Lead, Waterloo Uncovered)

The Battle of Waterloo involved upwards of 180,000 men fighting on a battlefield measuring just two by two and a half miles located in what today is Belgium. The soldiers making up the combatant armies came from a variety of nations; France, Prussia and Britain, with the latter fighting in alliance with Hanover, Netherlands, Brunswick and Nassau (around a third of the c.73,000 troops under Wellington’s command were British). Again, exact figures are unknown, but as many as 20,000 soldiers died in the battle which saw the final defeat of Napoleon and helped to shape modern Europe, with many more wounded.

After being brought together on that fateful day, 18 June 1815, the armies dispersed, with Napoleon famously spending the rest of his days on the island of St Helena. Some of those men remained in service while others returned home as civilians or made new lives in other parts of the world. It is a diaspora which has been little studied; where on earth did those veterans of Waterloo end up, and what fates befell them after surviving one of the most famous battles ever fought?

These were questions I first asked myself in the context of another war. In 2008, I had the privilege of accompanying Harry Patch, otherwise known as the ‘Last Fighting Tommy’, on his final visit to Flanders, where he was unveiling a memorial at the place where he went into battle in 1917. Incredibly, he was the last man alive to have fought on the Western Front in the First World War. Harry was 110 years at the time, and while he visited cemeteries of friend and foe alike, I had time to ponder the mostly untold stories of those who survive wars and go on to live out the rest of their lives, for good or bad. Harry touched on this himself, when with tongue-in-cheek he complained that people were only ever interested in his experiences on the Western Front, which lasted a few months, and not his many post-war years as a plumber.

Harry died in 2009, aged 111, and along with him went the last living link to the combat veterans of First World War.

Returning to Waterloo and its afterlives; Regimental Sergeant Major Thomas Barlow of the King’s Dragoon Guards, like Harry, was one of those who went on to live out their lives away from the battlefield. After Waterloo he went back to England to continue his military service. He retired from the army in 1833 and became a Methodist minister and school master, before emigrating to Australia with his second wife Sarah in 1849.

I welcome the initiative to mark the presence of this Waterloo veteran in Melbourne and hope a monument will make him more than a spot on a map. Who knows, perhaps this will mark the first step in an international effort to draw attention to Waterloo diaspora by telling the stories of veterans, of whatever nationality, and the places they chose to make home.

Professor Tony Pollard, OBE, FRHistS,

Professor of Conflict History and Archaeology Scottish Centre for War Studies and Conflict Archaeology University of Glasgow