Godfrey John Thaman Sherman was born in February 1890 to Amelia (née Harris) and William Sherman, of Nelson St Woollahra, in Sydney. Godfrey attended Sydney Grammar School, where he was in the cadets, and was working as a clerk when war was declared on 5 August 1914.

He enlisted (as another religion, RC - not unlike several Jews - though his parents had married in the Great Synagogue) in the Australian Imperial Force on 26 August 1914, aged 24, at Brisbane and gave as his next-of-kin Miss Katherine Cleveland-Coxe of The Wentworth, Bondi Beach - possibly fiancée - unknown to the family. As No. 206 Private Godfrey John Sherman, he joined A Company of the 9th Battalion, which embarked aboard HMAT A5 S.S. Omrah on 24 September 1914 (pictured) to join the first convoy (1st Expeditionary Force) of 38 ships that left Albany, WA, on 1 November.

The convoy arrived in Egypt on 2 December 1914 and trained at Mena Camp. The battalion - part of the 3rd Infantry Brigade of the 1st Australian Division - left Alexandria on 2 March 1915 and gathered with the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) at Mudros, on the Greek Island of Lemnos, where they practised landings.

On 24 April, the 3rd Brigade – so-called ‘All Australian’ brigade because its four battalions (9, 10, 11 and 12) comprised troops from Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania - boarded troopships and sailed overnight the 100km to the Gallipoli Peninsular. The brigade formed the first wave of the ANZAC landings on 25 April 1915, just before dawn, but apparently the 9th Battalion was “particularly disorganised.” A witness stated* that Godfrey “was missing on the first day of the landing, this battalion being badly cut up [at Gaba Tepe]. He was well known.” Another informant stated he “did not see Sherman at all afterwards.”

His body was not identified, and Godfrey was reported ‘missing’ until more than a year later, when a Court of Enquiry (5/6/1916) held in France, adjudged that he was ‘Killed in Action’ 25 April 1915: the first Jewish Australian soldier to die in WW1. Private Godfrey John Sherman’s name is engraved on Panel 31 of the Lone Pine Memorial, Gallipoli, Turkey.

Godfrey’s younger brother, Leslie Sherman, also enlisted in the AIF in January 1916 and was killed in action on 2 October 1917, in Belgium (see separate entry). They are amongst seven pairs of brothers from WW1 and a total of at least 14 pairs of brothers, whose names are inscribed on the Australian Jewish War Memorial.

*Australian Red Cross Wounded and Missing file.