PRIVATE TASMAN FOSTER BARKER
40TH BN AUSTRALIAN INFANTRY
21ST APRIL 1918 AGE 23
BURIED: BONNAY COMMUNAL CEMETERY EXTENSION, FRANCE
Emond, Tasman Foster Barker's young widow, made sure that even in far-off France people should know that he was her "loved husband" and the "dear daddy of Rollo". Emond and Tasman married in 1916 and James Rollo was born the same year. And in November that same year, Tasman, a coach builder from Colac, Victoria, enlisted. He left Australia on board HMS Ballarat on 19 February 1917. Two months later, on 25 April 1917, Ballarat was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of Cornwall, sinking the next day. However, all 1,752 passengers and crew survived.
Tasman died on 21 April 1918 of wounds received in the first battle of Villers Bretonneux. His brother Rollo, a Second Lieutenant in the Australian Heavy Artillery had been killed two months earlier in a motorbike accident in France.