Honouring Duncan Thompson on Remembrance Day

Duncan Thompson was regarded as one of the sharpest halfback tacticians ever to play the game. His ability to create an overlap, to surprise opponents with a blindside rush or beat a man with a pass was said to be years ahead of its time. Thompson plied his trade for Ipswich, North Sydney and Toowoomba and at representative level for Queensland, NSW and Australia in a career that was almost cut short by World War I. To mark Remembrance Day 2025, we pay tribute to a man whose courage knew no limits.

THOSE familiar with the story of Duncan Thompson will recall that he survived a German bullet that pierced his lung during World War I before he went on to become one of Australia’s most celebrated halfbacks and later a highly respected coach. 

What is not widely known is the harrowing account of his wounding in the village of Dernancourt in northern France in 1917.

Thompson wrote about his wartime experiences in an unpublished biography, telling how he crawled on his stomach and later on his knees for a mile across open ground after a gunshot wound had penetrated his chest. 

Thompson enlisted in 1916 as a 21-year-old, defying his father’s wishes, and was assigned to the 49th Battalion. After a period training at Salisbury Plain in the south of England, the 49th proceeded to France in October 1917 where Thompson admitted to a certain excitement.

“After a term behind the lines we finally were called to the front for my first taste of action,” he wrote. “This was at Dernancourt, on the Somme. When you are young and seeking adventure you almost look forward to this sort of thing. Certainly we had no idea of the privations of the trenches, not that I was to suffer it for long. 

“The very first night I found myself on a night patrol with a mate. I can think of many better nights out than feeling one’s way around a shell-pitted field searching for enemy strong points, not knowing if the next second will bring a burst of machine-gun fire.

"In fact the first sounds we heard were human – the guttural voices of Germans, seemingly at my shoulder. Down we went into a shell-hole. After a breathless few seconds a group of Germans also on patrol walked past. So close were they I could have reached up and grabbed an ankle – certainly the least inviting tackle of my life.

"My first trip ‘over the top’ was my last. My battalion was called on to attack and up and over the trenches we went. But whether because of poor resistance or sterner opposition on our flanks my group found themselves too far advanced and we came under enfilading fire. 

“We went to ground like plummets and lay there praying we would not be hit. Not so some of the old heads. Around us puttered legs began to pop up actually searching for a bullet which would earn a ‘Blighty’ (shipment home to England as wounded). I didn’t need a leg in the air. I suddenly felt a searing pain and then a paralysis. I thought I had been hit in the spine. From fingertips to my toes I was paralysed.

"I knew something about paralysis. One of my sisters had infantile paralysis and I thought: ‘If I live through this it’s a wheelchair for me'.

“But slowly movement returned to my fingers. I then found I could crawl. I also found the bullet that hit me. It went through my shoulder blades and straight through my body and lay beside me.” 

Thompson instinctively picked up the bullet and kept it as a chilling memento of his near-death experience.

As he began to recover movement his training kicked in and he headed for a clump of trees “about a mile from where I had been hit”. Thompson called it a “painful, nightmarish haul”

but when he finally made it, the first familiar face he saw was an old school friend from Warwick, Major Athol Rowell.

“I don’t remember anything being said but Athol maintains that when he rolled me over the conversation went like this: ‘Is that you Dunc?’ 
‘Yes, Athol. Do you think I’ll be able to play football again?’ 

Thompson was invalided back to England where doctors told him how lucky he was to have survived. “I was told that my future sporting activities would be restricted to an occasional game of tennis, and nothing more strenuous than doubles. I wondered if a quick death would not have been preferable to a slow one,” he wrote. 

Thompson spent months convalescing and eventually was sent home to Australia, where he was released from the Army. He resumed civilian life, moving in with the family of his future wife in Ipswich. He commuted each day to Brisbane, where he had regained employment as a bank clerk. 

Thompson was 24 by this time and despite the excitement of reunions with loved ones, he admitted that he was soon overwhelmed by depression.

“For a 24-year-old with pretensions to playing Rugby League for Australia, an odd doubles in tennis is [a] pretty mournful substitute. There had to be more to life than that. I was under no discomfort walking around, even working at the bank.” 

His return to the sporting field was gradual. He played some cricket for the Commonwealth Bank in the summer of 1918-19 before resuming tentatively with Starlights rugby league club early in 1919.

He played fullback at first but as his confidence returned he took up his old position of halfback and before long he regained the Queensland jersey that he had first worn in Sydney in 1915. 

Less than 18 months after a German bullet almost brought about his death, Thompson achieved his life’s ambition when he was chosen to represent Australia on the 1919 tour of New Zealand.

The achievement fuelled his competitiveness and the thought of playing an Ashes series against the English team that was to tour in 1920 led to him seeking employment in Sydney.

“I decided to seek a transfer to Sydney, purely to get into a higher standard of football,” he wrote.

Thompson was already acquainted with the North Sydney club, the result of an earlier transfer in 1916. He also spent a short period in Newcastle the previous season, turning out for Western Suburbs. 

Thompson’s guile and tactical ability helped to transform North Sydney from also-rans in 1919 (they finished last) into City Cup champions in 1920 and competition premiers in 1921 and 1922.

Alongside him he enjoyed the considerable support of champion wingers Harold Horder and Cec Blinkhorn as well as the high-calibre centre pairing of Herman Peters and Frank Rule.

Historian Andrew Moore wrote that: “Thompson is sometimes referred to as the first of the ‘scientific’ scrumhalfs. It was not just that the North Sydney halfback was nippy around the base of the scrum with a ‘tantalising, paralysing burst of speed’. In essence Thompson was ‘as champagne to an ordinary vintage’ because of the degree of thought he put into the game. He always worked with the ‘delicate miniature chisel of the artist, the brain work rather than the projection of bulk and brawn’. He thought about moves, plotted them in diagrams before implementing them in practice. On the paddock he was a field marshal, directing play, demanding not only a willing heart from his colleagues but intelligence also.” 

• David Middleton is the author of the official annual of the NRL.