in Adelaide. On 10 September 1913, he married Annie Elizabeth "Tess" Watson of Unley. The couple lived in the suburbs of Yatala and Parkside, and had two children. Weathers' elder brother Thomas enlisted to serve in World War I and died of wounds during the Gallipoli Campaign of 1915, while serving with the 9th Light Horse Regiment. His younger brother Joseph also enlisted, but was discharged at his own request before leaving Australia. World War I On 8 February 1916, Weathers enlisted as a private in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), and was initially allocated as a reinforcement to the 10th Battalion. In June, he was transferred to the 43rd Battalion, part of the 11th Brigade, 3rd Division. The 43rd Battalion embarked on HMAT A19 (formerly SS Afric) in June 1916, and after a brief stop in the Middle East and transit through France, spent the rest of the year training at Larkhill on the Salisbury Plain in southern England. The 3rd Division embarked for the Western Front in November, and entered the trenches for the first time in late December. Weathers reported sick in late January 1917, and did not rejoin his unit until late April. He returned to the front lines in time to participate in the first major action his battalion saw in the war, the Battle of Messines, during which the 43rd Battalion incurred 122 casualties in a night-time operation to capture the final objective, the Oosttaverne Line. One of those casualties was Weathers, who suffered a gunshot wound to the leg on 10 June. Evacuated to hospital in the United Kingdom, he did not return to his unit until early December. The 3rd Division spent the winter of 1917–1918 rotating through the front lines in the Messines sector of the Flanders region of Belgium, largely improving the trenches against an expected German offensive in the spring. Weathers was promoted to lance corporal on 21 March 1918, and a week later his battalion helped blunt the German spring offensive, taking up defensive positions between the Ancre and the Somme rivers west of Morlancourt. In late May he required medical treatment following a gas attack near Villers-Bretonneux that caused 230 casualties among the 43rd, and Weathers did not return to duty until mid-June. The 43rd Battalion's next major action was the highly successful Battle of Hamel on 4 July. The battalion was responsible for clearing the village