I have had a long run now, and I think I have done my ‘cut’. You know I am the only one you have

left now, and at this game a fellow is

always apt to go west.

Private charles Prince let ter home, augu st 28, 1917

Alfred AdamsDavid Andrews

Daniel Peter ArrowJohn Bateup

George Scott BlackRaymond John Bloodworth

Harry Ebenezer BoltonReginald Roy Brown

Leonard Rockley BrownlowAlfred Buckley

David James BurrinThuillier Lake Cardew

John ChristieAlbert Vincent Churchland

William John ChurchlandWilliam Henry Cole

John Alexander ColeFrancis Samuel Albert Cooper

Leslie CooperJoseph Christopher Cox

Roy Marcus ClarkPatrick Currie

Patrick DempseyVivian Claude Cecil Dowling

Timothy Doyle

Henry EdwardsGeorge Ellis

Walter James EnglandAlfred William Farragher

Aubrey Leslie FieldHarold Roy Stanley Field

Henry FinchWalter ALH Finch

John Bede FitzpatrickGeorge Arthur Craig Gardiner

Ivan Francis GrantClarence Clifton Green

Robert Walter GreenJames Arthur HardingRobert Randolph Holl

John Bathurst IsonDM Johnson

J JohnsonEdward David Kearney

Norman Dunstan KnightJohn Joseph Jacob Lang

Randell Reuben LarcombeEtienne Louis Lasserre

James Lihou

[ 2 ]

This is the story of a young man from Dubbo forced to bury his brother on a foreign battlefield. It is the story of a tennis prodigy once destined to become a household name, who instead lies in an unmarked

grave in the Somme Valley in France. And it is the story of a distraught mother who, quite literally, pulled her son out by the ear when she discovered he had gone to enlist – only for him to successfully try again months later and never return.

Ultimately, it is the story of the supreme sacrifice paid by one small town when a young nation called on its men to sign up and do their part for Queen and country after the Great War erupted on the far side of the globe.

To tell it, The Daily Telegraph enlisted the help of researchers to uncover the tale of each World War I soldier listed on the cenotaph in Dubbo, in NSW’s north-west.

Their stories are emblematic of those men and women from across the country who gave their lives for Australia.

It is important they are told and remembered.Lest we forget.

Stories compiled by Michelle Cazzulino, Sandra M Smith and Helen Thompson

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

Norman Beresford LovettRonald Stuart Main

George Adam MatchettWilfred Ernest McDonald

Robert Alexander Malcolm McFarlane

John Joseph McGintyPeter Albert McGrath

Archibald James McKayIvan William McLachlan

Reginald Roy MorganAthol Alexander Morrison

John Gordon MorrisonErnest Ambrose Mulhall

Robert MuncktonBertram John Sylvester Munday

Peter George ParkinsonJohn Paterson

Leslie William Charles PaulLeslie Pearson

James Henry George PollardCharles Prince

Wilfred QuihamptonHenry John Robertson

Lorne John RobertsonJames Henry Richardson

Thomas Alfred RichardsonLeslie Henry Robinson

Alexander Britton SamuelsHerbert Edward Samuels

Alfred Ernest SamuelsRobert Oswald Leopold Samuels

Walter Roy SibleyRoy Allen Sillar

Richard Clyde SimonsJames Lovel Simons

Harold Gordon SmithThomas Skelly

Sidney Joseph SkellyWalter Rupert Tink

John TurnerJames John Turner

Isaac WallsJames Mennie Walker

John Royal WardClyde Barrington Williams

Victor Robert WorthingtonStanley Worthington

Albert John Wright

[ 3 ]

[ 4 ]

“Private Bateup’s furious mother literally pulled him out [of enlisting] by the ear”

The newly-minted Private Jack Bateup had barely begun his military training

when he came face-to-face with a phenomenal enemy: his furious mother Martha, who had discovered his enlistment and travelled to Bathurst Camp, where she literally pulled him out by the ear.

But Australian military

authorities had a more prosaic take on the matter, discharging the 19-year-old on May 5, 1916, “at the request of his mother”.

Not to be dissuaded, Private Bateup followed a time-honoured tradition: denied by Martha, he sought and received written permission to enlist from his father Alf, and six months later – as his parents’ divorce was

finalised – the popular farmhand set sail for France.

Private Bateup was killed almost a year to the day after his mother had intervened to prevent his initial enlistment.

On May 30, 1917, he and a fellow soldier, Matthew Michael Carroll, died in the trench where they stood after being struck by an enemy shell. Their bodies

were buried in unmarked graves near Messines, in France.

Relations between Private Bateup’s parents did not improve after their son’s death.

By then both were remarried but they could not agree on which of them should receive his personal possessions, with each penning letters petitioning authorities for their return.

John “Jack” Bateup

The humble parcel contained a wallet, an identification disc, a letter, some photos and cards, a Bible, two

pocket books, a fountain pen, a metal ring and three pencils.

For a grieving Alfred and Emma Adams, the returned possessions were the final confirmation that the youngest of their four children, 22-year-old Alfred, was numbered among Australia’s war dead.

The couple had already buried one son – their third-born,

Jonathan, had died as a young child – but Alfred’s loss was compounded by an appalling error that saw his remains accorded the wrong person’s name, rank and date of death.

Alfred had been a fit and slightly built labourer when he enlisted in the Australian Army on June 7, 1916. He set sail for France three months later but was destined to survive for just a little over a year.

Just after 11pm on October 17, 1917, Private Adams was among

those holding the line in a battle at Westhock Ridge, Ypres Sector, when he took a break.

Witnesses would later recall that he was standing in a trench when an enemy shell exploded next to him. He was killed in-stantly and his body was buried close to where he died.

His remains were later exhumed and reinterred at the Tyne Cot British Cemetery, Passchendaele, 9km east-north-east from Ypres, but a marker on his grave bore the name of

Private W Daines from the 4th Battalion, who died on November 4, 1917.

An investigation by the London Office of the Imperial War Graves Commission eventually saw the mistake corrected and as Private Adams’ next of kin, his father, Alfred Snr, applied for his personal effects.

After initially being told none had been recovered, he received the items in mid-1918, after they were returned to Australia aboard a military ship.

The Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate described his memorial service as “a splendid

tribute to the memory of a hero [which] must have had a most soothing influence on the parents for the loss of a son who had given his life … to maintain the honour and integrity of the Empire on which the sun never sets”.

The report was published on January 21, 1916, but for years after, Stephen and Annie Andrews remained hopeful their son, 21-year-old David, had somehow survived World War I.

Tragically, he had indeed perished. Killed at Lone Pine, Gallipoli, the labourer, who had enlisted in November 1914, was initially reported missing in heavy fighting between Turkish and Australian forces between August 6 and 9, 1915.

Witness reports of the circumstances varied: Private Andrews was either shot in the head, stomach, thigh, or some combination of the three.

For his parents and six siblings back home, the ambiguity only added to their distress. As late as the 1920s they were still exchanging letters seeking details of his death with the Army Base Records Office in Melbourne.

Final notification eventually arrived on December 20, 1925, when the Imperial War Graves said it would erect of a headstone at Lone Pine. At the family’s request, the grave bears a verse from the Bible: “Greater love hath no man than this: that a man lay down his life for his friends”.

Alfred Adams

David Andrews

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

[ 5 ]

[ 6 ]

Dubboites! Xmas is coming again and your boys are still in the trenches fighting for you. Show

your appreciation by sending every soldier who left Dubbo a Xmas present ... it is the least you could do.”

Signaller Tom Skeyhill’s blunt appeal to locals resonated with at least one of Ray Bloodworth’s male relatives.

A “Mr Bloodworth” was listed in the same newspaper story as having made a five pound, five shilling donation on September 8, 1916. But by the war’s end, the family as a whole had paid a much heavier price, with the death of

21-year-old Trooper Ray Blood-worth on November 30, 1917.

The bank clerk, who enlisted on March 4, 1915, had endured several bouts of illness prior to his death in Palestine in the aftermath of an attack on Turkish lines in the area.

In a lengthy letter to Trooper Bloodworth’s father John, Warrant Officer D M Gillies, reported that the young officer and his fellow soldiers “were making their way back to their own lines, when they were subjected to a heavy barrage fire of shrapnel and machine guns”.

The missive was reprinted in full in the local newspaper on

February 22, 1918, with Warrant Officer Gillies observing that Trooper Bloodworth died “performing a deed of which not only you, but the whole of Coonamble district, should be proud”.

“One of Ray’s comrades, a lad named Christie, fell — mortally wounded as it turned out,” Warrant Officer Gillies wrote.

“Ray turned back to render him assistance, and while doing so he died the death of an heroic soldier, being shot through the head by a machine-gun bullet. It is comforting somewhat to know that he suffered no pain, as death must have been instantaneous.”

Raymond John Bloodworth

Dux of the District School, blessed with “good gray eyes” and considered

optimistic by nature, George Scott Black seemed destined for a glittering future.

Instead, the Duntroon College cadet tragically did not live long enough to see his 21st birthday.

The death of William and Margaret Black’s eldest son was reported in the Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate, but prior to that, it had been his academic results that made headlines in the local newspaper.

Initially he had made news when he placed third in an

essay-writing competition and later on Sergeant Black’s Junior University exam results also rated a mention in the local press.

But on March 24, 1917, two years after he had enlisted in World War I, there was sadder news when the Northern Champion carried Sergeant Black’s obituary.

It read, in part: “Sergeant Black took part in the second landing at Gallipoli where he was wounded and was for a time in hospital at Malta, and afterwards in England.

“From England he went to France with a detachment of the AIF. He was killed on 28th February.

“Judging from his recent letters, which were always brightly written, the deceased officer had lately been engaged in rather dangerous duty being in charge of a scouting party, which did night duty in ‘No Man’s Land’. He was only 20 years of age.”

George Scott Black

“He had been engaged in dangerous duty in ‘No Man’s Land’”

[ 7 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

For a young man full of courage and confidence, there was only one response to the carnage around him:

“Rest assured we will keep our end up … knowing that if we ‘go out’ in the attempt, more of our men will follow until we beat our enemies off the face of the earth,” Major Reg Brown wrote in a letter to his parents in May 1915.

It was to prove a prescient statement. But while Major Brown had a clear sense of the danger he faced, he could not have predicted the heartache that lay ahead for his family.

In December 1917, he was recalled to Dubbo following the death of his father, James George Brown. Ten months after that, in October 1918, the Browns were once again in mourning follow-ing the sudden passing of Major Brown himself, who burnt to death whilst on active duty.

At just 26, he had spent the past four years serving the nation and had been stationed in Egypt, Malta, London and France.

Unlike many of his country-men, he died an extremely wealthy man. An item published in an Orange newspaper following the death of James George Brown revealed he had left an estate worth £88,108, most of which was shared among his children.

An obituary written after Major Brown was killed remembered him as a “fine, hefty specimen of an Australian native”, the recipient of a Military Cross for bravery and a “popular man both as a citizen and soldier [whose] future was full of great promise”.

Reginald Roy “Reg” Brown

Leonard Rockley Brownlow

Difficult conditions, a tactical blunder and dreadful luck all played their part in the untimely

death of Lieutenant Leonard Brownlow, who was a divinity student when he signed up to defend the nation in 1916.

He was killed on October 12, 1917, and while the cause of his death was not reported in local newspapers at the time, it is likely to have been the result of friendly fire. Research suggests

he and his comrades had moved too far forward during the opening bombardment of a battle in Passchendaele, and he was shot by mistake.

His body was never recovered from the mud of the battlefield.

An entry in the University of Sydney’s Book of Remembrance paid tribute to the 24-year-old, whose legacy was his strength and decency.

“By his honourable and upright character, his courage

and determination in action, his loyalty and devotion to duty … he set … a most splendid example,” it read.

In his final letter to his father, Lieutenant Brownlow wrote that he had been able to meet up with his older brother, Sergeant John Calais Brownlow, while both were stationed in France.

Sergeant Brownlow survived the war, returning to Australia on August 24, 1918. He later married and died in Dubbo in 1936.

[ 8 ]

The letter described muddy, rainy, wintry conditions but also detailed a young man’s hopes of “doing something for

the Empire and defeating the aspirations of the enemy”.

Harry Bolton’s handwritten sentiments were undoubtedly intended to reassure his worried family back home.

But his father, George Field Bolton, would later recall that for days after reading the missive, he had been unable to shake the growing fear that “all was not well with his boy”.

The premonition proved tragically accurate a fortnight later, when word arrived in Dubbo that Private Bolton had been killed in action in France on March 2, 1917.

He had celebrated his 22nd birthday in the trenches just two months earlier.

An item in The Young Witness newspaper on March 20, 1917, described the farmhand as “a fine type of man, beloved in the family circle, and respected by all who knew him”.

It also noted he had made two attempts to enlist in the Australian Army before being accepted the previous year.

It seemed Private Bolton was also popular with his fellow soldiers, at least one of who recalled him as “one of the best”.

Witnesses to his death were able to offer some consolation for his family, reporting that while he had appeared to sustain a fatal concussion after being hit by an enemy shell, his body was otherwise “quite unwounded”.

He was no master criminal but in December 1912, the then-20-year-old

Alfred Buckley suffered the ignominy of appearing in Dubbo Police Court charged with riding his bicycle without lights, for which he and a number of others were fined.

The embarrassment was

compounded when the Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate carried his full name and details of the offence on page two of the newspaper the next day.

Just three years later, he was still in the area (and an avid cyclist) when he decided to join the Australian Imperial Force.

Gunner Buckley, a butcher whose fair complexion earned

him the nickname “Snowy”, went on to distinguish himself as a soldier over the course of the next three years, serving in Egypt before being deployed to France.

He died on March 14, 1918, after being admitted to the 14th General Hospital in France suffering a bad abscess in his left ear. He was operated on, but

developed the bronco-pneumonia that killed him 48 hours later.

Gunner Buckley’s family was nonetheless diligent about remembering his sacrifice.

Every year for the next eleven, on the anniversary of his death, they placed lengthy notices in the classifieds section of their local newspaper commemorating his life and achievements.

Harry Ebenezer “Cyril” Bolton

Alfred Buckley

[ 9 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

It was a farewell fit for a king – or perhaps just a 25-year-old local farmer who recognised how high

the stakes were when he enlisted in the war effort in June 1915.

Guests at Private Cardew’s leaving drinks were addressed by no less than eight separate speakers before the newly-minted soldier responded “suitably” and “tendered a farewell dance” accompanied by a three-piece orchestra.

Private Cardew was then presented with a case of pipes, and the whole event, which was held at Gilgandra’s Imperial Hotel, was written up in the local newspaper.

The Hawkesbury Agricultural College gradu-

ate, displaying the genteel manners acquired through his private school upbringing, wrote home at least once during his time abroad.

In a letter, he thanked ladies of the town for their “kindly interest” in sending a parcel whose contents had “arrived intact”. His tone was upbeat as he described meeting several Gilgandra locals overseas and he signed off with “remembrances to all” at home.

On July 20, 1916 – four months and three days after the missive was printed – Private Cardew was fatally shot in the neck by a sniper while holding a German trench in Fleurbaix, France.

A witness would later recall Private Cardew was one of numerous casualties sustained that day.

“Snipers got a good many of us in this trench,” Lance Corporal J H Wilson wrote.

Just days prior to being killed in action, Corporal Burrin penned a brief will comprising a single sentence,

directing that in the event of his death his possessions should be sent to his sister “to be distributed among the family as thought best”.

Even among the ranks of his fellow soldiers, Corporal Burrin seemed to have occasion to confront his own mortality more often than most.

His papers reveal he enlisted in October 1914 (two years after he

immigrated to Australia) with a distinct facial scar that ran from his forehead to his upper lip.

He sustained his first war injury almost immediately after embarking on active duty, when he developed a septic hand in Egypt. He was transferred to his native England for treatment and was eventually sent to his unit in France, where he was again injured, this time sustaining a severe gunshot wound to the right leg. He was once again repatriated to England to recover.

Corporal Burrin then

underwent military training in Cambridge before being sent back to France, where he spent a period enrolled in the 2nd Army Musketry School.

His final bout of illness occurred in March 1918, when he inhaled mustard gas, necessitating a third medical evacuation to England for treatment. Five months later he was dead – his service record reveals he had returned to France, where he was killed during a battle in the Somme sector. He was 27.

David James Burrin

Thuillier Lake “Boy”

Cardew

“Even among the ranks of his fellow soldiers, he had more occasion to confront his mortality”

[ 10 ]

For a township that had already mourned the loss of so many young World War I soldiers, the memorial

service on Saturday, November 10, 1917, was just another in a long line of ordeals to be endured throughout the conflict.

But the relatives and friends of three Wellington locals – Sergeant Harold Campbell, Trooper Alan Stuart and Private Jack Christie – were nonetheless stoic as they gathered at the town’s Presbyterian Church to “pay a last tribute to [the trio’s] honoured memory”.

Few details are available about the circumstances leading to Private Christie’s passing.

What is known is that the 35-year-old labourer, who was

single and listed his mother, Jane Christie, as his next of kin on his papers, enlisted in Wellington on January 7, 1916.

He travelled to Sydney as part of the 64th Battalion and was sent overseas aboard the HMAT A40 Ceramic on April 14, 1614.

Private Christie was seriously wounded during a hard-fought battle at Flanders on October 16, 1917, and died at the 17th Casualty Clearing Station on the same date.

His remains were interred at Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery in Belgium.

The local Wellington press initially reported he had been wounded but his death was publicly confirmed with the announcement of the memorial service.

John “Jack” Christie

“Private Christie was seriously wounded in battle and died the same day”

[ 11 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

While many families were left reeling from the loss of relatives and friends caught

up in World War I, few bore a burden as heavy as Haberfield’s Gertrude Clark Maxted, who lost the father of her children and two of her brothers in less than three years.

The first to be killed was her

husband, the 32-year-old Reverend Spencer Edward Maxted, who died in the Battle of Fromelles on April 25, 1916.

Tragically, the Anglican minister, who served as a stretcher-bearer, never had the opportunity to meet his twin daughters, Gertrude and Alice.

The next to perish was Lieutenant William Frederick

Clark, who died in the Somme on April 17, 1918, at the age of 26.

It is unclear whether news of his brother’s passing had reached Gunner Clark before he, too, was killed in battle.

The former Sydney Grammar School student, who went on to become a motor mechanic, had enlisted in Dubbo as soon as he reached adulthood on March

6, 1917 – almost two years after his brother-in-law was fatally wounded.

Gunner Clark left Sydney, bound for France, on November 5, 1917, but few details of his tenure overseas are publicly available.

He was serving in the 2nd Field Artillery Brigade when he died and has no known grave.

Roy Marcus Clark

The Great War exacted a shocking toll on Dubbo’s large Churchland family, which lost two of its young

men within six months, and then suffered a further blow in 1924 when its patriarch, 63-year-old John Churchland, was discovered dead by the side of the road.

Albert Churchland was the first of the brothers to join up to the war effort, enlisting in September 1915 at the age of 19.

His younger brother William was just 18 when he, too, enrolled with his parents’ consent on January 1, 1916.

After their deaths in April 1918 and October 1917 respectively, Albert and William were widely remembered as well-liked and courageous young men who had put the needs of the nation before their own.

Albert had returned to the frontline in France, despite still

suffering the effects of being wounded and gassed, after it became apparent that “the want of men was so great and reinforcements were not coming forward”.

William, meanwhile, sustained horrific leg injuries during a battle in Belgium but remained conscious long enough to joke with his mates that he had “got a mighty one”, and to predict that he was unlikely to survive it.

Medical staff worked to save him but he died just hours later.

Tributes published in newspapers back home extended condolences to the family in its “double bereavement”, but six years later, the Churchlands were once again in mourning after John Churchland, who had suffered health problems for years, succumbed to a heart attack while he was out on an errand about 8km from Dubbo.

Albert Vincent Churchland & William John “Jack” Churchland

[ 12 ]

The farewell, held at Dubbo’s Obley Hall, would later be recalled as “a very pleasant

night indeed”, punctuated by dancing, speeches and a new “wristlet” watch, which was presented to the guest of honour, the recently-enlisted Leslie Cooper.

Lance Corporal Cooper set sail for the frontline on May 13, 1916, and his letters home initially conveyed an air of excitement about the new adventure.

“The boys and myself are in the best of health, and…had a very enjoyable trip over here to England,” he wrote on July 16, 1916.

He went on to observe that his accommodation to date had been “good”, and although he had previously

been quarantined with the measles, he was looking forward to an upcoming transfer to London.

Eleven months later, the grim reality of wartime England had set in. Lance Corporal Cooper had started to miss home and he was less upbeat when he wrote home in July 1917.

His final letter, sent between four and eight weeks later, suggested that his worst fears had been realised. “I have just come out of the trenches and it is just hell on earth. Some of my pals went out with me and they will never see Australia again,” he wrote.

Lance Corporal Cooper had virtually written his own eulogy. On October 12, 1917, the 20-year-old one-time farm labourer was among a group of four men who were sheltering from battle in Ypres, Belgium, when they were hit by a German shell. No trace of the victims was ever found.

Leslie “Les” Cooper

“The trenches are just hell on earth”

The list of eight newly minted army recruits in the Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate

included three with the surname “Cole” – who the paper proudly announced were brothers.

“Let us raise a cheer for the brave lads, and for the other brother at the front and the other brothers who would go but they are underage,” it trumpeted on July 6, 1915.

In total, four members of the Cole fraternity would eventually

be numbered among Australia’s World War I ranks: Lance Corporal John Alexander Cole, Private Thomas Junior Cole, Private Peter George Cole and Private William Henry Cole.

For the extended family back in Dubbo, the anxious wait for news of the men’s fate was unbearable.

Their vigil ended under the most tragic circumstances one year and ten days later, when 30-year-old William (pictured) was killed in action in France.

Three months later, John suffered the same fate, dying of his wounds in Belgium aged 22.

Thomas, meanwhile, returned to Australia on February 13, 1917, but not even the loss of two brothers and the harrowing experiences of a third were enough to dissuade Peter, by then a 30-year-old farmer, from signing up on October 31, 1917.

He, too, served overseas before returning to Australia, where he was subsequently discharged.

William Henry Cole & John Alexander Cole

[ 13 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

Joe Cox would have had his own reasons for noting that his father was dead on his

enlistment papers, but it is not immediately clear what they were.

In fact, 62-year-old Frank Cox was very much alive on September 27, 1916, but Joe, the fourth of his 13 children, nonetheless nominated his mother Martha Cox as his next of kin.

The 27-year-old farm labourer was sent initially to Melbourne and then on to England, where he arrived in January 1917.

Private Cox was transferred to France but was injured three months after that. In two letters to his mother, dated July 1 and July 9, he wrote that he had undergone surgery to have shrapnel removed from his thigh.

Private Cox returned to France on July 31, 1917, but only survived for another six weeks. After his passing, his family received a letter from Lieutenant A E Tayles, who remembered Private Cox as “always cheerful”.

“Your boy was one of the best I have ever had in my platoon and was a soldier through and through. He did excellent work all the time we were in the line and was held in the highest esteem by the rest of the lads,” Lieutenant Tayles wrote.

Joseph Christopher “Joe” Cox

The final letter arrived at his brother’s NSW home almost three weeks to the day after Sapper Frank

Cooper lost his life. At the time of writing, the

26-year-old motor mechanic was still considered a new recruit in Australian army ranks and his military career was similarly short-lived.

He died just six months and one day after he enlisted in

Dubbo on January 10, 1916. Sapper Cooper was nonetheless said to have been in good spirits when he penned the missive.

In it, he gave details of his daily driving duties, which saw him conveying ammunition to the frontline, amid heavy shelling by enemy troops.

“The shells went up in the air to a terrible height and when they burst a small puff of smoke could be seen,” read

a report paraphrasing Sapper Cooper’s letter.

He also provided “a graphic description of the bombarding by airplanes of the enemy” but was scathing of the German soldiers and their marksmanship.

Sapper Cooper concluded by mentioning in passing that, although his health was good, he had developed a slight cold.

With agonising hindsight, family realised it was a precursor

to the bronchitis that claimed his life in Etaples, France. His body was interred at the British cemetery.

Sapper Cooper was honoured with several posthumous mentions at local gatherings in his hometown, remembered as a “scholar of the Methodist Sunday School” and a courageous young man who had “died a hero’s death in defence of the Empire”.

Francis Samuel Albert Cooper

[ 14 ]

There is no doubt his family knew about and grieved his passing but, for reasons known only to themselves,

the siblings of Private Patrick Currie never came forward to collect his war medals and it appears the proceeds of his will were never distributed.

The stoutly-built labourer, who was single, was born in Parramatta and enrolled in the army in Toowoomba but

nominated his sister, Dubbo’s Mary Martin, as his next of kin on his enlistment papers.

He set sail for Egypt on August 6, 1916, but was hospitalised with influenza two months later.

He recovered and was then sent to the Western Front, where he served largely without incident until his death in battle in Hebuterne, France, on April 6, 1918.

After her brother’s passing, a

letter written by Mary Martin was forwarded to Australian military officials in Melbourne, explaining that she had moved to the small village of Mogriguy, 30km north of Dubbo and requesting the return of Private Currie’s personal effects.

She got a response stating that none of his possessions had been received, but she later wrote again to advise she had been sent a parcel containing his pocket

book, prayer book, photographs and postcards. In April 1923, she signed for three photographs of his headstone.

No trace of her or another sibling – a brother aged in his 40s who was said to live in Dubbo – was ever found, despite notices urging them to come forward to finalise Private Currie’s affairs.

His remains were interred at the British Cemetery in Hebeterne, France.

Patrick Currie

[ 15 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

Known simply as “Claude Dowling” throughout his military career, the 21-year-old draper

enlisted in Dubbo just three months after the outbreak of hostilities.

But Private Dowling, who would eventually earn the rank of Lance Sergeant, was in for a tough introduction to army life.

Over the course of the first six months, he endured a bout of severe diarrhoea that saw him hospitalised, a case of

mumps (just a fortnight later) and a head injury – all before he reached the shores of France.

From there though, he proved himself an adept and very accomplished soldier. While serving in Pozieres, France, on July 25, 1916, Private Dowling distinguished himself in the field of battle, acting to save others at great risk to himself.

He was subsequently awarded a Military Medal for his actions that day and his citation dated September 9, 1916, reads in part:

“Private Dowling attended to the wounded under heavy sniping and artillery fire (although not a stretcher bearer) at a time when stretcher bearers were not available. His general work throughout the action as a runner was of a very high order”.

He was promoted thereafter, but was among those killed in action in France during a battle

on April 9, 1917. After Lance Sergeant Dowling’s death, his father Martin wrote to Australian authorities, informing them he had received a Military Medal thought to belong to Lance Sergeant Dowling, but inscribed with the name “C. Clutterbuck”.

It is unclear whether his son’s medal was ever returned to him.

Vivian Claude Cecil Dowling

Born in Nyngan in 1896, Private Patrick Dempsey was the last of James and Mary Dempsey’s four

surviving children (their twin daughters, Marie and Theresa, died at birth in 1900).

The 21-year-old was unusually tall for the era, standing 5’10”, and was said to have been of slight build. He listed his occupation as “carrier” on his military papers. Private

Dempsey, who was living in St George, Queensland at the time, was among the men who set sail for England on January 24, 1917.

By all accounts, his military career was short-lived. While he was still aboard the HMAT A33 “Ayrshire”, he spent 11 days being treated for disease.

On July 27, 1917, he had completed his training and was transferred to Belgium, where he served as part of the 15th Battalion. He was seriously wounded less than a month later, receiving a gunshot wound to the stomach on October 15, 1917.

Private Dempsey was rushed to the 3rd Casualty Clearing Station but died the following day.

His remains were interred at Nine Elms British Cemetery in Flanders, Belgium and his two sisters went on to become the beneficiaries of his estate.

Patrick Dempsey

“He attended the wounded under heavy sniping and artillery fire”

“A month later, he was shot”

australian troops fighting on the Western Front.

[ 16 ]

It was an experience that was destined to make a lasting impression on a fresh-faced teenager, and as Gunner Tim

Doyle wrote to his mother in Dubbo, the view from the top of Egypt’s famous pyramids made him feel as though he was standing in the sky.

The one-time labourer’s initial impressions of military life were overwhelmingly positive. In December 1915, he and his fellow soldiers in Alexandria had each received a Christmas present from Australia – billy-cans filled with chocolate, cigarettes,

tobacco, handkerchiefs and sweets – and he had the strong impression his compatriots were gaining the ascendancy over the Turks on the frontline.

His parting message – that he was just as happy in Egypt as he had been at home – must have temporarily allayed his mother’s concerns.

That was in March 1916. By August, Gunner Doyle had been transferred to France, where he said he expected to be “in the thick of the fighting before long”.

The prediction proved accurate. His last missive to his

mother, dated September 8, 1916, was later described as “an elaborate production”.

“One side was taken up with a scene worked in silk upon a white gossamer fabric, with the words ‘Greetings from the trenches’ crewelled in scarlet characters,” a Dubbo newspaper reported.

On the back, Gunner Doyle had observed he was “in the best of health”. Five days later, he was dead, after being wounded during a battle in France. His remains were interred at the Estaires Communal Cemetery and Extension. He was just 19.

He was a bright boy who grew into a keen road cyclist before following his father’s example

and training as a local butcher. Private Harry Edwards

might have been destined for greater things until World War I intervened, and just five months and three weeks after he enlisted, the 26-year-old had sacrificed his life for his country.

Prior to that, Private Edwards had married, although his military record lists him as single and one of his fellow soldiers (a longtime friend) would later recall that the relationship had not lasted. Private Edwards and

his wife, nominated as “Miss Holland”, had been living apart before he travelled overseas.

His death was violent but mercifully swift. Private Edwards was among the members of the 18th Battalion attacking the Turkish line at Gallipoli on August 22, 1915.

By all accounts, resistance was fierce and Private Edwards was shot dead seconds after leaving his trench. All around him, his fellow soldiers were forced to retreat after finding themselves caught in a volley of gunfire.

“Informant was hit just after [Private Edwards] and while crawling back to our lines spoke to Edwards and ascertained he was dead,” read one of several reports on the soldier’s passing.

His remains were never recovered. One of his platoon members said he would have been “buried the Gurkhas [Nepalese soldiers who formed part of the British Army]”.

Henry “Harry” Edwards

Timothy Doyle

“Edwards was shot seconds after leaving his trench”

[ 17 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

Just three years after arriving in Australia from his native Wales, 27-year-old Private Ellis enlisted to serve for the

country he had come to love. A profile printed in a local

newspaper observed that the “popular” and “sturdy” Ellis, who was a porter at the Railway Goods Shed in Dubbo, had been “so eager to do his bit he consented to

undergo an operation” after being informed it would be necessary to gain entry to the army.

It would prove an ominous sign of things to come. Over the next three years, Private Ellis would travel to and from France after being shot in the right shoulder (in November 1916) and the leg and chest (in May 1917).

In a letter penned in June

1917, he wrote of “the hell of [the French village of] Bullecourt”, which he described as “more than an artist can paint”.

“Many of our brave and good-hearted boys were slaughtered there, and it was heartbreaking to pass up and down the trenches, and see them lying dead in such a hellish place,” he said.

“I got knocked in the leg and

chest, but it did not do much damage, as the wounds were only flesh ones. Of course, I was operated on to take out the pieces of shell.”

Private Ellis again returned to France and on April 17, 1918, where he was wounded for the final time. A day after being shot in the thigh, Private Ellis developed gangrene and died.

Long before Mick England was released from his storeman duties, allowing him to enlist in the

Australian war effort, the 23-year-old’s “ingenuity” was making headlines in Dubbo.

A story printed on page four of the Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate in November 1915 described how he had “fixed up a huge pair of fans” at the Berrima Butter Company, using galvanised iron and a belt from the driving shaft of a neighbouring engine. “The company now has one of the coolest store rooms in the state,” it noted triumphantly.

Private England was finally given the chance to enlist in August 1916, and did so at the first opportunity.

He was sent to Weymouth, England in November 1916 and sent several postcards home, observing the nine-and-a-half week trip had got “rather monotonous towards the end”.

From there, Private England was sent onto France but was killed in action on May 3, 1917. But accounts of his death varied and one soldier even claimed that Private England was among a group of 40 soldiers who were captured by German forces.

A tribute published in the local paper observed “there was no more popular fellow in Dubbo than ‘Mick’ England”.

George Ellis

Walter James “Mick” England

[ 18 ]

The letter to one of his sisters, dated May 1916, kept up a steady banter about the local men

fighting alongside him, and observed that “France is a pretty country but there is no place in the world like old Dubbo”.

Private Farragher, who had enlisted 12 months prior to writing the missive, also said he was not sorry to have left Egypt, where he

had been stationed, despite being well aware of the dangers ahead.

“It won’t be long before we’re in the firing line. We can hear the big guns from where we are,” he said, signing off with a promise to send his “colours”.

“They stand for death or glory. Which will it be?” he wrote.

Exactly one year later, Maggie Farragher received her answer. Private Farragher, who had also

served in Turkey, had fought hard to recover after being shot in the head during a battle in Bullecourt, France, but his injuries proved insurmountable.

According to his military file, he remained conscious in the period immediately following his wounding and was able to speak to the stretcher-bearers who rushed him to army hospital for treatment.

He lapsed into a coma soon after but survived for the next 20 days as medical personnel worked to save his life.

The one-time farmer was aged just 26 when he died at 9.30pm on May 30, 1917.

Private Farragher left behind his parents and numerous siblings, including a twin sister, Ellen Mary, who was born the day after her brother and died in 1973.

Alfred William “Alf” Farragher

“It won’t be long. We can hear the big guns from here”

[ 19 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

The young man was laid to rest in Dubbo Cemetery, finally at peace after a long struggle with

illness. For those gathered at his graveside, there was a dreadful sense of déjà vu – just 13 months before, they had stood at a neighbouring plot as the body of his older brother was lowered into the ground.

To say Joseph and Elizabeth Field had suffered during that time would be a terrible understatement. All three of their sons had enlisted in World War I: Percy, who served with

New Zealand forces, and his younger brothers, Aubrey and Harold, who enrolled in, and fought for Australia.

The trio signed up individually over the course of a two-year period and all kept in close contact with their family in Dubbo, regularly sending letters and postcards documenting their impressions and experiences.

A typical missive from Sergeant Percy Field, sent in June 1916, reported that he was recovering well after being shot in the head in France. He also

thought the Germans were about to make their last stand and speculated that a ceasefire seemed imminent.

All three of the brothers would ultimately return from the war: Percy to New Zealand and Aubrey and Harold to Australia. But each came back plagued by numerous injuries from which they were never to fully recover.

Corporal Aubrey Field was the first to succumb. The 29-year-old clerk, who had never married, died on Christmas Day, 1918. A report published

in a local Dubbo newspaper described the community as “stunned and horror-stricken” by the loss.

On January 20, 1920, Private Harry Field also passed away, shortly after his 30th birthday. He left behind a wife and five-year-old son in addition to his parents and surviving brother, who was still said to be “in a very poor state of health”.

“The family has the deepest sympathy of every person in the Commonwealth,” read a story published in a local Dubbo newspaper.

Aubrey Leslie Field & Harold Roy Stanley Field

It was said to have been “a very pleasant evening” – a farewell enjoyed both by Dubbo’s Hibernian Catholic

Australasian Benefit Society and its past president, Jack Fitzpatrick, who had enlisted in World War I and was bound for France.

The guest of honour was presented with a prayer book – “the usual gift at the Society to members going to the frontline” – and Chairman Jack White wished him “an honourable and glorious career as a soldier”, adding that he was already regarded in the highest-possible terms.

Private Fitzpatrick was also assured “he could rest assured that, upon his return, the warmth of his welcome home would be equally as warm as his send-off”.

Tragically, while he was remembered as a hero in Dubbo, the 35-year-old farmer, who never married, would not survive to enjoy his homecoming.

He left Australia bound for the Western Front on August 22, 1916, although very few details of his subsequent military service are publicly available.

What is known is that he died of wounds sustained during a battle in France.

He has no known grave but his name appears alongside 10,884 others at the Australian National Memorial in the French commune of Villiers-Bretonneux.

John Bede “Jack” Fitzpatrick

“He was regarded

in the highest terms”

[ 20 ]

By the time he left Dubbo, he was already the father of two young boys, but 27-year-old storeman

George Gardiner did not take easily to military life. Described as “a wild and irresponsible Private”, the tall redhead left Australia bound for England on June 9,1916.

Over the course of the next five months, he underwent intensive training and much to the delight of his superior officers, proved himself a particularly

quick study. He was promoted to the rank of Lance Corporal and transferred to France in November, where he continued to distinguish himself with his efforts in the field. Several other promotions followed until he eventually attained the rank of Sergeant.

A military text, titled The 43rd Battalion History, chronicled Sergeant Gardiner’s career and observed that while in France, “he went through all the hard-ships and dangers of the winter of 1916-17, a winter which will

always stand out for its severity and vile weather”.

He emerged tougher than ever and on June 4, 1917, embarked on the course of action that would eventually net him a Distinguished Conduct Medal.

“[Sergeant Gardiner] took command of a raiding party when the officer was killed, and led them through intense rifle and machine gun fire until compelled to take shelter in shell holes,” his citation read.

“He remained for some time

attending to the wounded, later working his way back to the front line, and personally conducting stretcher parties to bring in the dead and the wounded men. By his courage and resourcefulness he set a splendid example.”

Just three-and-a-half weeks later, Sergeant Gardiner was killed in action while digging in a trench in Messines, Belgium. His widow, Theresa, received a fortnightly military pension of £4-7-3 ($9.42) for herself and the couple’s two sons, Bob and Jack.

George Arthur Craig Gardiner

Daniel Peter Arrow

When English convict William Arrow arrived in the Bathurst area

in 1821, he could not have foreseen the mixed fortunes that would befall his many descendants. Condemned to Australia to serve out a seven-year sentence, he eventually met and married Sarah Burton, and the couple went on to have 15 children.

Daniel Peter Arrow was among his grandchildren. The 35-year-old labourer was still a bachelor when he decided to enlist in World War I on October 14, 1916. Like many of his contemporaries, he was eventually dispatched to the frontline in France, but his two-year military career was punctuated by a bout of illness and then a serious gunshot wound to his left thigh, which he sustained in October 1917.

On May 14, 1918, just one month shy of his 37th birthday, Private Arrow was killed during a night raid at Villiers-Bretonneux.

A witness would later recall that his fellow soldier’s death was instantaneous: “Arrow volunteered to go as one of a party to attack a strong post. It was too strong. The night was rather light and Fritz played on them with a machine gun. Four were killed, of whom Arrow was one, and four were wounded.”

[ 21 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

Long before he enlisted in World War I, “Did” Green boasted a pronounced daredevil streak –

although it’s fair to say his stunts achieved mixed results.

In June 1912, the Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate carried details of a “painful accident” sustained by then-18-year-old labourer as he

attempted to prove his prowess with a stockwhip.

“It appears that ‘Did’ was attempting to emulate the feats of ‘The Stockwhip King’, when the lash of the whip clicked his face, cutting a nasty gash in his chin,” the newspaper reported.

“Blood flowed freely from the wound, but no serious effects

are expected to follow from the mishap.”

He had, in fact, made a full recovery by February 26, 1916, when he enlisted to serve Australia in the Great War.

There are few details publicly available about his subsequent military service but records reveal that Private Green eventually made his way to

France, where he died in battle on April 9, 1917. Private Green was 23 years old.

His parents, Thomas and Rebecca, had moved from Dubbo to Sydney by the time of news of their son’s death had reached Australia, but they nonetheless observed the anniversary of his passing by placing notices in the Advocate every year.

Clarence Clifton “Clarrie” “Did” Green

An unorthodox upbringing and lack of direction in his teens had left Ivan Grant

with nowhere to live and no employment prospects. And so it was that the then-17-year-old, whose father had deserted his mother and ten siblings, found a home in the Australian army.

He enlisted under the name of an older brother and bumped his age to 21 on his military papers before heading for the Western Front.

Private Grant, whose grand-mother was a full-blooded Aboriginal, was the second in his family to sign up to the war – his brother Cedric Hordon Grant was serving overseas when he left Australia in September 1916.

Five months later Private Grant was stationed in France when Cedric began the journey back to Australia. His return to Sydney on April 14, 1916, should have been a time of celebration for his mother, but jubilation quickly turned to grief when she received word Ivan had died.

As the local paper reported, “[Cedric] arrived … wounded from the front, having lost an eye. The poor mother was naturally much distressed over her wounded son, but the news of the death of her other lad overwhelmed her.”

Private Ivan Grant had been killed along with five others by a shell in Bullecourt, France. They were buried where they fell. The grave was unmarked and its whereabouts are unknown.

Ivan Francis Grant served as John henry Grant

[ 22 ]

As with many of his fellow soldiers, eyewitness accounts of Private Robert

Green’s death varied but there seems little doubt the 28-year-old labourer’s passing was quick.

According to one account, Private Green was among a group of men who had dug in at Passchendaele prior to a bout of heavy shelling.

Inevitably, one of the enemy shells reached its intended target, killing a number of Australian troops in the process.

Private Green, mortally wounded, was said to have called out to his fellow soldiers, “I’m done, lads”.

He was said to have died shortly after.

Another witness to Private Green’s death, named as Private Smith, had himself been badly wounded in the same attack.

He confirmed that Private Green had lived for just a couple of minutes after the attack, before himself succumbing to his injuries.

Private Green was killed on October 17, 1917, some 18 months after enlisting in the war in his native Dubbo.

It was said that he was buried where he fell, although the grave was not marked and could not be located later.

All the possessions he had on him were retrieved and sent to relatives back in Dubbo.

Private Green’s name appears on the Ypres (Menin Gate) Memorial in Belgium.

The first Dubbo man killed in action in World War I was a married father of four young children whose

death underscored the brutal reality of life on the frontline.

At home, a series of fundraisers were planned to assist his grieving family and a lengthy biography detailing his many achievements appeared in the local newspaper, which also hailed his ascent up the military ranks (within six months, he had been promoted from Private to Corporal).

There is no doubt that between his work as carrier for a mixed business store, and his involvement in the Dubbo Motor and Cycle Club, Corporal Harding had been something of a community leader.

He was not the first man in the area to sign up to the war effort

but he had nonetheless enlisted soon after war was declared, signing his papers on September 18, 1914.

By the time he left Australia on December 22, he had already earned an initial promotion to Lance Corporal.

He was sent straight on to Turkey and spent the day of the first Gallipoli landing in a boat off Gada Temple, tending to severely wounded diggers, many of who had sustained horrific, life-threatening injuries. By the time he went ashore at midnight, the full extent of the carnage was just becoming evident.

By April 27, he had been sent to Quinn’s Post in the Anzac sector of Gallipoli, where he and his unit were separated from the enemy by less than 50 feet. Communications were almost

completely cut and he and his fellow soldiers were met with a volley of gunfire every time they attempted to advance.

Like so many others, Corporal Harding did not survive the day. He was shot dead by an enemy sniper and given a quick burial at the foot of Quinn’s Post. (His grave was subsequently lost.)

Back in Dubbo, his family was told, erroneously, that he had not lived past April 25. He never reached his 29th birthday, which he had been due to celebrate the following month.

His widow, Eva, was subsequently awarded a military pension, although the amount was increased by 50 per cent after she wrote to authorities to point out that her husband’s rank was Corporal, not Private, when he died.

James Arthur Harding

Robert Walter Green

“Mortally wounded, he called out: ‘I’m done, lads’”

[ 23 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

Just four days after Australian military authorities called for volunteers, Dubbo shop hand Robert Holl’s hand shot up.

The 20-year-old, who had trained with the cadets as a youngster, was accepted into the ranks immediately and left Australia bound for Egypt just two months later.

By July 26, 1915, he had been granted a furlough, which he used to explore the city of Alexandria.

During this time he also contracted a bout of gonorrhoea and ultimately forced to return to Australia, where he recovered

in Victoria’s Langwarrin Army Internment Camp.

He was given a clean bill of health on October 22 and sent to Broadmeadow Camp in NSW but when he did not turn up as expected two days later, a warrant was issued for his arrest.

Private Holl officially reported back for duty on March 10, 1916, and returned to the Middle East on May 3.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble. In training camp, he was sanctioned for being drunk at a sentry post. Regardless he was later elevated him to

Acting Corporal but just 18 days later he was stripped of the new rank after he once again went absent without leave for a week.

Private Holl’s disciplinary infractions continued as he accumulated what would come to be an 87-page service record.

His death, on November 6, 1916, occurred in atrocious weather conditions at Flers, near the northern edge of the Somme.

Witnesses would later recall that he was hit in the head by a splintered piece of shrapnel after a shell landed and exploded near him. He was killed instantly.

Robert Randolph Holl

John Bathurst “Jack” Ison

At 18 years and six months old, labourer Jack Ison was technically underage

when he presented himself to military authorities and should have been carrying a permission letter from his parents before he was allowed to enlist. But it seems unlikely that he bothered to get anything signed, as his military record contains no evidence he did.

He was nonetheless accepted into the ranks of the Australian army and over time, would prove himself an adept and adaptable soldier who was confident in battle and good-humoured during his down time.

He wrote numerous letters recounting his experiences in Egypt, Turkey, England and France, where he celebrated his next three birthdays.

After completing his initial training in the Middle East, he arrived in Gallipoli on April 30, 1915, and formed part of the Australian attack at Lone Pine, where he is said to have been instrumental in taking several Turkish soldiers prisoner. He suffered a bout of shellshock in the process and, upon recovery, was sent across to Pozieres, France, where he was again wounded – this time suffering nasal damage.

As soon as his condition allowed, he was back on the

front and took part in some of the heaviest fighting in Bullecourt. His military superiors, noting his skill, subsequently sent him to England for further training.

Throughout this period, Corporal Ison’s experiences made for fascinating reading. In a letter to his sister Violet, dated May 21, 1916, he wrote: “These bosches are hard nuts. On … part of our line they put

up [a sign that said], ‘Advance, Australia, if you can.’

“Our fellows put out an imitation German sausage and iron cross, with the following inscription: ‘Advance and capture the sausage and gain the iron cross.’

“Needless to say, he who touched that sausage would be blown to smithereens. This time last year I thought the war

would be a thing of the past by now. We had just given the Turks a real good licking, and there have been some talk of us meeting the Turks over this side, but I think not.”

Corporal Ison was killed five days after the fall of Passchen-daele, on November 10, 1917, after an enemy shell fell on his post. He died instantly and his remains were never recovered.

[ 24 ]

Edward Kearney Senior was shouldering a heavy burden long before his eldest child and namesake

decided to enlist to fight for Australia during World War I.

All three of Mr Kearney’s wives had died shortly after the birth of a baby, rendering him a single father of seven children in total.

Edward Kearney Junior was a 23-year-old labourer working in Dubbo when he answered the call to arms on February 15, 1916. He eventually left Sydney in June 1916 and arrived in England two months later.

Private Kearney initially joined the 14th Training Battalion but was later transferred to Etaples, France,

where he was accepted into the 55th Battalion.

He was not destined to survive for long. On February 8, 1916 – six days shy of the anniversary of his enlistment – he was rushed to the 45th Casualty Clearing Station to receive treatment for a number of wounds. He could not be saved and died later the same

day. His body was interred at the Dernancourt Communal Cemetery Extension in France.

Back in Dubbo his father, who had already endured so much suffering, was once again forced into mourning following the loss of a loved one. He was eventually sent his son’s personal effects: an identification disc, a pipe, a letter and two religious books.

Edward David Kearney

“All three of his father’s wives had died shortly after the birth of a baby”

australians fire artillery on the Western Front.Picture: australian War memorial

[ 25 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

By the late 1890s, Swiss immigrant Emile Henri Humble Lang had every reason to feel positive

about the future in his adopted homeland. The auctioneer and produce manager, who was naturalised in Lismore in 1893, had married two years prior to that and he and his wife Margaret would go on to have 12 children.

And then World War I began, and Emile Lang’s life fell apart. His first four sons – Archibald Emile, John Joseph Jacob, Donald Felix and Robert Samuel – would all go on to serve the nation overseas but

only three were destined to return alive.

Private Joe Lang was one of the unlucky ones. He enlisted in February 1915 at the age of 19 and was sent to England and then onto Gallipoli, where he contracted enteric fever (a potentially fatal bacterial disease also known as “typhoid fever”).

He was subsequently sent to Egypt for treatment but, when his condition worsened, he was invalided back to Sydney, where

he spent time in a military hospital.

Private Lang eventually recovered and, after a short period of leave that saw him return briefly to Dubbo for a visit, he again left Australia bound for England.

In January 1917, he was transferred across to France where he returned to his battalion. He was killed in action on April 15, 1917, but his body was never recovered for an official burial.

By the time word of his passing reached Dubbo, his family was already mourning the loss of 23-year-old Archibald Lang, who had died during a battle just six weeks earlier. On March 28, 1918, 19-year-old Robert Samuel Lang became the third of his brothers to succumb to injuries sustained in the war.

In Dubbo, their bereaved father fared no better. In March 1919, he suffered the ignominy of having his bankruptcy details published in the local news-paper. A period of ill health followed and he died in Sydney just three months later.

John Joseph Jacob “Joe” Lang

The funeral cortege was one of the largest ever seen in Dubbo, “testifying to the

respect and esteem with which the deceased and his bereaved family were held by its citizens”. Six soldiers acted as pallbearers for the departed man, a bugler played “The Last Post” at his graveside and a volley of shots was fired over his final resting place.

By 1916, Dubbo residents had long become accustomed to farewelling young locals lost to the war effort, but even in that climate, the death of 28-year-old Private Knight had come as a particular shock – especially given he had not lived to see a day of active combat.

The popular and well-known public school teacher had successfully enlisted in the Australian army on September 21, 1915, after twice being rejected on the basis of his height and chest size (he stood just 5’2’’ and had a chest expansion of 84-86cm).

He was transferred to

Sydney to commence military training and on April 7, 1916, was among a group of soldiers sent to Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown to gain experience dressing head wounds.

According to witnesses, Private Knight collapsed while the demonstration was in progress and fractured his skull when his head hit the ground. He lapsed into a coma and never regained consciousness, dying on April 11.

An account of his death, printed in a local Dubbo newspaper just days after it occurred, revealed that Private Knight had shown no prior symptoms and had been home the week before to visit his family whilst on final leave.

He was not eligible for any military medals but his father James subsequently received a memorial plaque and scroll in recognition of his son’s contribution to the war effort.

Norman Dunstan

Knight

[ 26 ]

Lou Lasserre was born in Dubbo circa 1882 but extraordinarily the event was not officially

registered until 2005 – some 123 years later.

His father Louis died shortly after Etienne’s birth and his mother Mary, left with several small children to care for, remarried the next year to Jeremiah Minogue.

Private Lasserre made several attempts to enlist in the Australian army and when he was finally accepted on August 7, 1915, the 32-year-old fettler was held up in his native Wongarbon as an example for other single men to follow.

“Wongarbon possesses at least 20 young soldiers, if they could only be taught to realise the position in which we stand,” read an editorial in the local newspaper.

“Come on, boys, buck in and

get off with Lou … in Wellington married men are enlisting. Is this the correct thing? Ask yourselves, boys!”

Sadly, Private Lasserre’s fate was emulated by many but envied by none.

Like so many of his fellow soldiers, his time overseas was punctuated by bouts of serious illness (he was hospitalised with dysentery, gastroenteritis and at least one other stomach infection) and six months after he was sent to the Western Front, he was killed in action in Passchendaele, Belgium.

His grave was unmarked and his whereabouts are unknown.

His name appears on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres, Belgium.

After her son’s death, Private Lasserre’s mother, who was listed as his next of kin, was granted a military pension of £2 per fortnight.

On his birth certificate he was Randal Ruban Larcombe, his father William signed army

enlistment papers permitting Randal Reuben Larcombe to serve, and a letter confirming the spelling of his name, also signed by his father, saw him listed as Randell Reuben Larcombe.

Whatever his true moniker – or more accurately perhaps, his father’s linguistic shortcomings – there’s no question Sergeant R R Larcombe lived and died for his country.

The “brave and fearless soldier” was just 19 and the first of three brothers to enlist in World War I. The labourer, who was described as tall and lanky, only wrote to his family sporadically while he was overseas but in one such letter, dated November 3, 1916, he said that he was in a military hospital in England, recovering from numerous

injuries sustained during a battle in Pozieres, France.

His harrowing descriptions of life on the frontline spoke of huge numbers of men who had been shot and killed in No Man’s Land and the stretcher-bearers’ desperate attempts to retrieve them for proper burial.

Sergeant Larcombe also enclosed the piece of a metal bomb that had been removed from his eye, asking his father to hold it in safekeeping until his return.

Tragically, that day never came. After recovering from his injuries he returned to France but on October 9, 1917, he was reported missing in action in Belgium and later confirmed killed in action. His body was never recovered.

Sergeant Larcombe was just 21 when he died. His brothers, Private Edward Larcombe and Private William George Larcombe, returned to Australia in 1918 and 1919 respectively.

Etienne Louis “Lou” Lasserre

Randell Reuben “Reuben” Larcombe

[ 27 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

He was a leader in life, a warrior in battle and a hero in death. Norman Beresford

Lovett was just 14 when he made the pages of the local newspaper after trying for nearly two hours to save the life of a local teenager who drowned in area then known as Murrum bidgeree, near Dubbo.

His efforts were unsuccessful but it was one of the few times Norman Lovett would fail at anything. A keen scholar, avid sportsman, and talented gardener, the young man was reportedly destined for great things. When Australia joined the war in 1914, he was among the first to volunteer his services, leaving Australian shores on October 19 – the date of his 23rd birthday.

He completed training in Egypt before being transferred to Gallipoli, where he saw active service. On May 28 1916, he was shot in the leg during a battle but by mid-July, he had been promoted to Lieutenant.

In May 1917, he was promoted to Captain, having again been recognised a second time with “a bar to the Military Cross for conspicuous bravery”.

He was killed in action on April 9, 1918, during a battle at Villiers-Bretonneux.

Captain Lovett was posthumously recognised with the Croix de Guerre by Belgian authorities. He was 27 years old.

Private Jimmy Lihou left school at the age of 15 to help his support his parents and six younger siblings by

trapping and catching rabbits in his native Dubbo.

Over the next few years he also worked as a roustabout on local sheep stations and a general farmhand.

His experience was a world away from the military lifestyle but when World War I broke out he nonetheless enlisted at the age of 21. Over the course of the next 21 months, Private Lihou would distinguish himself as a highly decorated soldier who emerged as one of Australia’s true war heroes.

After initially serving in Reninghelst, Belgium, Private Lihou moved to Gueudecourt, where he was wounded in battle near Stormy Trench on

February 5, 1917. He was injured again two months later during the First Battle of Bullecourt but soon returned to his duties and was promoted to Lance Corporal and later, Corporal.

In April, he was part of a battalion that successfully assaulted enemy trenches in Hebuterne, France, meeting its objective and capturing the field beyond.

He was subsequently awarded a Military Medal for his part in the attack, and on July 4, 1918, was recognised again, this time with a Distinguished Conduct Medal for leading another wave of attack in Vaire Wood, France. He was promoted to Sergeant the next month.

Tragically, his second Distinguished Conduct Medal had to be awarded posthumously as he received it for his actions

on the day he died. A machine gun began firing from behind Sergeant Lihou and his party of seven others but, instead of taking cover, the 23-year-old rushed the post, killing three enemy soldiers and taking several others prisoner.

He charged ahead and captured another crew, giving the rest of the men in his section time to enter the enemy trench. Sergeant Lihou then continued on his own, rushing a post of 20 Germans, but was fatally wounded in the attempt.

His battalion history states Sergeant Lihou’s “cheerful, careless gallantry was such that he was regarded as a certainty for a Victoria Cross had he been spared”.

He has no known grave and his name appears at the Villiers-Bretonneux Memorial, France.

James “Jimmy” Lihou

Norman Beresford

Lovett

“Lihou’s gallantry was such

that he was regarded as a certainty

for a Victoria

Cross”

[ 28 ]

Reverent James Taylor Main was just nine years old when his father William was struck and

killed by a train in his native Scotland. Some years later he migrated to Australia, where he met and married his wife Isabel before rapidly ascending the ranks of the Presbyterian Church, eventually becoming Moderator of the General Assembly of NSW, prior to his death in 1904 at the age of 51.

In what would prove a tragic rerun of history, the fourth of his six children, Ronald, was also nine when he lost his father. The Main family then moved from Dubbo to Richmond and Ronald was sent to Fort St High School before completing his education at Hawkesbury Agricultural College.

After graduating he moved to New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) to assist the locals with coconut-

growing. He returned home in May 1915 to enlist in World War I. Aged just 20, he had written permission to enlist from his mother and was sent initially to Egypt and then on to Gallipoli.

Like many of his fellow soldiers, Private Main quickly developed a range of stomach complaints, for which he received medical treatment on numerous occasions.

He was eventually sent from Turkey back to Egypt for more extensive treatment. Upon recovery, he returned to active service and was this time sent to France. (Around this time he also committed a minor disciplinary infraction after being absent without leave for seven hours.)

He arrived in Marseilles on March 18, 1916, but three months later was wounded in the right elbow and finger and was sent to England to recuperate. He was then granted a short furlough but was once again in trouble for not returning to his duties on time and forfeited eight days’ pay.

Private Main was sent back into the action in Etaples, France, in November, where he would subsequently achieve promotion. By the end of February 1917, the newly-minted Lance Corporal Main was on the road to Le Barque, as part of the advance on the Somme.

On February 27, he was among a group of four men who infiltrated a German trench.

The other three were instantly shot dead but Lance Corporal Main was able to make some ground before he, too, was felled by an enemy bullet.

He was given a hasty burial where he fell but his remains were later exhumed and reinterred at the Warlencourt British Cemetery, France. He had celebrated his 22nd birthday just a fortnight earlier.

His personal effects were sent to his mother, who also received a military pension of £2 per fortnight.

Ronald Stuart Main

Adam Matchett was widely considered something of a tennis prodigy who might have gone on to become a

household name, had World War I not intervened.

At 6’ tall, he boasted an athlete’s build and had just celebrated his 21st birthday when he decided to enlist on February 15, 1915.

He left Australia bound for Egypt on June 22, and his service record suggests he wanted to make the most of his time there: he took several furloughs, which he spent exploring the local culture.

He left the Middle East bound for Marseilles, France, on February 20, 1916, exactly a week after he turned 22.

Private Matchett spent the next nine months fighting on the frontline and by November, the winter was setting in early.

He and his fellow soldiers were routinely rubbing whale oil into their feet to keep warm, all

the while battling exhaustion at the same time. He was killed on November 8 on the Somme battlefields near Le Sars.

A letter from an eyewitness to Private Matchett’s mother Ida described the circumstances: “A couple of shells fell just behind the trench where [Private] Matchett was standing. About two seconds before they went off I jumped on a ladder to keep watch, when your son said with a big smile, ‘It’s alright, look, I’m watching’.

“No sooner were the words spoken than the shells came, a piece hitting poor Matchett just under the helmet. He just fell back, without so much as a struggle. His two pals were at his side in a moment, but a Higher Hand had rendered human aid impossible.”

Private Matchett’s remains were never recovered. In the wake of his death, Ida Matchett was awarded a military pension of £2 per fortnight.

George Adam “Adam” Matchett

[ 29 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

Dear Sir, I am quite uneasy about my son, who I understand is in hospital in Belgium…”.

The sentiments contained in the short letter echoed those of so many Australian parents throughout the war years.

Herbert George McFarlane’s controlled tone and beautiful penmanship did little to disguise his fears for the welfare

of Gunner Wilfred McDonald, which were premature in this case, but would eventually prove well-founded.

In fact, the 22-year-old was still alive when the letter was written in January 1917. Gunner McDonald, a linesman by trade, had enlisted in the army in October 1915.

He was educated in Dubbo before finding work locally. His

military career began after he was persuaded to enlist as part of a recruitment drive known as the Coo-ee March, which had passed through his native Wongarbon.

On May 3, he was with his unit occupying a position near Bullecourt, France, preparing to support and attack the Hin-denburg Line, where the allied forces were under continual

heavy German artillery fire. During a bombardment, a

store of mortar bombs was struck and exploded, killing nine men and leaving numerous others wounded or unaccounted for. Gunner McDonald was initially classified as missing but was later counted among the casualties. His body was never recovered.

Wilfred Ernest McDonald

White lillies, inverted waratahs and a family of seven left without a breadwinner. The

funeral of Bob McFarlane was an understandably sombre affair, with the 22-year-old labourer remembered in his hometown of Guerie as a “worthy son and soldier” who had “followed a divine command to answer life’s responsibilities even unto death”.

Less than three years earlier he had enlisted in the Australian army with his parents’ blessing. Private McFarlane was the eldest of six children and the only one of his four brothers who was eligible to serve in World War I.

Private McFarlane had signed up to the army on January 1, 1915, but it wasn’t until April 17, 1916, that he left Australia bound for Egypt. He was transferred to England for training but was moved to Etaples, France, shortly after.

Private McFarlane was killed in Ypres, Belgium on September 26, as the Battle of Polygon Wood raged around him. His remains were recovered and interred in Belgium’s Hooge Crater Cemetery.

Back at home, the wider Dubbo community rallied around his stricken family. His father Robert, listed as his next of kin, received a military pension of £2 a fortnight and the members of the local Progress Association dipped into their Patriotic Fund, gifting £25 to his family.

Robert Alexander Malcolm “Bob” McFarlane

[ 30 ]

Compared to his elder brother Tom, Bert Munday wasn’t a particularly good

student – far from winning awards for his academic achievements, he spent his school years preoccupied with his beloved cricket.

He would eventually get himself a job as a packer but after World War I broke out, he and Tom both travelled from Dubbo to Sydney to enlist (they would later be joined on the frontline by a younger brother, Will).

While Tom and Will wrote home on a fortnightly basis, Private Bert Munday was a

less frequent scribe and his letters hinted at homesickness and a struggle to adjust to military life. “I have not been too well this last few weeks,” he wrote in one.

“I had lung trouble and a very bad cold, but I am good again now. They won’t put anyone in the hospital here until he is dying.

“We got four days’ leave to London. [It] is a big place … but they cannot beat good old Australia. Private Munday hopes soon to be back in Dubbo again, and wishes to be remembered to all friends in the good old town.”

Tragically, Private Bert Munday would never return home. On April 30, 1917, he joined the 1st Battalion in Etaples, France, but he was killed in action at Bullecourt on May 5, almost a year to the day after he joined up.

Eyewitnesses reported seeing the 19-year-old and another man being “blown to pieces” after they were hit by a shell at around 7pm.

Bertram John Sylvester Munday

“London can’t beat good old Australia”

Jack McGinty was born in the Sydney suburb of Leichhardt and educated initially at St Aloysius

College, Milsons Point, but while he was still a child, his parents moved the family to Dubbo, where he continued his education at Dubbo Catholic College.

A bright student who also excelled at a range of activities and his achievements often made the pages of the local paper.

But when the nation became embroiled in World War I, the then-19-year-old Jack McGinty enlisted in the newly formed Royal Australian Navy and joined the carpentry crew of the training ship Cerberus.

On November 22, 1915, almost a year to the day he had enrolled, the young sailor was assessed and the verdict rendered as

“Character very good; Ability satisfactory”.

He was transferred the next day to the destroyer ship HMAS Sydney, which subsequently set sail for Bermuda, where it joined the North America and West Indies Stations for patrol duty.

There is no official information about Jack McGinty’s state of mind in the lead-up to his death, but it’s clear that on some level the young man was unravelling.

On July 4, 1916 – just one month shy of his 21st birthday – he committed suicide on the ship, which was then stationed at a naval base in Jamaica. He was buried at Up Camp Memorial No 1 in Kingston.

Jack McGinty’s father, John Joseph, and brother Francis Thomas also served in World War I. Both survived – John Joseph was

diagnosed with “senility” and medically discharged in May 1917. Curiously though, he was elected unopposed as an Alderman on Dubbo Muncipal Council just four months later.

In April 1930, he successfully sued the Dubbo Dispatch for libel after it published claims he had been embroiled in an adulterous relationship. He was subsequently awarded one farthing in damages.

His son Francis, who was discharged from the Australian army in 1919, fared worse in the post-war years. A boot salesman when he enlisted, he turned his hand to wharf labouring and then running a café in subsequent decades but saw his reputation ruined by a number of convictions for theft, for which he served at least a year’s imprisonment.

John Joseph “Jack” McGinty

[ 31 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

He left a promising career as a clerk with the Commonwealth Bank and went to war seeking

“neither adventure nor glory” but motivated by a desire to serve his country.

At the age of 20, Mac McLachlan already had some military experience and almost immediately after he enlisted in 1915, was sent to Sydney and then onto a training battalion in the

Middle East to further increase his skills. By the time he arrived on the Western Front in September 1916, he was a Sergeant, although he dropped back to the rank of Private after joining the 20th Battalion.

His tenure in Belgium was short-lived. Private McLachlan survived just long enough to write to his family back home in Dubbo and the contents of the letter, dated October 14, were

duly sent onto a newspaper in his hometown, which published a short summary in the wake of his death.

In it, “He had very little to say about his experience there, but was delighted to be doing something of real value after the long delays in the Sydney camps and in Egypt,” the newspaper reported.

Private McLachlan was one of several men killed in action on

November 13, 1916. Witnesses later described his death as instant, recalling that he and eleven others had either died or been severely maimed by the same shell.

The victims were all buried in the same grave, although attempts to relocate their remains later were unsuccessful.

Private McLachlan was remembered in Dubbo as “a lad of quiet, unassuming and very lovable disposition”.

Archie McKay was a 23-year-old railway signalman when he decided to enlist in

the Australian war effort, and conveniently for him, he was able to catch a train from Sydney’s Warwick Farm station where he was working, to Town Hall to complete his medical.

It was one of the few times in his military career where the stars seemed to align for the Parkes native, whose family moved to Dubbo after his father died and his mother remarried.

Just 10 months and four days after he enlisted in the Australian army, Private McKay was dead. His journey to the Western Front had begun in earnest on March 8, 1916, when he set sail for England, where he underwent training before being trans-ferred to France on June 19, 1916. Tragically, he survived exactly four weeks.

On July 19, he was reported as one of several men listed as missing in action following a battle in a series of captured German trenches in the French village of Fleurbaix.

Private McKay’s remains were never recovered but his name appears in the VC Corner of the Australian Cemetery Memorial in Fromelles, France.

Ivan William “Mac” McLachlan

Archibald James “Archie” McKay

[ 32 ]

They were born more than five years apart and chose different careers – the first became a sharebroker, the

second a flour miller – but Athol and Gordon Morrison felt the same responsibility to serve their country during World War I. Eventually they would both meet the same tragic fate.

Gordon, the younger of the two, had previous experience as a cadet when he left Australia bound for Egypt on December

11, 1915. He was transferred to France the following year and was promoted to Lance Corporal on October 26, 1916.

Just a fortnight later, the 24-year-old was dead.

On November 5, 1916, he was one of scores of men who climbed out of his trench in shocking conditions near Guaudecourt Wood.

Witnesses would later recall the driving rain had reduced visibility to almost nil and the

attack was disorganised, while the German response was targeted, swift and brutal.

Lance Corporal Morrison was one of at least 50 men gunned down that day.

Four months later, the Morrison family found itself facing the possibility of a second unthinkable loss after a telegram arrived informing them that Private Athol Morrison had been concussed during combat and hospitalised with shellshock.

Their repeated pleas for information yielded no response from overseas and they spent much of early 1917 fearing that he, too, had succumbed to his injuries.

Sadly it would prove a dry run for what was to come. Private Morrison, then 29, had, in fact, recovered and been returned to the frontline in France.

He survived almost no time – on May 20, 1917, he was also killed in action.

What started out as a short notice in the local newspaper advising of a

bank clerk’s World War I enlistment became a furious treatise against the young men who refused to follow suit in the region.

“Mr R. R. Morgan, a popular young fellow, with any amount of the better qualities of humanity … has enhanced his reputation by setting out with the noblest purpose in view,” the Dubbo Liberal and Macquarie Advocate gushed in praise of his decision to sign up in March 1915.

“His nation is in striking contrast to that of several young men of this town – a couple at least of whom have openly declared that they would shoot the man who tried to force them to go to the war – that they won’t fight, and they don’t care a hang if the Germans do take Australia.

“These young men are, we blush to write it, the sons of British parents, but their threats fire the brag of the cravens.”

For his part, Private Morgan lived up the accolades, serving his country with distinction and quickly ascending the

ranks of the Australian army until he became a commissioned officer.

Like many of his fellow countrymen, he served in the Middle East before he was then transferred across to the Western Front.

On May 4, 1917, Lieutenant Morgan and the members of his platoon were en route to the frontline in Bullecourt, France, when they came under heavy enemy machine gun fire.

Five men in his platoon were killed instantly in the volley of bullets, while Lieutenant Morgan sustained gunshot wounds to his right thigh and head during the onslaught.

He was rushed to the 3rd Australian Clearing Station but tragically the young soldier died the next day of his wounds. He was just 24 years of age.

His remains were recovered and interred at Grevilliers British Cemetery in Picardie, France.

As his next of kin, Lieutenant Morgan’s father Benjamin was subsequently sent a valise containing his son’s personal effects.

They included 15 soft collars, five ties, several tunics, a wallet, diary, religious books and an assortment of letters and photos.

Athol Alexander Morrison & John Gordon “Gordon” Morrison

Reginald Roy Morgan

life in egypt for australian soldiers.

[ 33 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

On August 17, 1914, Bob Munckton became the first person from Dubbo

to enlist in World War I. The 19-year-old student

soon proved himself a capable and indefatigable soldier whose letters home attested to the carnage he had witnessed but also a grudging respect for the ethics of his adversaries.

“We all admire the Turks for their chivalry and determination,” he wrote in June 1915.

“We will soon have them beaten, but they fight stubbornly. They are very fair at fighting. The other day they asked us to move our hospital, as it might be hit by a shell.

“They didn’t fire near there till we had it moved. Once they hit the hospital ship, and they sent in to say it was an accident and they regretted the incident.

“All the men whom they ever found wounded they treated well, and gave some of them back to us.”

That letter found its way to a local Dubbo newspaper, which published it on August 24, 1915. Unbeknownst to readers and his family though, Private Bob Munckton had already been dead for up to 18 days.

A witness would later recall that the young man had been killed by a bomb and buried with “about 30 others” at Lone Pine, Gallipoli, some time between August 6 and August 12.

He was initially listed as missing in action and in Dubbo, his mother Mary, a widow who owned and ran Dubbo’s Hopetoun Private Hospital, faced a long and uncertain wait for news of her son’s fate.

Private Munckton’s mother finally received his personal effects on February 22, 1918.

He is buried in Turkey’s Lone Pine Cemetery.

Elizabeth Mulhall was 77 when she died, having survived her eldest child for more than 30 years, and

the inscription on her grave in Bowraville Cemetery testifies to her belief that he had been killed in France in 1917, at the age of 22.

Private Ernie Mulhall had indeed perished during World War I but the apprentice baker and musician was actually serving on the Menin Road in Flanders, Belgium, when his unit came under attack.

The young man who had had a previous enlistment

application rejected on the grounds of poor eyesight and ultimately he had no chance of reacting in time to escape the bullet that claimed his life.

He had been accepted into the army on October 13, 1916, just eleven months earlier, and spent some months training in Folkestone, England, before being transferred to Etaples, France and then onto Belgium.

Although Private Mulhill was the only one of his seven siblings who qualified to serve in World War I, the extended family was to suffer at least one other tragic

loss as a result of the devastating conflict.

The older brother of Private Mulhill’s aunt by marriage died the month after he did, and his service record reveals he had several cousins who were also numbered among the nation’s military ranks.

Private Mulhill was given a hasty burial along with numerous others felled in the same attack as him, but their grave could not be relocated later and its whereabouts remain unknown. His name appears on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres, Belgium.

Ernest Ambrose “Ernie” Mulhall Robert “Bob” Munckton

“Private Mulhill

was given a hasty

burial ... but his grave could not

be relocated later”

[ 34 ]

It was a sight that would long haunt everyone present but it stayed with Frederick Ernest “Frank” McGrath until the

day he died. On November 19, 1917, the

24-year-old soldier, serving in World War I alongside his older brother Albert, was dispatched with a doctor to where a dozen men had been injured following fierce fighting in Messines, Belgium.

When the pair arrived, two of the victims were already dead, their features rendered unrecognisable by their horrific injuries.

In a letter to another of his brothers, Private Frank McGrath outlined what happened next: “I came back to Battalion Head-quarters along with the doctor. Early next morning another headquarter runner went down the sap to ‘D’ Co. with a message.

When he came back he said, ‘Where is your brother?’

“I replied, ‘I don’t know. I was talking to him in the sap yesterday afternoon’. He said, ‘If I were you I’d go down and see who those two chaps are that are killed in the sap’.

“I went down, and when I arrived the pioneers had just finished burying them. Dear Albert was one, and a chap named Brigden was the other. I

will never forget the sight that night in the sap. I walked right over the top of my dear brother lying there killed, and did not know it was him.”

Private Albert McGrath was just 28. Private Frank McGrath, and a third brother, Private William James McGrath, both survived the war and returned to Australia in 1919. Private Frank McGrath died in the Sydney suburb of Burwood in 1953.

Peter Albert “Albert” McGrath

“I walked right over the top of my dear brother lying there killed and did not know it”

Fighting winter conditions in the somme.

[ 35 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

Dubbo’s extended Parkinson clan was well known in the area long before the outbreak of

war in 1914, having suffered a much-publicised tragedy some seven years earlier.

Peter Parkinson was eight when his older sister Mary Ann, a 24-year-old domestic servant, successfully sued her former

fiancé for breach of promise. The man did not contest the action and she was duly awarded £20. Less than a year later, she committed suicide by arsenic poisoning following an argument with her father.

Peter George Parkinson, whose names appeared in reverse order on his birth certificate, was an 18-year-old

grocer when he enlisted to serve in the army on April 19, 1916.

After leaving Australia to train in the Middle East in late 1916, he was sent to France on April 19, 1917, which also happened to be his 19th birthday.

On August 4, 1917, Private Parkinson was reported as missing in action in France, although it would appear it was

a case of mistaken identity. Exactly two months later, he was conveying rations and water to men on the frontline in Passchendaele Ridge when numerous witnesses saw him killed by a shell.

He was again initially reported missing but his remains were eventually interred in Belgium’s Tyne Cot Cemetery.

Peter George Parkinson

After both of their parents died, brothers John and Andrew “Douglas” Paterson

decided to leave their native Scotland and travel halfway around the world to start afresh in the NSW township of Warren.

Private Paterson was working as a butcher when he enlisted in the war at the age of 26.

He left Australia on September 30, 1915, reportedly with some hopes of visiting his homeland and potentially arranging a brief reunion with his sister Mary, who was a nurse in Sheffield, England.

Private Paterson was initially sent to Egypt’s Tel-el-Kebir for training before leaving for Marseilles. He arrived in France on June 29, 1916, and joined the 54th Battalion, which was largely comprised of men from NSW, including a large number from the township of Dubbo.

The battalion’s first foray into armed combat was an unmitigated disaster. In freezing conditions, the men were ordered to attack as part of what would become known as the Battle of Fromelles.

Sixty-five per cent of the 54th Battalion was lost almost immediately and Private Paterson was numbered among the first casualties.

Such was the onslaught – and the resulting confusion – that Private Paterson’s official date of death is unknown. He is listed as having been killed in action on July 19 or 20, 1916.

He was hastily buried in the trench where he fell but his remains were later recovered and he was interred at the Bedford House Cemetery in Belgium.

John Paterson

australian mascots accompanied troops on deployment.

[ 36 ]

Standing just 5’2’’, it’s easy to imagine how 22-year-old Leslie Paul came upon his

nickname, although a fellow digger would later recall it came about because his mates would “kid” him about having so many initials.

The apprentice hairdresser had in fact had an unorthodox childhood – his mother died just one month after his birth and his father contracted tuberculosis and died just 18 months later.

Their only child was then adopted by his hairdresser uncle, Leo Paul, who raised him in Dubbo before moving to the southern

Sydney suburb of Carlton, where he opened his own salon and took his nephew on as an apprentice.

On September 15, 1915, Leslie Paul caught the train to Holsworthy Army Bar-racks where he enlisted in the nation’s war effort. He left Australia on December 20, 1915, bound for the Egyptian city of Cairo.

His death on August 6, 1916, was as freakish as it was gruesome. His battalion was under heavy fire at Pozieres and he and his fellow soldiers were sheltering in trenches when a shell burst in front of them, shattering part of another digger’s bayonet.

According to that man, one of the metal shards broke off and lodged in Private Paul’s heart, killing him instantly.

Les Pearson joined the war effort at the relatively late age of 34, having been persuaded to sign up as part

of a recruitment drive known as the Kookaburra March.

The labourer, who was single, enlisted on January 12, 1916 and left Sydney bound for Egypt on April 14, 1916.

He was only in Tel-el-Kebir for a few weeks before he was transferred on to Marseilles but upon arrival, was sent to the 12th Casualty Clearing Station where

he was diagnosed as suffering deafness. He was eventually sent to England but his time there was also punctuated by periods of illness – he was hospitalised on several occasions with bouts of shock and trench feet.

Private Pearson was returned to France on May 1, 1917, where, according to his service record, he fought on the frontline for several months.

On October 13, 1917, he was among four men who were digging trenches at Passchendaele,

having endured three days of intense shelling. Witnesses would later recall that every member of the group was killed when a shell exploded in front of them.

A report on Private Paterson’s death, recalled “it was impossible to bury him at the time, so he lay there in the trench till we were relieved … the new lot may have buried him after we’d gone.”

Private Paterson’s final resting place remains unknown. His name is listed on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres, Belgium.

Leslie “Les” Pearson

Leslie William Charles

“Kid” Paul

“His death was as freakish as it was gruesome”

[ 37 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

His mother’s letter was as heart-wrenching as it was insistent.

“I only ask for a fair deal,” Mary Ann Pollard wrote in July 1918.

“My son … is now nearly ten months’ dead. I have a husband and son-in-law in France, fighting for their country.

“I gave all my men to fight for the King, trusting you will give me a chance in life. I am a

broken-hearted mother through this war.”

Mrs Pollard’s grief resonated with Australian authorities and she was awarded a military pension of £2 per fortnight.

Like so many others, she carried a heavy burden: her son, Private James Pollard, had been aged just 18 years and two months when he enlisted in the war effort on Anzac Day, 1916.

His father William decided

to follow his son’s example and signed up just nine days later.

Private Pollard was initially sent to England for training and left Australia on September 30, 1916. He was sent to the frontline the following year, joining the 4th Battalion in France on March 25. He was shot in the left thigh less than a fortnight later and sent to England for treatment.

By July 10, 1917, he had rejoined his unit in Belgium but less than

three months later he was dead. Eyewitnesses recalled that he had been dismembered after being hit by an enemy shell.

Their accounts recall in harrowing detail the full extent of his injuries.

His fellow soldiers later remembered burying him before dawn but his grave could not be relocated later. He is remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial in Ypres, Belgium.

After almost three years abroad, Private Charles Prince had served for Australia in at least

four countries and witnessed the brutal deaths of hundreds of young men, many of them mates. He had also endured freezing winters, several bouts of illness and numerous punishments for a range of indiscretions.

Little wonder then that an uncensored letter to his father dated August 28, 1917, carried an air of thinly veiled despair.

“The winter is the hard problem to face here,’’ it read in part. “I spent the last one on the Somme, and it did me for a tough one. I wouldn’t mind a trip home. I have had a long run now, and I think I have done my ‘cut.’ You know I am the only one you have left now, and at this game a fellow is always apt to go west.”

Even prior to the war, Private Prince had suffered his share of hardship. His twin brother George died at the age of two and his parents’ faltering union collapsed shortly after the birth of their third son in 1887.

Private Prince was 29 at the outbreak of hostilities and enlisted in World War I on December 15, 1914. He subsequently served in Egypt, Turkey, France and Belgium.

Private Prince was killed in action in Belgium on September 21, 1917. His body was never recovered.

James Henry George “Harry” “Bluey” Pollard

Charles Prince

troops faced hellish conditions on the

Western Front.Picture: australian

War memorial

[ 38 ]

MMy dear Mrs Quihampton,

“It has fallen to my lot to send this cruel news,

but you must be brave and, besides, it was God’s will so we must not complain … but I can feel for you, Madam, because I lost my brother in the same charge and I have to send the cruel news to my dear mother.

“I feel sure [Wilfred] was killed. I can give you no hope, so, dear

Mrs. Quihampton, do be brave and don’t cry; your son was a brave, good man.”

The short letter, penned by a Dubbo soldier named as R O Samuels, was one of two sent to Clara Quihampton a month after her son was listed as missing, presumed killed in the Battle of Fromelles.

The tall Englishman, who was single, had travelled to Australia as a third-class passenger on the

Ophir, arriving in Sydney on May 1, 1909, and making his way west to Dubbo, where he worked as a farm labourer.

He enlisted in the Australian army on August 7, 1915 and left for Egypt in December.

From there he was sent on to Marseilles, where he became part of the 54th Battalion, which fought a bloody and ill-fated campaign in Fromelles.

Private Quihampton’s exact

fate remains unknown. He was believed to be with a group of men who made a charge across the bloodstained No Man’s Land on July 19 or 20, 1916, but no one was ever able to confirm what happened thereafter.

A Court of Enquiry declared him killed in action on August 4 of the same year.

His name appears on the Australian Cemetery Memorial in Fromelles, France.

Wilfred Quilhampton

[ 39 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

From midway through 1915 until the end of World War I, there was a warrant out for Private Henry

Robertson’s arrest. The 28-year-old was in an

unusual position: officially he was wanted for deserting the army, despite the fact that he was serving in the army at the time.

The labourer was the tenth of

his parents’ 15 children and the youngest of the three Robertson boys who enlisted in the war effort. He was also the family’s only casualty.

Private Robertson had initially enlisted in Dubbo in July 1915 but his papers show he deserted the army three months after that, hence the reason a warrant was issued.

By December 1915, he had reversed his decision and signed up to the military once again, leaving Australia bound for Egypt. He was quickly transferred on to Marseilles, arriving on May 25, 1916.

Private Robertson was then sent to the frontline on November 21, but on Christmas Eve he was killed in action in

France. His body was interred at Bancourt British Cemetery.

Some bureaucratic mismanagement meant his arrest warrant wasn’t cancelled until January 20, 1919.

Two of Private Robertson’s older brothers, Private John Walker Robertson and Private Alfred Edward Robertson, returned from the war in 1919.

Henry John Robertson

Years of backyard cricket and rabbit shooting had honed Leslie Robinson’s reflexes, such that

Australian military officials quickly identified the tall young farmer as a potential future leader. Along with his older brother Locksley, the 21-year-old had driven a buggy into Dubbo to enlist in the army on August 18, 1915, and he eventually left Australia bound for Plymouth, England, on June 23, 1916.

After landing he entered a lengthy period of intensive training and quickly impressed his superiors, who rewarded him with several temporary promotions. In November he earned the permanent rank of Corporal, having topped the class at the School of Musketry and developed a working knowledge of the Lewis Gun.

He was sent to the Western Front on September 4, 1917, but his tenure on the frontline was shockingly brief.

On September 26, Corporal Robinson was part of a group of 15 men who launched an early morning attack on German forces at Passchendaele Wood in Belgium.

They had no time to react when a shell fell among them and five soldiers, including Corporal Robinson, were subsequently killed. Eyewitnesses would later recall that he had been struck in the side and only lived for a very short time. He was buried in a hastily dug grave with the four other victims.

A fierce battle followed and a cross marking Corporal Robinson’s grave was destroyed in the confusion. His final resting place is unknown.

Leslie Henry Robinson

When news of Private Lorne Robertson’s death reached Walter Foxton Robertson, he

reacted with a mix of grief and determination to pick up where his younger brother left off.

And so it was in September 1917 (five months after Lorne Robertson was killed), the accountant and married father left for the frontline, apparently with his extended family’s blessing. A third brother, Sapper William Hulbert Robertson, was also

serving in France at the time. For his part, Private Lorne Robertson had had a difficult time convincing army officials to take him in the first place.

Initially rejected because of his slight frame (he was 5’6’’ and weighed just under 55kg), he was a 29-year-old stock dealer when his application to enlist was finally accepted.

He set sail for England on September 30, 1916, where he joined a training camp but found it hard to adjust to the rigours

of army life. He was sent onto France in February 1917, but on April 15, 1917, his military career – and his life – came to a dreadful end when he and two others were fatally shot by a sniper.

The trio was given a hasty burial in a sunken road at Denycourt, near the French town of Hermies. Their bodies were later exhumed and reinterred at Hermies Hill British Cemetery.

Sapper William Robertson and Private Walter Foxton returned to Australia in 1919.

It was said to have been a lively evening, punctuated by songs, dancing and speeches proclaiming the “sterling

worth” of the guest of honour, Trooper Jack Richardson.

In reality though, there was little for his friends and relatives to celebrate. By February 1918, World War I had exacted a heavy toll on the Richardson family, a fact that was not lost on any of the attendees that night.

Trooper Richardson had returned home to Dubbo after sustaining a “slight” gunshot wound to the neck in Palestine; His two brothers were not so lucky. Privates Jim and Thomas Richardson were killed in action within six weeks of one another in the first half of 1917.

Private Jim Richardson, the older of the two, was the second to enlist and the first to die.

The Dubbo farmer was a month shy of his 28th birthday when he signed up to the war effort, eventually setting sail for Plymouth, England, and later Etaples, France. His medical records reveal he was initially treated for influenza and then a bad case of laryngitis before heading back to the frontline.

On April 11, 1917, a decision was made to attack German

forces in Bullecourt but the offensive was badly planned – they were sent into battle behind tanks meant to clear a path past barbed wire for them.

Private Jim Richardson was among the men who became hopelessly ensnared, making them easy targets for enemy snipers.

All up, there were more than 3000 casualties as a result. His body was never recovered.

Private Thomas Richardson (pictured) fared no better.

He also suffered a range of illnesses during his time on the frontline, including scabies, bronchitis, influenza and swelling of the leg and ankle.

He returned to England to convalesce on numerous occasions. On the morning of July 23, 1917, he was back on active duty in Ypres, France, where the wet, windy, freezing conditions made it hard for him and his fellow soldiers to walk.

He and numerous other diggers were said to have come under heavy fire at some point on their journey and are believed to have been killed instantly.

Like his brother, the remains of Private Thomas Richardson were never recovered.

Lorne John Robertson

James Henry “Jim” Richardson & Thomas Alfred

Richardson

[ 40 ]

He had seen his older brother Alf’s wounded left arm and heard him

refusing medical treatment. But far worse was to come for Lieutenant Rol Samuels, who was stationed in Fromelles, France, as the Battle of Fluerbaix raged around him.

Having finally convinced Alf to leave the frontline the next morning, he could do little but watch in horror as he was hit by another bullet – but this time the 36-year-old would not survive and Lieutenant Samuels was one of three men charged with digging his brother’s grave.

Private Alf Samuels was killed on July 20, 1916, and somehow Lieutenant Samuels found the courage to continue. He returned to England for officer training in October 1917, and during this time, wrote numerous letters to comfort the bereaved families of friends who had died beside him.

He lost his own life on August 8, 1918, at the age of 31. Witnesses said he died after being struck by a bullet between the French villages of Chipilly and Cerisy, along the Somme Canal.

After he was killed, one of his fellow soldiers recalled that Lieutenant Samuels had been “absolutely idolised by his men and many a boy shed a tear when they heard he had been killed”.

It had been more than 20 years since the Samuels brothers had perished but their hometown of Dubbo had not forgotten

their sacrifice. On Armistice Day 1939, they

were mentioned by name in the local newspaper, with their family and friends gathering to remember “happy associations [and] the strenuous years of the Great War”.

Private Alexander Samuels, Trooper Dick Samuels and a third brother, Gunner Frederick Samuels, were well-versed in the hardships of World War I.

The men signed up at different times over the course of the conflict – the youngest, Alexander, joined in September 1914, followed by Herbert, who enlisted in December of the same year. Frederick, the oldest of the

three, was probably unaware that Herbert had been killed exactly a fortnight prior to his own embarkation date of September 20, 1916.

The two younger brothers left home with high ideals but soon became all too familiar with the privations of military life.

Six months after leaving Australia, Private Samuels developed a ruptured hernia and diarrhoea and was transferred from the frontline in France to England to recover.

From there, he was sent back to Egypt, where his military record shows he was punished after being charged with having an altered leave pass in his possession.

At about the same time, Trooper Samuels was also in

Egypt on active duty. He was stationed in the Suez Canal zone when the Battle of Romani got underway on August 4, 1916.

Trooper Samuels survived just five days before being killed in action by German and Austrian forces.

Private Samuels was redeployed to France and later Belgium, where he was among the British forces making slow progress towards the heavily defended Hindenburg Line.

He was reported missing in action following a particularly bloody bout of trench warfare on April 11, 1917. A Court of Enquiry subsequently declared him killed in action.

Gunner Frederick Samuels returned to Australia on December 21, 1919.

Alexander Britton Samuels & Herbert Edward

“Dick” Samuels

Alfred Ernest “Alf” & Robert Oswald “Rol” Samuels (aka Robert Oswell Samuels)

“He was unaware his brother had

been killed exactly a fortnight

before his own

departure”

[ 41 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

[ 42 ]

Richard Clyde “Dick” Simons & James Lovel Simons

Like all those around him, Private Dick Simons had completed his basic training but no amount

of instruction could have prepared the 26-year-old for the conditions that actually awaited him on the frontline at Gallipoli.

The one-time baker had signed up to war at the first opportunity, joining in Dubbo on August 29, 1914. As one of the first men in the area to enlist, a large crowd was said to have assembled at the railway station to witness his departure.

He left Australia that October

but it wasn’t until April 5, 1915 that he joined the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, which took him to the Dardanelles in north-western Turkey.

Just 20 days later, he and his fellow soldiers boarded a small boat and made their way towards the Gallipoli Peninsula under heavy shrapnel fire.

To reach their destination, the men had to jump overboard and wade up to their necks through bloodstained water while shells continued to pour down on them.

By all accounts, Private Simons made it to shore and up the steep terrain, where he and

a mate were instructed to relieve those in a firing trench.

To achieve this objective this the two men would have to pass through more than 70m of open ground. Private Simons did not make it to the other side.

In the confusion that followed he was initially reported wounded and missing.

A Court of Enquiry held on June 5 found he had been killed in action, making him Dubbo’s second World War I casuality.

His older brother James, a cordial maker by trade, was a married father-of-three when he signed up to the war effort in

August 1915. He undertook training in Egypt before being sent on to Marseilles where he was shot in the right knee in August 1916.

He left Australia bound for the Western Front on August 22, 1916, although very few details of his subsequent military service are publicly available.

What is know is that he died of wounds sustained during a battle in France.

He has no known grave but his name appears alongside 10,884 others at the Australian National Memorial in the French commune of Villiers-Bretonneux.

[ 43 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

By February 1916, some of the lucky ones had begun filtering home from the frontline, albeit with

horrific injuries. The unlucky ones simply hadn’t made it.

At just 18 years and five months, Wally Sibley could have waited almost three more years before enlisting; his parents could have refused to sign the

consent form. But the young labourer wanted to go to war and Henry and Sarah Marie Sibley did not stop him.

With their blessing he left Australia on September 9, 1916, bound for England, where he underwent training before being sent to Etaples, France.

What might initially have seemed like a great adventure

all changed when Private Sibley reached the frontline.

By early 1917, he was among the Australian soldiers advancing on German trenches east of the French village of Bullecourt.

Despite seizing two enemy lines, the early success would not last. On May 3, 1917, the allied British forces were driven

back to their starting point by a vicious German counter-offensive.

In all, more than 3000 men were lost during the Battle of Bullecourt, and Private Sibley was one of the many who were initially reported missing and later killed in action as part of the hastily executed campaign.

He had a brilliant mind and the academic record to prove it – and for a long time, Captain Roy Sillar’s

studies prevented him from joining his two brothers on the frontline (he was a medical student, which rendered him exempt from enlisting).

In 1917, the then-22-year-old Dubbo local graduated with Bachelor of Medicine and Master of Surgery degrees and was also elected Student of the Year. He found employment at a hospital in Crows Nest before moving on to St Vincent’s Hospital.

Despite his success, the young doctor was still very keen to join the war effort and, in January 1918, convinced military authorities to accept him into the Australian Army Medical Corps.

He set sail for England on March 2, eventually arriving in London, where he was appointed Medical Officer at No.3 Command Depot at Hurdcott, near Salisbury, Wiltshire.

His death was as sudden as it was accidental. On June 30, at around 3pm, Captain Sillar and his cousin Lieutenant Victor George Sanders were riding their horses toward Bartford when they met up with a friend who was travelling by foot, so they dismounted to speak to him.

On remounting Captain Sillar placed his foot in the stirrup just as his horse moved forward. He overbalanced, falling and hitting his head on the road.

The men took him to a local house where an ambulance was called but he began to lose consciousness on the way to Fovant Military Hospital. He died three hours later.

Roy Allen Sillar“Captain

Sillar’s death was as sudden as it was accidental”

Walter Roy “Wally” Sibley

[ 44 ]

Standing just 5’3’’, 22-year-old Harold Smith initially did not qualify for enlistment

in the Australian army, which had a minimum height restriction of 5’6’’ at the outbreak of World War I.

But in June 1915 that was lowered to 5’2’’, allowing the Wongarbon native to put his name forward. The labourer finally signed up in January 1916 and was sent to Egypt in April and then on to the frontline in Etaples, France.

It had taken a year for the allied forces to plan the capture of land on Messines Ridge, south-east of Ypres. The objective was to reduce the Germans’ tactical advantage by gaining control of the higher terrain. To achieve this, engineers had built tunnels dug under German lines and filled them with explosives. New tactics were developed to protect allied soldiers from the barrage of fire from machine guns.

On June 7, 1917, an assault on the Germans began according to plan but 20 minutes later the bombs in the tunnels were detonated, killing thousands. Although the battle was considered a win for the allied forces, it was clearly not without significant losses. One of the diggers killed that day was Private Smith, who was among those leading the charge when he was a hit by a bullet and died instantly.

His body was never recovered. In Wongarbon, his father subsequently received a small package, ostensibly containing his son’s personal effects.

Long before the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, Sidney “Brickey” Skelly was intimately acquainted with

conflict of a different nature. Hailing from an otherwise respectable Dubbo family, the 38-year-old miner was regularly in trouble with the local police right up until he signed up to the war effort in November 1915.

Along with his brothers Tom and William Edmund, Brickey completed his enlistment papers but initially proved a disastrous recruit. Between December 1915

and March 1916, he committed at least 15 offences, ranging from being absent without leave to drunkenness. His superiors fined him all his outstanding pay and discharged him.

Undeterred, Brickey dropped his age by seven years and changed his name to Francis Scully before travelling to Bathurst, where he re-enlisted.

Despite his improved attitude, Private Scully’s career on the frontline was brief, violent and full of hardships after being stationed in the Somme. It was

here that Private Scully was felled by enemy fire and lost his life on January 7, 1917.

Private Tom Skelly (pictured)was in Bullecourt, where the allied forces continued to sustain heavy losses throughout the rest of 1917. Private Skelly was among the lucky ones, and with his fellow survivors, inched forward into Peronne in northern France.

He, too, was killed in action. On September 1, 1918, he was hit in the groin by a shell and witnesses later recalled his death was instantaneous.

Thomas “Tom” Skelly & Sidney Joseph “Brickey” Skelly

(served as Francis Scully)

Harold Gordon

Smith

[ 45 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

According to one onlooker, Private Jack Turner (left) was buried in Pheasant

Wood, Fromelles, “on a sunny afternoon just by a field of waving green corn, fringed with the trees one only sees in France, and his requiem was the booming of the guns, the burst of shrapnel, the song of the birds, and the calm breezes through the trees, while his comrades stood round with moist eyes listening to the words of the funeral service”.

For more than 90 years, the letter from his fellow soldier to Private Turner’s mother was all his family had in terms of information about the young man’s grave. But in 2008, his remains were unearthed at the site of a mass burial ground containing the bodies of 250 Australian and British service-men. DNA testing confirmed his identity and the 20-year-old, who was shot in the heart by a sniper on July 20, 1916, was laid to rest for the final time at Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery.

Private Jack Turner was the second in his immediate fam-ily to sign up to the war effort (his father, Robert James Turner, followed him the next month).

Private Jack Turner’s eldest brother, James John Turner, had been among the first Dubbo men to enlist, joining as John James Turner on August 29, 1914. (The reason he switched his Christian names remains unknown.)

He was sent to Egypt and then onto Turkey, where he joined the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, which took part in the second and third wave of landings at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.

Private John Turner survived the initial onslaught and on August 5, 1915, was

among the men who made his way up the valley of Lone Pine in a bid to attack the Turkish trenches. At the same time, British forces were also attacking the same ground via Quinn’s and Pope’s Posts.

The mission was ultimately classed as a failure. Although the Turkish troops were unable

to push the allied forces back down the valley to the beach, they did inflict numerous casualties and Private John Turner was among them.

The loss of life was such that the 25-year-old was initially reported as missing in action but a Court of Enquiry later found he had been killed. His

exact date of death was never established and is listed as August 7-12, 1915.

The Turner brothers’ father, Private Robert James Turner, returned to Australia on January 4, 1918.

Their brother-in-law, Sapper William Barry, was killed in action on October 12, 1917.

John “Jack” Turner & James Turner

(enlisted as John James Turner)

[ 46 ]

James Mennie “Jim” Walker

“Private Walker got a taste of life on the frontline in the Somme Valley”

He knew the dangers that awaited him overseas and had watched in dismay as recruitment numbers

plummeted. But the teenage Jim Walker

was nonetheless determined to play a role in the Great War, joining the Citizens’ Military Force at the same time as he was training to become a surveyor’s labourer.

Just two months after his 18th birthday, he finally got his chance

and enlisted with his parents’ consent on June 2, 1915.

Private Walker was sent initially to Egypt and then onto Marseilles, France, where he joined the British Expeditionary Force.

He got his first taste of life on the frontline in early 1916, when he was deployed to the Somme Valley. The goal was to reclaim the French village of Pozieres, which was then held by strong German forces.

The weather was wet and cold but the allied troops clung to small gains despite continuous artillery fire and repeated enemy counter-attacks.

But their determination to hold the line was costly. During a period of just 15 days, 6848 Australian men lost their lives.

The German troops were eventually overpowered and subsequently surrendered, but not before Private Walker became numbered among the

casualties. The 19-year-old died on the night of August 4, 1916 at Pozieres Ridge, just south of the township of Armentieres.

He and a fellow soldier (who was also a Dubbo local) had been dispatched to bomb a German post and were returning to their base when he was fatally shot.

His body was never recovered but the young man’s service to his country was recognised when he was posthumously awarded a Military Medal.

[ 47 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

Isaac “Ike” Walls

In an unusual departure from the-then convention, Jerry Ward’s parents, James and Elizabeth never married and

John Ward’s nickname, Jerry, is likely to have derived from his mother’s surname, Jerrems.

The fifth of their eight children first rated a mention in the local paper at the age of just nine, after he and another boy were found “wandering about the streets of Dubbo with no ostensible occupation”.

At that point he was 22 and was working as a farrier’s floorman. While he was initially keen to enlist, he soon found himself struggling to adjust to the rigours of military life.

While Private Ward’s conduct was not always exemplary, there can be little doubt that he was courageous in the field of battle. In a letter that arrived in Dubbo in August 1916, one of his fellow soldiers recalled an incident on the Western Front when Private Ward distinguished himself: “If anyone deserves the Victoria Cross it is [him],” the man wrote.

“In a skirmish on May 5th he performed prodigies of valour. Our fellows were getting cut up, and Jerry repeatedly rushed out of the trenches, and lifting a wounded man up, would carry him to a place of safety.”

Private Ward was killed in action in Pozieres, France, during a battle on August 5, 1916.

John Royal “Jerry” Ward (aka John Roy Ward)

In 1912, a local newspaper described him as “a strapping lump of a fellow”, but in the wake of his war

service some six years later, the same publication was falling over itself to hail the “dead hero” and “champion bomb thrower” who was also a “young man of courage who never knew what fear was”.

In reality, Ike Walls was probably all those things at some point. The 24-year-old sleeper cutter had, in fact, been in trouble with the police prior to his military career (he was accused of using indecent language and fined £1) and by the time he signed up to the war effort, he had acquired a large tattoo of a woman’s face on his

lower left forearm. He left Australia for Egypt and then Turkey on October 20, 1914.

Unlike many of his compatriots, Private Walls survived the Gallipoli landing on April 25, 1915, thanks in part to his superior bombing skills. He moved across to the Western Front and over the next three years, helped to bury countless

men, vowing to relatives back home that he would avenge the deaths of those he was closest to. But he was powerless to avoid the shell that took his life.

On August 21, 1918, he was asleep in a cottage at Strazeele in northern France when a shell landed and exploded at about 5am, killing him outright.

[ 48 ]

Four of their sons enlisted in the war effort, three went on to see active duty and only two returned home

alive. The Great War exacted a shocking toll on Thomas and Eliza Worthington, who lost their fifth- and sixth-born children within a period of two months.

The first to die was Private Stanley Worthington, an 18-year-old plumber who was said to have been desperate to join his older brothers on the frontline. He signed up with his parents’ blessing on May 13, 1915 and was sent

to Sydney’s Liverpool Depot to commence his training. He was never even got the chance to be issued with a service number. On June 1, 1915, he died in Liverpool Field Camp Hospital after contracting cerebral meningitis and influenza.

By that stage, Private Vic Worthington (pictured) had been a member of the Australian army for more than nine months. and had joined the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force for the landing at Gallipoli on April 25, 1915.

On July 27, 1915, Private Vic

Worthington was shot dead. Unlike most who died in the field of battle at Lone Pine, his body was not lost.

He was buried at Shrapnel Valley Cemetery in Gallipoli.

Two other Worthington brothers survived the war. They were Frank Worthington, who returned to Australia on January 22, 1917, and Thomas Henry “Harry” Worthington, who enlisted in British Columbia and returned to live in Canada, where he lived for the rest of his life before dying at the age of 74.

It was a wartime romance that began with a bout of illness and ended with a letter carrying news of his death,

sent from halfway across the world. For the young woman known only as Molly, Private Clyde Williams’ passing dashed her dreams of a future with the young Australian, who had met her in England and pledged to write every week until the war ended. As she later recalled, his silence had fuelled her fears.

“[The] letter never came, and how I looked for the postman,” the young woman wrote to Private Williams’ mother in response to the missive containing news of her son’s passing.

“On Armistice Day I was so happy as I thought he would soon be coming home, and to think that he was dead all the time.”

Private Williams was the fourth of Susan Williams’ eleven offspring to predecease her, although the other three had died in infancy or as young children.

The Dubbo farmer had signed up to war on June 19, 1916, at the age of almost 23.

After spending five weeks in isolation being treated for an undisclosed illness, he set sail for Devonport, England, in February 1917, but fractured a finger upon arrival and

stayed to recover and receive further training.

It’s unclear when he and Molly (whose surname has been lost over time) actually met, as he was finally transferred to the Western Front in January 1918, but was hospitalised with influenza before being sent back to England to recover from a bout of gas poisoning.

He returned to the frontline in September and after a short furlough, was posted east of Peronne in northern France, where he took part in Battle of St Quentin Canal. The skirmish was part of the hundred-day offensive that would eventually spell the end of the war.

Private Williams did not live to see it. On October 30, 1918, he was perched behind his own machine gun when he was fatally wounded. He was initially buried in the trench where he fell but his remains were exhumed and reinterred at Sts. Emi-lie Valley Cemetery in Villers-Faucon, France. He was 25.

Victor Robert “Vic” Worthington & Stanley Worthington

Clyde Barrington Williams

[ 49 ]

s p e c i a l t r i b u t e

His death was horrifying – painful and preventable – and utterly undeserved, given the exemplary

way in which he had conducted himself in life. In Dubbo, Private Bert Wright was remembered as “a good sport and a good soldier”, who had undertaken some of the most dangerous work on the frontline in an effort to advance the allied cause.

The local farmer, who was the

seventh of ten children, enlisted on February 29, 1916, less than a month shy of his 24th birthday.

He left Sydney that August but was forced to disembark in Africa after contracting the mumps, for which he was treated in hospital.

The next month, Private Wright recommenced his journey to the frontline, boarding a vessel bound for Plymouth, England, where he undertook training in the port town of Folkestone. In

December he was dispatched to the Western Front and started his service in Etaples, France.

For a period in October 1917, he took on the perilous duties of a runner, for which he was rewarded with a period of leave, which he used to explore some parts of Paris. He returned to active duty shortly after.

Private Wright was among the men who encountered heavy fire during a battle on April 14, 1918.

He was hit by a shell in the thigh and testicles and was sent to the 15th Casualty Clearing Station.

His wounds, which were very serious, should not have been fatal but without sufficient resources to manage them properly, he died in agony on April 22. His personal effects, which were sent to his father in the wake of his passing, included a wallet, a damaged knife and a French book. He was 26.

Albert John “Bert” Wright

Walter Tink had a natural affinity with animals that would serve him well in his

young life and later, throughout in his short-lived military career.

As a 25-year-old he signed up to war in Dubbo on March 14, 1916, and was immediately put to work as a trooper, training his horse to accept the sights, sounds and smells of war.

He left Australia on July 22, 1916, bound for the Isolation Military Camp in Egypt, when he

joined the 2nd Light Horse Training Regiment to enhance his skills in desert warfare. He was then sent to the 7th Light Horse in Egypt.

Under the cover of dense fog on March 26, 1917, Trooper Tink and the other members of the 7th Light Horse were atop their mounts awaiting the command to make their charge in the First Battle of Gaza.

Two British Infantry Units would support the attack, approaching simultaneously from

the opposite direction. Trooper Tink was one of the first men involved in a successful bayonet charge that ensured two machine guns were captured.

He lived just two more hours. Trooper Tink died in a volley

of gun fire unaware that his last mission was a success.

His fellow soldiers eventually caught the high ground north of Gaza, although the casualties on both sides were enormous. Four thousand allied soldiers died alongside 2400 Turkish men.

Walter Rupert Tink

australian troops departing for the great War.

Lest we forget