An Anzac project launched on Sunday will delve into the history behind 265 Diggers from Williamstown who did not return home from WWI.
In 1917, Williamstown councillor Bill (William) Henderson gave an undertaking to collect photographs of each veteran who died for an honour board at Williamstown Town Hall. Now historian Lindy Wallace is collecting the stories behind each face.
“Our project – The Sons of Williamstown, A Labour of Love – continues to commemorate the spirit of Cr Henderson’s work,” Ms Wallace said.
“Of the 1800-or-so Williamstown men who enlisted, 265 gave their lives.
“Those who died were not returned to Australia. They remained in marked and unmarked graves in the countries where they fell.
“The need to have somewhere to commemorate sacrifice and loss led to the creation of the memorials and honour boards we see in many Australian towns and cities today,” Ms Wallace said.
“In the absence of graves to visit, the listing of names on memorials became, for families, the physical presence of lost loved ones.”
LEST WE FORGET
Her research has uncovered some of the men’s stories. One is that of Gordon Rankin Inglis, who enlisted as a naval clerk in August 1914 and was wounded in a lung at Gallipoli on April 26,1915.
“He’s the only Australian serviceman buried in Danygraig cemetery, Swansea,” Ms Wallace said.
“A champion bagpipe player, originally in the Victorian Scottish Regiment, Gordon was nursed and protected by his mate, who refused to allow him to be taken on to the deck of the hospital ship, which was a precursor to being buried at sea.
“A fellow bagpipe player who had befriended him in the Swansea hospital returned especially to play over his grave. The people of Swansea erected a cedar cross and his grave was turfed and planted with spring plantings, of which a photo would be sent to his mother.
“In 1920, his grave was visited by a stranger who picked a flower and pressed it to send to Gordon’s mother, along with a photo of the grave.”
Other stories include those of Private Brendan Calcutt, a railways timekeeper who enlisted at 19.
Calcutt died in December, 1916, while a prisoner of war in Turkey.
Then there’s the story of three of the four Chandler brothers, who enlisted together and perished in France, two of them within two months of each other.
Or that of naval clerk Geoffrey Gladstones, who enlisted at 22 and was fatally wounded while resting in his dug-out at Polygon Wood, at Ypres, Belgium.
As the project progresses, historians will be calling on the Williamstown community to help uncover more Diggers’ stories.
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