KIA at Fromelles

Great work from Bill.

For those of you who follow this blog you will be aware that for some time I have had the privilege of being one of the people involved in trying to locate the next of kin of those Australian Servicemen who were discovered in the mass graves in Pheasant Wood France. They were were later reinterred in the Fromelles (Pheasant Wood) Military Cemetery.

So when anything comes up that involves those who fell at Fromelles, it quickly gains my undivided attention. Such was the request from Lee the great niece of 1707 Pte Cyril David Jones, who was Killed in Action at Fromelles on the 20 July 1916.

Some time ago, 1972 to be exact, the family had loaned Cyril’s medals and death plaque to an RSL.

When it came time to collect it, it could not be found. At this point we step forward to 2006, when Lee decided that she would go in search of his plaque and medals. But again she heard the words that her family had heard 34 years before, “No we don’t have it. And no we have no record of ever having had it”.

Again step forward to March 2016.

Never one to give up, to which I can testify, Lee restarted her search. This time she approached ANZAC House, and my No.1 fan Jude Beshears, who gave her my name and phone number.

Now let me take this story back four years to 2012, when I was approached by a metropolitan RSL, to help in putting their memorabilia currently recorded on typewritten list, a large folder and whose locations were otherwise unknown, on to computer. They also wanted a system for auditing what they had, well what they thought they had, or as it later turned out what they thought they should have. Unfortunately for a variety of reasons the club never completed the project.

It was while I was setting up the computer system that I was approached by a member of the Committee, who showed me a plaque, and asked me “what was this for?’. I explained that it was a WW1 Memrial Plaque, that in this case had been given to the family of a Cyril David Jones.

Found amongst old files in the back of a filing cabinet, my enquiries to the current and past Secretaries proved fruitless. So before I filed away an entry for the plaque, I looked up Cyril David Jones. There was only one Cyril David Jones Killed in Action during WW1 and that was at Fromelles. It was, I think, because of Fromelles that the name stayed in my memory.

Now we come back to the present and my first conversation with Lee, then a search to relocate the plaque. This was then followed by a  discussion with the President of the Club concerned. As a result it was decided that while there are strict rules under which the RSL accepts militaria, and that above all ‘gifting’, if I can use that word, is in perpetuity. As the Club had no official paperwork to support keeping the plaque, and that for some reason or other it had remained in limbo for all these years, there must have been an intent sometime in the past to return it the plaque.

The club has now, to its credit done so.

As for the medals, well I have accepted the offer of the RSL concerned to complete the audit and should Cyril’s medals be located they too will be returned to the family.

The returned medal tally is now 1861. 

Wilfred Parker

In 2007 I received Wilfred John Parker's Memorial Plaque and its accompanying letter from the King.
The only solid piece of information I could find was the details of Wilfred's death at Passchendaele on 31 July 1917 as recorded on the Commonwealth War Graves web site. I located two regimental numbers for Wilfred which is not uncommon but made the search a little more uncertain. Wilfred was a British soldier who served with the Royal Sussex Regiment and the Queen's Own Royal West Kent Regiment.
Yesterday, I revisited the research and came across a family tree on Ancestry. Wilfred was listed with his siblings but the tree owner was not closely related so I started researching his brother Stephen only to discover that Stephen died in Queensland in 1983. This explains how the plaque came to be in Australia. I then had a close look at Stephen's family and found another family tree which is owned by Stephen's grandson. A message to the owner, Bill, was answered almost immediately and confirmed he is Wilfred's great nephew.
I now know that Wilfred first enlisted at aged 15 but when his mother found out he was withdrawn from the army. Wilfred is commemorated at the Menin Gate Memorial and his town memorial at Littlehampton, Sussex. Bill has very kindly provided me some photos of the memorial and of Wilfred.
Thanks to Glenn S who sent me the plaque and letter. The returned medal tally is now 1213.

This is Wilfred's memorial plaque

The naming on the plaque. It appears to have been rubbed a lot, maybe an attempt to remove it.

This is the letter sent to families which accompanied the plaque. It is signed by George V.

A photo of Wilfred believed to be taken during training.

Wilfred in uniform

Littlehampton Memorial showing PTE W.J. Parker

David George Irvin update number 2

Following the return of the memorial plaque to the family of David George Irvin, ABC South East NSW broadcast a follow up story. The audio can be heard at this link.
Thank you to Ian from ABC in Bega.
Army News also ran a story which can be viewed on page 8.

David George Irvin update

In August I told the story of the memorial plaque presented to the family of David George Irvin. This post is to bring up to date the story of the return of the plaque to the family.
As I mentioned, I was hopeful that the Chief of Army's History Conference would provide the perfect opportunity to bring the Irvin family to Canberra and return the plaque. When I discussed this with Roger Lee from the Army History Unit, he was totally behind me. AHU, through Dr Andrew Richardson, kindly allowed me a time slot in the program to tell the story behind Irvin's plaque. After that, Major General John Caligari formally handed back the memorial plaque to the Irvin family.
The story was reported in the Canberra Times (thank you David) and I've reproduced it below.
Once again I must mention that it is thanks to the vigilance of Tim D that this return began at all.
(To view larger copies of this article click on the picture, a further zoom can also be done).

David George Irvin

This is a complicated story so hopefully I can do it justice.
4807 David George Irvin  was a member of the 54th Battalion AIF. The AWM entry says the following about the action this battalion was involved in on 19-20 July 1916:

Moving to France in June 1916, the 54th fought its first major battle on the Western Front at Fromelles, on 19 July. It was a disaster. The 54th was part of the initial assault and suffered casualties equivalent to 65 per cent of its fighting strength. Casualty rates among the rest of the 5th Division were similarly high, but despite these losses it continued to man the front in the Fromelles sector for a further two months.

This battalion has probably become better know today after the discover of a mass unmarked grave at Fromelles. This website provides more details. The Australian Army has gone to great lengths to identify the soldiers buried in the grave and re-inter the remains of these soldiers in a proper war graves cemetery. My friends Tim L and Sandra P are also heavily involved in this project, this is their website.
Irvin is one of the soldiers whose remains have been identified through DNA testing. This link provides the details of the soldiers who have been identified. This link is to the ABC story about the identification of Irvin and this link has a picture and more details about Irvin.
So how did Lost Medals Australia get involved?
The memorial plaque presented to the family of Irvin after WWI recently came up for sale on ebay. A very vigilant Canberra local and now Lost Medals Australia researcher, Tim D, realised who Irvin was and the significance of the plaque. He won the auction and has asked Lost Medals Australia to coordinate the return to Irvin's family who we have also been in touch with.
It is early days yet but I'm hopeful we can arrange for this plaque to be represented to the Irvin family at the upcoming Chief of Army's History Conference.   
Well done to Tim for his wonderful gesture to an Australian soldier.
These pictures are of David Irvin and the plaque.

The returned tally is now 968.

Large family medal collection

Bill has just completed a wonderful piece of research that has seen 11 medals returned to the family of four soldiers, all related. This is the story of the research:

While working for Legacy, Kel Gulliver was given a box of medals and other miscellaneous items. It was believed the box may have belonged to a Legacy Widow. Unfortunately, there were no records with the items that identified her.

Recently Kel, now retired and having exhausted all other avenues, placed an item in the Veteran Affairs newsletter. At that same time Bill was researching another matter also listed in the same news letter so he contacted Kel to and volunteered our services.

The box in Kel's possession contained four sets of medals:

-one WW1 set awarded to David McLean, who tragically died on a troopship whilst returning to Australia, 

-the second set from WW2 awarded to his son, David H.C. McLean,

-a third set from WW1 awarded to Frank William Gibson, 

-and finally another WWI group to Frank's brother, Percival Thomas Gibson which included Percival's Death Plaque.

Along with all these medals was a letter that the Ships Chaplain wrote to David McLean's widow, a WW1 Returned From Active Service badge, a Widow's and a female relatives badges and school children's Peace Medalet.

It was while tracking the two families that Bill realised they were linked, David H.C. McLean and Frank had married sisters, Amy and Alice. The two couples went their separate ways and neither had any children.

One of the principles we follow is to always try to keep family medals together, thus the obvious choice now was to search for the next of kin of their brother Alfred, one of whose sons was killed in Malaya in 1942, while another, Henry, was a POW on the Burma Thai railway.

From all this Bill tracked down Alfred's grand daughter Kaye and has since rung Kel to give him the news and connect him with Kaye.

When Stan Savige sat down with other WW1 Veterans and formed Legacy to look after the widows and children of deceased servicemen and woman, we would I like to think he had people like Kel Gulliver in mind.

The full collection included:

David McLean WW1 Medals - QSA, 1914-15 Star, BWM and Victory Medal.

DHC McLean  WWII Medals - ASM 1939-1945, 39-45 War Medal, and a LSGCM.

Frank Gibson WW1 Medals - BWM and Victory.

Percival Gibson WW1 Medals - BWM and Victory, also his death plaque (pictured).

1 School children's Medalet.

Returned From Active service badge.

Female relatives badge.

Widow's Badge.

The returned medal tally is now 962.

195 John (Jack) Fothergill

I usually use this blog to tell the story of returns that we have made. Every so often, I use it to get some exposure for medals we have in a hope that a family will come across the entry. This strategy has worked in the past.

This particular search is for the family of John Fothergill, more commonly know as Jack. Jack was a tram worker in Melbourne prior to the war. His parents address is originally given as Euroa but they later moved to St Kilda. He is a very early enlistee, signed up on 14 August 1914 and has the regimental number 195 for 6th Battalion. After training in Egypt, he landed at Gallipoli at about 1000 on 25 April 1915. He was injured that afternoon and was seen walking back towards the beach. Jack was never seen again and later classified as killed in action. He has no known grave. Jack’s service record has copies of the correspondence between his parents and the AIF in an effort to try to discover what happened to him.
As I started researching Jack, I came across a number of Internet references to him, mainly linked to Dr Michael McKernan and the research he has already done. What Dr McKernan discovered is that each year from 1916 to 1948 his parents put an In Memoriam notice in The Argus newspaper. Dr McKernan wrote a piece for the National Archives of Australia magazine about Jack. The article is on page 5. From this data, I know that his parent names were Robert and Isabella. Robert died in 1939 and Isabella in 1948. Some of the notices mention a brother and sisters but I have not worked out their names.
I have Jack’s Memorial Plaque and hope that this entry might assist in locating his family.

Update on 8 May 11 - photos added.

Charles Alfred Heather

I sometimes get referrals from the most unlikely place. A couple of weeks ago I received an email at work telling me about a request in the Herald News Paper for any information about an AIF soldier. A lady had his memorial plaque and had run out of leads to locate his family.

I contacted the Herald and offered to help. A couple of days later the lady conducting the search dropped me a line with the number and name of the soldier. From there I found this information:

HEATHER, Private, CHARLES ALFRED, 850. 8th Bn. Australian Infantry, A.I.F. Killed in action 4th July 1915. Son of Edward John and Ada Main Heather, of 415, High St., Kew, Victoria, Australia. Native of Bournemouth, England. II. C. 28.

There was nothing in any of the archives of the contemporary papers to give me a clue and since Charles was not married there were no children to track down. It turned out his father's name was all I needed. I found one Internet reference to Edward John Heather which gave a name and number of a family member in Brisbane. I provided all this information to the lady with the plaque and sure enough it was the Right connection. Below is a photo of Heather's plaque.

The returned tally is now 619.

4520 Teddy McLean

A little over two years ago I was contacted by Alan Kitchen from the Family and Friends of the First AIF Inc who had obtained the Victory medal of 4520 Teddy Arthur McLean 3rd Bn AIF. McLean died of wounds on 4 Mar 17.
Alan was keen to see this medal returned to the family for the following reasons:

• 'He was wounded in the same action when my Uncle was KIA 2356 T.H.Kitchen .
• He was one of three brothers,
• They lived very near from where my uncle & Dad grew up in Waterloo and possibly went to the same school Cleveland St in Surrey Hills.'

Bill , assisted by the Yuku team, did some extraordinary detective work which led to locating McLean's great nephew, David. When Bill spoke to David it turned out that he had all the other items that are associated with a WWI soldier who died of wounds. He has Teddy's memorial plaque and scroll. A photo of the scroll is below. David also has all the letters that Teddy's brother sent home. David has also provide us with a photo of Teddy.



The returned medal tally is now 580.
The family of Teddy McLean also had his memorial plaque so now all the items have been reunited. (Added 6 Feb 10).

KIA Fromelles

914 Albert James Roberts was a member of 24th Bn AIF who fought at the Battle of Fromelles in August 1916. He was initially reported as missing and then KIA following a court of inquiry. He has no know grave and is listed on this website.

The Battle of Fromelles has received considerable attention recently with the discovery of an unmarked burial site at Pheasant Wood near Fromelles containing 250 Australian soldiers. The ADF is currently managing a project to re-inter the remains of these soldiers in a proper war graves cemetery. My friends Tim L and Sandra P are also heavily involved in this project, this is their website.

This return is not a medal but the memorial plaque that was presented to families who lost during WWI.

The medal returned tally is now 575.