The Red Cross also sought information from soldiers on Drosen’s disappearance, and their evidence conflicted with the court of enquiry findings. One soldier said that Drosen was evacuated to a casualty clearing station, where he later died from his wounds. Another claimed he was blown to bits.4 Only one thing seemed certain: he was dead. A telegram informed Drosen’s mother, Eliza, of her son’s death. Weeks earlier, her younger son, Ernest, had been wounded at Pozières. It is hard to know how she came to terms with George’s death so soon afterward. The family’s in memoriam notice in The Argus in 1917 — ‘Soldiers yes, and heroes too; forget them, no, we never will’ — provides few clues.5 As a schoolboy in the 1930s, George’s nephew Colin Drosen watched Great War veterans march by the Williamstown cenotaph each Anzac Day, oblivious to his uncle’s fate. ‘It wasn’t much talked about,’ he remembered. Colin was in his eighties before he discovered, on the internet, the details of George’s death. The internet filled the silences that he had experienced as a child: both his father and mother had lost family members in the Great War.6
Privates Robert and Stephen Allen of the 13th Battalion had disappeared during their unit’s failed attack upon Mouquet Farm on 14 August. The evidence of their fate, presented at the court of enquiry in January 1917, was scant. Sergeant Albert Assenhein told the court that he had heard secondhand that Robert had died on the way to the front line, killed by the heavy German bombardment that had fallen for most of the day. On 23 January 1917, the words ‘killed in action’ were stamped in blue ink on Robert’s file, and the family was duly informed. Although their mother, Hester, later received a parcel containing their personal belongings — a few coins, a purse, and a disc — precious little other information was forthcoming.
The shroud of silence lifted when Hester received a letter from her sons’ company commander, Captain Theodore Wells, in March 1917. He apologised for not having written earlier. He explained, as best he could, the circumstances of the boys’ deaths that night. He wrote:
It was one of the glorious charges in which the Australians have participated … Our lads got right across but their losses were very heavy and as the regiments on our flanks failed we had to retire … If you have not yet received information that they are in German hands I think you must make up your mind that they fell gallantly while rushing forward in that glorious charge.7
Captain Wells, it seemed, had written many such letters. He finished kindly, ‘They were well liked by all ranks and were good soldiers and willing fighters. Although they have given up their lives they did their duty nobly and well. Please accept my deepest sympathy.’
The letter at least gave Hester and her daughters, Florrie and Minnie, a more bearable memory of Robert and Stephen to cling to. According to Wells, they died fulfilling their noble duty in the Great War for civilisation. Yet what good came from Hester eventually knowing the crushing truth: that her beloved sons were blown to bits while sheltering in a shallow trench; that their remains were quickly thrown over the parapet; and that they were later buried in a shallow unmarked grave, along with three other soldiers, which could no longer be located?
The Red Cross enquiry into the boys’ disappearance — somewhat delayed because of a backlog of work in the reports department — uncovered more details.
‘Your two poor brothers were between my brother and I. When the shell exploded I knew by the screams that someone had caught it,’ wrote Private Will Hale in response to the Red Cross’s enquiry.
‘They came across with me and were very decent chaps,’ wrote Private Eric McFarlane.8 Hale’s and McFarlane’s letters helped the Red Cross respond to the Allen family’s enquiries into Stephen and Robert’s fate.
Hester placed a simple in memoriam notice in The Sydney Morning Herald on the first anniversary of their death. She appeared to believe that this double tragedy could only have been God’s will: ‘The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ In later years, Hester’s notice simply read: ‘In death they were not divided.’ 9
Sporadic official correspondence continued. Hester was informed in February 1917 that she would be entitled to a fortnightly pension of four pounds. Through 1922 and 1923, she received a Memorial Plaque, a Memorial Scroll, and a Victory Medal for each son, as well as a pamphlet entitled Where the Australians Rest, which aimed to inform families of the location of prominent cemeteries and the care taken to maintain them. The scroll, signed by King George V, contained the perhaps comforting words that they had given up their own lives that others might live in freedom.
James Browne, from Milton, Queensland, also searched for the truth about his son, Sergeant Philip Browne of the 9th Battalion, who had died on 22 July while trying to help some wounded soldiers. He was buried in a makeshift grave, the location of which was later lost in the confusion of battle. James repeatedly wrote to the Base Records Office in search of information about Philip’s disappearance: ‘Any particulars as to his last moments will be greatly appreciated,’ read one handwritten letter dated October 1916.10 The replies from the overworked clerks always seemed the same: ‘No details are available. They will be furnished at first opportunity.’
In January 1917, Philip’s belongings — including his lucky boomerang charm, his prayer book, and his New Testament bible — were returned to James and Jessie. In the same month, they received the letter from Philip’s friend and fellow soldier Freddie Barbour, which explained the circumstances of his death.11 Curiously, they also received a letter from the minister for defence, Senator George Pearce, who sympathised with their loss. The letter concluded: ‘I trust that your remaining sons at the Front will go through this terrible ordeal unscathed and return to you safe and sound.’12
Despite the small consolations of Philip’s kit being returned and receiving Freddie Barbour’s letter, James’s continuing search for details about the circumstances of his son’s death and final resting place continued to be fruitless. ‘We are very anxious indeed to find out how he died, whether any friends were with him or any message left,’ James wrote to the Base Records Office in October 1916. ‘What I want is to be advised is as to the best way, if there is any way to get this information.’13 No news came.
‘It is now six months since he was killed and there is no further information received beyond the bare facts that he was killed,’ pleaded James in another letter in January 1917. ‘We are still anxious for further particulars as to where he was buried.’
On 22 May 1917, Toowoomba Grammar School officially unveiled its ‘magnificent’ bronze-and-copper War Honour Board to those old boys, like Philip Browne, who had served in the Great War. If James and Jessie had attended the opening they would have heard former head of the school the Honourable Littleton Ernest Groom express his ‘mingled feelings of sorrow, of sympathy, of admiration, of pride’ in unveiling the memorial.14
A few months after the unveiling, on 21 July 1917, James and Jessie placed a simple in memoriam notice for Philip in The Brisbane Courier. It was conspicuous among the other notices that day in that it contained no poetry or verse. It simply read: ‘In loving memory Sergeant Philip Gerald Browne, killed in action in France, July 22 1916, age 21.’15
James’s correspondence with the Base Records Office continued. He maintained a dignified and respectful tone in the nine letters he sent them between 1916 and 1922, despite the anguish and frustration he must have felt. How could the Australian Imperial Force simply lose Philip? No doubt James and Jessie must have contemplated why they had signed Philip’s consent forms back in May 1915. One can imagine their feelings as they awoke each morning wondering whether there would be any fresh news about what had happened to their son.
James continued writing to Base Records well into the 1920s, his focus shifting from searching for details about his son’s death to making sure he was suitably commemorated, even though he had no known grave. He wrote on November 1922, ‘As I understand
that the grave of my son has not been found will you let me know if anything has been done or is being done by way of a head stone and inscription to keep his name on record same as those whose grave has been found.’16 James even furnished details as to where his son’s unmarked grave might be found, enclosing a sketch he had been given by a returned soldier. ‘We have had so many disappointments that we are not placing much reliance on same,’ he wrote wearily. Needless to say, his endeavours again bore little fruit.
Eventually, the Australian Graves Detachment and the British Labour Corps, responsible for scouring the battlefields and locating, burying, and re-burying the Australian and British dead, disbanded. This was traumatic for the thousands of families whose sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers were still missing. In 1921, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that a Mr Windeyer of Sydney proposed a meeting of influential Australians in London to protest against the cessation of exhumation of war graves and to urge that systematic work be continued in those sectors — including Pozières — where the dead were known to be predominantly Australian.17 The Australian government discussed alternative arrangements, such as paying a bounty to French farmers who uncovered any remains on their farms; wisely, they didn’t pursue the plan.
It is hard to imagine how parents such as Browne’s must have felt in their fruitless search for information about their missing sons, although Ted Rule’s encounter with John Newton Wanliss, the father of a missing soldier, perhaps provides some insight. The convalescing Rule vividly described the visit, which occurred in 1918 in a hospital in Britain, in Jacka’s Mob: ‘I’d heard of the old man, a splendid old Victorian gentleman, and how he had followed his only boy across from Australia; settling down in London, he counted the days until the boy’s leave period brought them together again.’18 Unfortunately, they never reunited, as Wanliss’s son died in 1917. Rule remembered that Wanliss was dazed with grief; he thought and dreamt of nothing else but his boy. Rule recounted:
Afterward he haunted the hospital to interview each wounded man coming from the battalion. He asked the same questions a hundred times, he heard the same answers and was never satisfied. Seated by my bed, he no sooner introduced himself than he asked: ‘When did you see Harold last?’
Parents such as Wanliss would have read with anguish the intermittent newspaper reports of missing soldiers’ remains being uncovered. In 1937, another soldier’s remains were discovered near Pozières; a tarnished aluminium disc was found on the body, which helped identity it as the remains of James Connelly of the 52nd Battalion.19 The officer in charge of Base Records forwarded the disc to Connelly’s family, suggesting that it would be ‘valued on account of its former intimate association with the deceased’. James’s brother, William, replied a few weeks later: ‘Myself and the rest of the family can now say we have something personal belonging to him which he had at the end.’20
Yet the discovery of items such as rings and watches on a soldier’s remains didn’t always guarantee their identification. In 1937, the bodies of two Australian soldiers were unearthed in a shallow grave near Pozières. A nine-carat gold ring engraved ‘T.R. to A.R.’ was found in the pocket of one soldier’s tunic, so the Imperial War Graves Commission instigated a search in Australia through the Base Records Office to identify the soldier. Based on the burial location and the ring’s inscription, veteran Leslie Styles believed the remains were of his mate, John Rowan, whom he helped to bury in July 1916.21 Based on Styles’ claim, Base Records contacted Rowan’s widow, Margaret, seeking further help, but their enquiries proved inconclusive.22 In the same year, another Australian soldier’s remains were exhumed near Pozières. A wristwatch engraved ‘From M.P. to C.P.’ provided Base Records with some clues to assist their investigation; however, by the end of that year the soldier’s identity still remained a mystery.23 There are no records indicating whether the soldiers’ remains were ever identified.
Ninety-odd years on, there is little that connects us with George Drosen, Robert and Stephen Allen, or Philip Browne beyond their names chiselled on the Portland limestone memorial panels to the missing located at the Australian National Memorial, on a quiet hill just outside Villers-Bretonneux. By reaching up and running one’s fingertips over the coarse panels, the etched letters of each man’s name, the visitor achieves, at best, a fleeting connection to the lives and hopes of these young men who left their sunburnt country generations earlier with high ideals, only to die horribly in a foreign land. There are 10,700 names etched on these vast panels, which are located only a few miles from Pozières. Add to this the 6176 Australian names etched on the walls of the Menin Gate at Ypres, Belgium, and the tragic magnitude of Australia’s missing on the Western Front hits home.
Families yearned to express their grief for lost ones, but the traditional practice of visiting a grave was rarely possible. Travelling to France was beyond the means of most, especially widows such as Eliza Drosen and Hester Allen. They sought alternatives, such as visiting shrines and memorials, which became quiet places to reflect. Communities formed committees, raised money, and selected sites for these memorials. Within ten years, there were about 1500 memorials located in virtually every town and suburb in Australia.24
In 1917, the Australian government endorsed Charles Bean’s idea of creating a national museum to commemorate the dead of the Great War. He wished to affirm the identity of each dead man not as a soldier but as a citizen of Australia, as his own family and friends knew him. The agreed response was to etch each man’s name into panels contained within a Hall of Memory. It took another 12 years before the design was agreed. Finally, in 1941, in the midst of another world crisis, a permanent war memorial opened.
Memorials were constructed on the Pozières battlefield. In September 1917, Birdie unveiled one dedicated to the 1st Australian Division at Pozières, located near the pillbox at Gibraltar. Another was erected at the highest point of the Pozières ridge, where the old windmill once stood. Charles Bean composed the words on the memorial plaque, which explained that this sacred acre ‘was captured on August 4th by Australian troops who fell more thickly on this ridge than any other battlefield of the war’.25
The Sydney Morning Herald reported in 1920 that French authorities were ‘genuinely anxious’ to assist Australia to secure the land it desired for memorials, while French notaries sometimes refused to accept payment for professional work relating to Australian soldiers. One of the few times authorities refused permission was when Australia sought to purchase a six-acre site near Gibraltar, which locals pointed out would obliterate part of the road from Pozières to Thiepval and encompass part of the village. Locals compromised and agreed on a one-acre site. The memorial park was established after an Australian officer searched out and negotiated the purchase with many owners, some whom submitted inordinate claims for their land value.26
Not all memorials in France were of bricks and mortar. In 1918, the Bishop of Amiens promised all Australians that his dioceses would piously keep the tombs of its heroes.27 The promise was kept. Many French villagers adopted the graves of fallen soldiers as if they were their own sons. Twice a year, they visited each military cemetery in their dioceses to honour those who had travelled from all parts of the world to fight on their soil.
According to Jay Winter in Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning, for some widows, the thought of commemorating the dead was a distant second to feeding a family that had lost its main provider. ‘I think it would be more fitting to put the money to better use for those that are living and finding it hard to live these days,’ wrote Mrs Hinds, after she was asked to provide her dead husband’s particulars for the country’s honour roll. ‘Why worry over the dead, I’m sure that they would not wish for it, if they only knew how we who are left are treated.’28
‘I appreciate my husband’s name being erected on the “Hall of Memory” immensely but what about those left behind,’ wrote another.
Mary McNeil, the widow of
Pozières veteran Percy Blythe, was one of those left behind. Percy desired, should he be killed, that she live with his parents. Instead, she moved in with another man, Leslie Thomas. It bitterly upset Percy’s mother. In her eyes, Mary was an adulteress, betraying the last wishes of her beloved son. She wrote to Base Records in 1922, claiming that Mary didn’t deserve Percy’s Memorial Plaque.29 Not that Mary would most likely have cared — what could she do with it? In an era when few women of her class worked, having a family provider mattered more.
The naming of places or landmarks was another way of honouring those who died at Pozières. As soldier settlements sprung up around the country, some streets were named Pozières, Amiens, Albert, or Birdwood. There’s even a town in rural Queensland called Pozières. Returned soldier Arthur Watkinson established a small four-hectare farm in northern Queensland and called it Mouquet Farm. He never told anyone why; in fact, he never talked about the war. Years later, some of his farmland was converted into a public park and, fittingly, a large sign explained the significance of the name. For Arthur, it was a quiet tribute to his 15th Battalion mates who died while trying to take the farm in August 1916.
First Battalion veterans formed their own association, and from 1935 commemorated Pozières Day every year, with a memorial service on a Sunday in July.30
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