by Paul Ham
From Flanders fields to London, by ship to Sydney, and then by train to Braidwood, New South Wales, a suitcase containing Horrie’s personal effects finally arrived at the family home a few months after its dispatch. The ‘Valise (Sealed)’ contained:
2 Wallets, Letters, Postcards, Socks, Handkerchiefs, Ties, Collars, 2 Books (Fragments of France), 2 Towels, 1 Pr. Gloves, 1 Muffler, 2 Suits Pyjamas, 2 Singlets, 1 Shirt, 1 Pr. Underpants, 1 ‘Sam Browne’ Belt, 1 Pr. Boots, 1 Pr. Leggings, 1 Safety Razor, 2 Shaving Brushes, 1 Brush, 1 Knife, Keys and Chain, 1 Whistle & Lanyard, 2 Razor Strops, 1 Pr. Spurs, 1 Belt, 1 Cap, 1 Fleece Lining, 2 S.D. Tunic, 1 Pr. Slacks, Rosary Beads, 1 Kit Bag.39
Further items arrived in a leather trunk, including his breeches, field glasses, golf balls, letters, postcards, a walking stick and prayer book. The family were informed that the Braidwood branch of the Bank of New South Wales held the original of their son’s will.
Thousands of families received this one-paged document on which their son had typically bequeathed to ‘my mother and father my personal estate’, perfunctorily signed in the cheerful belief that the beneficiaries would never have to read it. On receiving it, the parents’ desolation was complete: many broke, turned to drink, never recovered. Parents who outlived their sons did not ‘move on’ and ‘get closure’, in the callous usage of our times. Back then, people grieved.
Soldiers were listed as ‘missing’ if they failed to report at the Last Post of the day. Most were later recovered, wounded or dead. But a great number disappeared without a trace. During Poelcappelle, for example, an Australian raid on a line of pillboxes in Celtic Wood vanished into thin air: of the 85 men who went into the copse, fourteen walked out unwounded. The rest, it seemed, had ceased to exist: the War Graves Commission could find no trace of these men after the armistice.40 Most of the missing had been obliterated in direct shell hits, making identification of the scattered body parts impossible. Families were duly updated, thus: ‘the soldier who was previously reported missing is now reported Killed in Action’.41
The lists of the missing presumed dead soon entered the tens of thousands. The missing included those whose temporary graves were subsequently destroyed by artillery fire, tanks or battle. By 1918, 559,000 casualties were registered as having no known grave.42
Yet the soldier had existed: here was his kitbag, his military record, his razor and toothbrush. The missing presented governments and military authorities with the awkward question of how to inform the families of their son’s disappearance; and how to commemorate a man whose body had vanished off the face of the earth.
It was eventually decided to carve their names in stone, in several monuments to the missing, the most famous of which are the great arch at Thiepval, on the Somme, and the Menin Gate, at the eastern entrance to Ypres, designed by Sir Reginald Blomfield and inaugurated on 24 July 1927. Addressing the ceremony, Belgium’s King Albert said that Ypres had the same meaning for the British that Verdun had for the French.
Not everyone warmed to the imperialist overtones of the Menin Gate’s triumphal design, and his dismay at the monument drove Siegfried Sassoon to compose his incendiary poem, ‘On Passing the New Menin Gate’ – ‘this sepulchre of crime’.43 And yet, great monuments tend to gather affection around them, perhaps in recognition of their awkwardness, or sober grandeur, and Menin Gate has powerfully served the purpose for which it was consecrated: to honour the missing. Inscribed in its panels of white Portland stone are the names of 54,896 soldiers of the British Empire with ‘no known grave’.44 The Last Post is performed here at 8 pm every evening (9 pm in summer), drawing crowds in their hundreds, sometimes thousands.
It would often take months, even years, before the missing were confirmed killed in action. The process was long and heart-rending for families, many of whom would never know what had actually become of their sons, husbands or brothers. One mother’s search for her son’s grave was a minor epic of unfolding despair. In late October 1917, Mrs Anne Alsop, of Winchelsea, Victoria, received a telegram informing her and her husband that their son Fred had been killed in action on 17 October 1917. His personal effects followed. His body had been interred in a temporary grave with two other Australians, a cross marking the spot, according to a letter from Fred’s commanding officer:
It is my painful duty to inform you of the death of your dear son, Frederick … your son, with two other boys, were killed instantaneously by a shell falling on the dugout which they occupied. I must express my deepest sympathy, as a more pleasant boy I could not have had in my section. He was liked by all who came in touch with him. I buried him just beside the cemetery, and a short burial service, which was read over him, was conducted by myself. I have made arrangements to have a cross put on his grave … 45
After the war, Mrs Alsop presumed her son’s remains had been transferred to a permanent grave with a headstone. Unable to afford to travel the great distance to see it, she wrote repeatedly to the Australian Army barracks in Melbourne, Victoria, to ask for a photograph of her son’s permanent resting place. On 2 October 1921, she requested:
Please send me a photo of my son’s grave as I wrote once before for it but got no answers. I do hope and trust you will do me this great favour.
Sincerely,
His Heart-broken
Mother46
A week later, she received a reply from an unnamed major, the ‘Officer in Charge, Base Records, Victoria Barracks, Melbourne’:
Dear Madam …
I regret to state that no photographs of the grave of your son, the late No. 411 Private F.B. Alsop, 24th Machine Gun Company, have yet been received here, but arrangements have been made for three photographs of the graves of our fallen soldiers to be sent, free of charge, as soon as they can be made available. Owing to the magnitude of the task considerable delay is inevitable … 47
Neither the promised photos nor an explanation was forthcoming. So Mrs Alsop wrote again. On 1 May 1923, she received this letter from another unnamed officer at ‘Base Records’:
Dear Madam,
With reference to your communication, I very much regret to inform you that no report of the burial of your son … has been received, and … it must be reluctantly concluded that the Graves Services have not succeeded in locating his resting place … Failing the recovery and identification of the actual remains, it is the intention of the authorities to perpetuate the memory of these fallen by means of collective memorials on which the soldier’s full regimental description and date of death will be inscribed … 48
In other words, shellfire had destroyed her son’s grave and his corpse. She and her husband, like other parents of the missing, received a British Commonwealth Memorial Plaque.
Among the thousands of missing was Lance Sergeant Donald Gordon Douglas, a professional soldier born in Northern Ireland in 1886. Douglas had served in the Boer War, in South-West Africa in 1914, and in Egypt in 1915 and 1916, and had survived one of the worst battles of the Somme, at Delville Wood. He was killed in Flanders on 20 September 1917, and buried in the field. ‘He was struck in the stomach and died almost immediately,’ wrote Douglas’s commanding officer to his parents: ‘your son was a brave and great-hearted man. I feel his loss very much indeed … Sixteen men and myself were all that came out of that action, and all of these wish me to express their sincere sympathy with you in your bereavement.’49 Douglas’s battlefield grave was destroyed, and his name is commemorated on the Menin Gate.
Some families refused to accept that their missing sons were dead. Often, they asked the Red Cross to investigate. This rarely brought good news, such as in the case of Private Matthew H. Austin, from a small mining town in New South Wales. ‘We deeply regret to inform you,’ the Red Cross informed his parents, ‘that we have received an unofficial report which we fear leaves little hope that he is alive … [A witness] stated that he saw your son lying dead on Oct 12th, 1917 at the Regimental Aid Post … apparently killed by a machine gun bullet in the head. Another man r
emarked … “There is poor old Pies” (your son’s nickname).’50
Many parents persisted in hoping their boys were alive against all the evidence. ‘I beg to ask leave for my son 2/Lieut R.H. Taylor who left Canada two years ago,’ a mother wrote to her boy’s commanding officer. ‘He is my only son and I certainly if it is possible want him back on leave as I am not well and I must see him.’ Two days before she wrote this letter, her son, the only boy in a family of seven girls, had been killed in Flanders.
Born in the British colony of Newfoundland in 1892, Richard Taylor had been studying engineering at McGill University when he enlisted in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry. He died of a shell burst on 20 September 1917. His mother refused to believe he had been killed because an earlier notice in the paper had reported him Wounded and Missing. She permitted one of her daughters to volunteer as a nurse on the Western Front, in the hope of finding him. A stretcher-bearer who saw the newspaper report revealed the truth: ‘I found his body … and took his property, including his watch and wallet … No time for burial.’51
Many families lost all or several of their sons. South Australians Fred and Maggie Smith lost six of their seven sons to the war52; Lincolnshire mother Amy Beechey lost five of her eight sons, the biggest single loss to a British family.53 The Gallaher family, from the Bay of Plenty, in New Zealand, had five sons: David and William served in New Zealand units; Charles, Henry and Douglas in Australian ones. All except Charles were killed. In 1905, David had captained the New Zealand All Blacks on their world tour, in which they predictably won every match except one. He married in 1906, and the couple had a daughter in 1908. A foreman in the Auckland Farmers’ Freezing Company, he decided to enlist when he heard that his younger brother Douglas had been killed in France in 1916. David died on 4 October 1917 at the Battle of Broodseinde. His grave at Nine Elms British Cemetery in Flanders lists his age as 41; he was actually about 44 (he always claimed to be three years younger).54
The case of George, Theo and Keith Seabrook was unusual because all three men were killed in the same action, at Polygon Wood, on 20–21 September 1917. ‘I knew two brothers called Seabrook,’ a witness later told the Red Cross. ‘One of them was killed instantly beside me on 20th Sept in front of Ypres.’ He could not say whether it was George’s or Theo’s death he’d witnessed, but felt sure the casualty was ‘the taller of the two’, adding, ‘All brothers were I believe single … one was a good cricketer.’55 Another witness said, ‘Death was instantaneous. They were given Field Burial.’56 It seems a Canadian unit coming up the line had buried George and Theo, ‘as we had no chance of putting our own men under’, said a fellow soldier.57 A friend in the same unit said, ‘I saw [George’s] body put into a shell hole nearby. He was a friend of mine. Knew him well. Came from Sydney. I don’t know if he got any other burial.’58 The third brother, Keith, had been mortally wounded and lay in a casualty clearing station. Their parents were yet to receive the telegrams. Such was the confusion surrounding one set of brothers’ deaths in Third Ypres.
Their mother, Fanny Seabrook, discovered the full story of what happened in increments, over several years. Rumours persisted they had been killed by the same shell, or at Gallipoli, or elsewhere; or that George was still alive and mentally ill. The family would not learn the full story until 1923; they never recovered from the trauma.
In the days following the battle that killed them, confusion reigned: yes, Keith had been confirmed dead, but George was initially reported ‘Wounded’, then ‘Killed in Action’; and Theo was reported ‘Wounded’, then ‘Wounded and Missing’, and finally ‘Killed in Action’. The family received a series of cables to this effect. Neither George’s nor Theo’s remains could be found. The family’s mystification deepened when, on 7 November 1917, Private Tom Bowman, a close friend of the three boys – ‘we were as four brothers and I cannot forget them’, he later wrote59 – sent the Red Cross his diary extracts relating to Keith’s death:
Sept 19. Troops left at midnight for the firing line. Keith (Lieut Seabrook) very pale and anxious, took my final handshake to be very spontaneous and affectionate. 20th Hop over this morning … Keith wounded. 21st Capt Barnett, our Adjutant tells me Keith is dead. 24th We arrive at Rest Camp near Poperinghe and boys tell me ‘Keith was seriously wounded by a phosphorous shell (which also knocked out 8 of his men) …’ Capt Allan our OC sent for me and told me Keith was dead and was buried on the 21st in the Military Cemetery at Poperinghe …
Of the two other brothers, Bowman heard that Theo had been killed and buried in a shell hole. But he had received no ‘authentic news’ of George: ‘His Sergt Major and Quartermaster Sgt tell me they have heard many times unofficially that he is dead but others tell me he is not dead and until I get Official news I do not feel inclined to write their parents. Happy thought.’60
When the family saw Bowman’s diary, Fanny Seabrook clung to the hope that there had been a mistake. George’s tag had not been found, perpetuating the mother’s hopes that her eldest son had survived, despite the fact that she had received an inventory of his personal effects on 12 November.61
‘[I]t is all very confusing to our minds,’ she wrote to Army Base Records in Melbourne on 27 November 1917, ‘& if you could explain it to me we would be much obliged and grateful. The blow of losing our three sons in one battle is terrible and we are heartbroken.’62
The army replied a week later. George and Theo Seabrook had been officially ‘reported killed in action, 20/9/17’, the officer wrote. ‘I regret to state there is no room to suppose that a mistake has been made …’63
Still holding a candle for George, Mrs Seabrook asked the Red Cross to initiate an inquiry, with the help of Tom Bowman. In February 1918, they confirmed that Keith had died of multiple shell wounds and a fractured skull; and the two other brothers had been killed in action. George and Theo’s bodies still had not been found. A witness told the Red Cross that he had seen George’s body in a shell hole.
That did not satisfy the indomitable Fanny. In March 1918 she wrote to the army to request photographs of her sons’ graves, on the understanding that these would be freely supplied. They were no longer free. A Belgian agency now handled the photos of war graves, as one scrupulously efficient captain informed her:
it is not the intention of the Government to furnish next-of-kin with photographs of the completed graves of our soldiers, but copies of the permanent headstones may be obtained on application to [a Mr Kemp with a Belgian address], who will supply three (3) postal card sized prints … for the sum of seven shillings and sixpence (7/6), plus postage 3d.
In any case, she would receive no photos of George’s and Theo’s graves because the Commonwealth War Graves Commission had not succeeded in finding their remains. Now officially ‘missing’, their names would be inscribed on the Menin Gate.64
The messy aftermath continued to plague the family. In March 1918, Keith’s personal effects arrived in Sydney (the parcel included two gold boomerangs, a whistle, a compass and a cigarette case).65 Theo’s were still at large, in pursuit of which, on 3 July, Fanny flourished her pen again: had her son’s belongings been sent, she wondered, and could the army confirm a report she’d received from a soldier in George’s unit who had seen his body ‘half-buried’ in a shell hole?66 The army replied that Theo’s kit had not yet arrived but that ‘several heavy consignments’ were en route, ‘and there may be something included for you’.67 George’s identity disc had not yet been recovered, it added.
After the armistice, the Exhumation Units entered the battle-field. Fanny Seabrook hoped for news of her missing sons’ bodies. They found nothing. They could only say that George’s remains most likely lay north of Polygon Wood, where the battle occurred, and not – as the official records stated – ‘in the vicinity of Westhoek and Anzac Ridge’.68
A letter from the Seabrooks’ commanding officer on 10 December 1919 should have defused the mother’s growing obsession with the fate of George: ‘You
r son George and his other brother [Theo] were killed during the attack … I can only think that George and his brother were so upset at Keith’s death that they exposed themselves unduly in seeking their vengeance on the enemy …’69
If they were dead, where were their bodies, she continued to ask herself. The question tormented her. Like many parents, she had no conception of modern warfare or the effect of a direct hit by a howitzer shell on the human body. On 6 July 1921, she fired off another letter to the army: ‘I am much concerned at no word having reached us to the whereabouts of the Bodies [sic] of our two eldest sons …’70 Wearying of this unshakable woman, the army promptly replied that ‘an intensive search is now being made over all old battlefields with a view to locating unregistered graves’.71
They found nothing. Fanny never stopped believing that her eldest son was alive. On 21 April 1923, almost six years after their deaths, the Australian Army confirmed that the remains of George and Theo were still missing and speculated as to the reason, in a letter of brutal honesty, to the three brothers’ father: ‘It is quite possible all traces of their graves were obliterated by shell fire …’72
Fanny Seabrook even refused to accept this; by now, the poor woman was delusional. On 14 March 1925, she wrote to the Defence Department to ask why no photograph of Keith’s grave had arrived from Belgium and whether the Department had received any news of the bodies of her other sons: ‘After all these years surely something should be known. This is very heart-breaking for us.’73 She died on 28 August 1929, of stomach cancer, still clinging to the belief that her eldest son lived.
The Germans were similarly clearing the battlefield of their dead, of whom an enormous number had accumulated on the ridges of the Salient throughout the summer and autumn months. Of their 220,000 casualties sustained between 21 May and 10 December 1917, the heaviest concentration was in the first ten days of October, with 9034 men killed and missing and 14,217 wounded. The Germans were running out of manpower, unlike the Allies, who would soon be able to draw on the great pool of American manpower and the rehabilitated French Army. The British attacks were draining Germany’s male lifeblood, as Haig intended. At this rate, the Allies would ultimately ‘win’, though at a cost in lives that Lloyd George and posterity would refuse to accept.
