Monday, October 29, 2007

The Story of Roy James Gladstone Burr

Some of the soldiers who appear on the Quorn memorial were not exactly natives of Quorn. Roy Burr was born in Glanville in Adelaide. He also enlisted there as well. At the time of his enlistment in August 1915 Roy was working as a labourer and was aged 23. The link with Quorn came later as his parents, who were living in Eudunda at the time of Roy’s enlistment, moved to Quorn before the end of the war. After initial training in Adelaide Roy embarked as a Private on the "Malwa" for the Middle East on 2nd of December.

No record exists of when Roy got to Egypt, but he was admitted in to the Abbassia Dermatological Hospital in Cairo. Now, most of the soldiers who left for overseas behaved quite well but a few got themselves into various forms of trouble. Roy might have been one of those, but far from the worst (as we shall see). “Dermatological” hospitals of the First World War were actually VD clinics! This was in mid January of 1917 and he stayed at the hospital for about 2 months, finally being released on 16 March to rejoin the 12th reinforcements for the 12th Battalion. In May he was promoted from Private to Driver.

In June Roy embarked on the Cunard liner the SS Ivernia to travel to France. He disembarked in Marseille a week later.

The SS Ivernia had been built in 1899 as a liner and spent the next 14 years plying passengers between the United Kingdom and United States. At the start of the war it was converted to a troop ship. A year after delivering Roy to France the Ivernia was torpedoed with the loss of 121 lives near Cape Matapan in the Mediterranean. By that time Roy was dead too.

Shortly after arrival in France, Roy found himself back in hospital. This time from an apparent fight he had got into. On the 30 July he was released from hospital and joined the 52nd Battalion.

The next and last record we have of Roy is a note that he was wounded on 3-4 of September 1916. However as time goes past he can’t be found. On the 20 October he was posted as “wounded and missing” as there must be no records received from the Germans of prisoners with his name listed. A month after that his name is put on the “supernumary” list as he had been absent for three months.

Finally a military inquest on 24 April 1917 returned the verdict “killed in action” on the original date he went missing.

Roy was never found and his name is now on the Australian Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. The Australian memorial was built to commemorate the 10000 Australian first war soldiers who have no other known graves. While his own personal records are sparse it is possible to infer where Roy fell. 52nd Battalion was part of the 13th Brigade of the Fourth Division of the AIF. During 1916 the Fourth Division was involved in fighting on the Somme, chiefly at Pozieres, Mouquet Farm and Flers. The Australian army took 23,000 casualties (both killed and wounded) in the area around Pozieres between July and September of 1916. It is highly likely that Roy was one of these casualties.
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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

A walk by sea

As the weather is getting warmer it was a nice night to go for a walk along the beach to Brighton. We found this sand sculpture of a boat and anchor.
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Monday, October 22, 2007

The story of James Stanley Harden.

James was born in Quorn but enlisted in Adelaide where his parents were living. James described himself as a driver although at discharge he claimed he was a baker. At enlistment he was 19 years old when he was one of the first enlistees enrolling in August 1914 and getting serial number 25. At enrollment James was 86kg (189lb) and 171cm (five feet, seven half inches) and his medical examination noted that he already had a scar on his chest. Within a month of enlisting James was promoted from private to lance corporal in the 10th Battalion and by November he was aboard HMAT Ascanius on his way from Adelaide.

In January of 1915 he was admitted to the 2nd General Hospital AIF suffering from flu which he overcame and was released a fortnight later.

James was one of the original Diggers at Gallipoli. He was promoted to Corporal in the field on 28th April, only three days after the landing. Exactly one month later on 28th May, James was wounded while near Gaba Tepe. A Turkish shell exploded nearby causing terrible wounds to his upper legs and pelvis with some damage to his face too. The wound was so bad his leg was amputated on the beach at ANZAC cove.
He was shipped out to the 1st General Base Hospital in Heliopolis (Cairo) which he reached ten days later on the 7th June.

He was examined in Heliopolis in July 1915 where his wounds were noted as almost healed. However he was assessed as totally incapable of earning a living and declared unfit for further active service.

At the end of July, on the 27th, James was released from the hospital at Heliopolis and the next day was aboard the HS Hororata, leaving the middle east. James passed through Western Australia on is return and was finally discharged on 20 march, 1916 from the 7th Australian General Hospital in Keswick.

On discharge James received a pension. Initially it was 3 pounds, 8 shillings per fortnight but this was reduced to 2 pounds, 11 shillings from September 1916.
James was eligible for all three service medals but by the time they became available he had already succumbed to his ill health. His mother, Emily, collected the medals in June and July 1921

Sunday, October 21, 2007

A new project.

When I was a young boy I spent several summers learning to swim in the small country town of Quorn. To the north of the central part of Quorn and next to the playground is the war memorial. Every small and large Australian town has one of these where the names are recorded of the sons (and daughters) of the early 20th century who died in that grim first war. Sometimes these monuments have additional wars added to them with additional casualties. It is rare for the later wars to list as many names as that first world war. On the Quorn monument are listed 40 men who never came back, indeed some came to disappear from the face of the earth totally.

About 10 years ago I was able to get paper copies of the records of my great uncle, one of the names on that monument. At the time I wondered about getting a record for each of those Quorn men to discover what became of them.

Due to great foresight by the historian of the first war (Charles Bean) there is a record held of every Australian soldier who served in that conflict. These records, almost 380 000 of them, are now kept in the National Archives in Canberra and are available electronically making research like this much more practical.

Over the next few months I hope to put a record of each individual on this blog. Their names as inscribed on the monument are:

BURR R.J.G.
BROWN W.C.P.
BELL A.J.
DENNIS F.J.
DIENOFF E.S.
EASTHER L.R.
EASTHER A.B.
EDWARDS F.C.
ELLERY E.
FERGUSON M.N.
GREGOR E.H.
HOOPER G.W.
HAWES J.E.
HAINES H.J.
HAINES C.E.
HOBBS H.H.
JAGO A.L.
KLINGBERG H.T.
KLUGE W.
KING W.
KENEALLY T.C.
LARWOOD W.J.F.
LESLIE L.B.
LEHMANN H.C.
MILLS S.S.
PEARCE A.S.
PARKES A.
PATTEN C.D.
PATTEN G.F.
PILL J.G.
PASCALL H.H.
ROWE W.H.
ROGERS F.P.
SUMMERTON E.A.
STEER E.H.
TWOPENNY T.
WISE F.S.
WRIGHT J.H.
WRIGHT W.B.
WATSON R.J.

The grave shown above is one I fortuitously took a photo of in the West Terrace Cemetery (Adelaide) and belongs to James Harden. He does not appear on the Quorn monument despite being born in that town. James served in the Dardanelles and was horrifically wounded before being sent home and discharged from the army. I have no further record of him but he died not long after this time. James will be the first I cover in greater detail.
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