10 Village Voice February 2017
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Fight for soldier to b with a war grave is n
THE wheels have been set in motion for the final resting place of a First World War soldier buried in an unmarked grave in Melbourne Cemetery to be given an official headstone bearing his name – nearly a century after he died aged 23. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission is asking for anyone directly related to the soldier named Wallace Hatton to get in touch, so his grave can be fittingly marked and his sacrifice honoured. Private Hatton fought in the First World War in the Notts & Derby Regiment of the Sherwood Foresters. His name is marked on the Melbourne cenotaph, along, poignantly, with his one son William Wallace – whom he would only have met as a baby – and who was Melbourne’s first Second World War casualty when he was killed in France in 1940, aged 21. Although Wallace’s grave may at one time have been marked with a wooden cross, there is not one there now and a simple urn is all that marks the spot. Local researcher Adrian Earp submitted Wallace’s details to the commission so his case could be considered for a war grave. The commission commemorates those who died in world wars one and two – the end date for the first world war being August 31, 1921, as
hostilities were not officially declared over until then. Born in Melbourne in 1896, Wallace was the only child of market gardener William Hatton and wife Lizzie. Existing details from his early life tell us the family was living in Victoria Street in 1901 and that by the time he was 15, in 1911, he was himself employed as a market gardener and living in Commerce Street with his father – his mother at the time living in Blackpool with her sister and brother-in-law Frederick Loake, a boot manufacturer from Melbourne.
How the book took
Author of the book ADRIAN EARP gives a background of how he gathered the information.
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l Wallace’s unmarked grave in Melbourne cemetery.
MY RESEARCH into WW1 casualties carried out about four or five years ago showed that very few service records of Melbourne men had survived the fires of the 1940 Blitz. Very little information regarding Wallace was clear except for the facts that he was listed with the Melbourne men serving in November 1914, was a Sherwood Forester reported missing in 1918, and who was recorded on the War Memorial. Even the Sherwood Foresters’ archive only recorded his service number but not the battalion in which he served. When his death was traced to late 1919 it seemed that he was probably one of several men who had succumbed to the Spanish Flu pandemic. The breakthrough in finding out more came with the memorial card
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which was found by MHRG member Jean Grimley among her late mother’s possessions. This in itself was a mystery since there was no family connection with Wallace Hatton. Later research showed that Jean’s grandfather, William Henry Walker, had obviously been a friend and comrade in the same battalion since their service numbers were consecutive. The memorial card contained not only the only known photograph of Wallace but the fact that he had died of wounds received on the first day of the German spring offensive. This along with the proof provided by the death certificate was sufficient for the CWGC, after verification by Army researchers, to grant him War Grave status in November 2014. Following an article in the Village Voice, I was contacted by Michael Loake regarding a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings from WW1 which had been compiled by
his gran who ha aunt. This b erences picture showin 1916. T elsewhe after th land du More also con count o life as count, w dictated blind W very few ten by therefor The C uous pr morials cut at t is hoped Melbou for inst
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Wallace joined up on Octo posted to Ireland at the tim been then hospitalised in la on February 27, 1917, after bury Plain. On October 21 in ried in Melbourne a hosier Moore. Wallace was injured in th first day of the German Spr a prisoner of war. He was o
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