A RELIC FROM MONTBREHAIN

BY LEIGH GILBURT

A recent discovery in a French village returns home.

In 2019, a local of Montbrehain, France, and an amateur battlefield collector Thomas Frischknect unearthed a small inscribed metallic disc. Thomas is a passionate collector and over the past eight years has uncovered objects ranging from belt buckles, buttons and brass sockets to helmets and bayonets. On the day he discovered this disc, Thomas was working with his metal detector in a private field—with the owner’s permission—on the northern outskirts of Montbrehain. The disc he found belonged to Australian Private Walter Leonard Cooper who served with the 4th Mechanical Transport Company, a support unit stationed in Montbrehain around October/ November 1918. The disc contains all of the essential information needed to identify Private Cooper’s body in a worst-case scenario.

Thomas Frischknect with the identity disc c 2019–21

Image courtesy of Thomas Frischknect

The first formal identifications for the bodies of Australian service personnel were issued during the Boer War (1899–1902). Soldiers were given a tape strip to be carried in their pocket which would be used to identify their body if they were severely wounded or killed. During the First World War (1914–18) this system was upgraded to something a little more robust—two fiberboard discs inscribed with the service person’s name, service number or regimental number as well as their religion and unit.

We know little about the origins of Private Cooper’s disc nor how it was lost. It appears to be handmade rather than an official issue. Private Cooper survived the war and returned to Melbourne in 1919. He passed away in 1962 at the Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital.

In 2021, Thomas contacted Shrine staff member Michael Ganey. Michael is the great nephew of Captain Austin Mahoney, an officer killed at Montbrehain, and is active in promoting awareness and commemoration of the battle. Thomas found Michael through a Facebook group that Michael had set up to arrange the 2018 joint French and Australian centenary commemorations. With the assistance of Google Translate they arranged to return the disc to Australia.

Following consultation with Private Cooper’s descendants, Michael and Thomas have donated the identity disc to the Shrine. It is now housed in a place that already shares a very special connection to the Battle of Montbrehain.

Leigh Gilburt is Production Coordinator at the Shrine of Remembrance.