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Thursday, sday, 14 January, 2016
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The What Year In Review made news in 2015 SEE INSIDE
Spirit of service By LACHLAN MOORHEAD OUR people of the year are long dead. But age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. In 2015, on the eve of the Anzac Centenary, Star News paid tribute to the local men and women who put their lives on the line to serve during WWI. Many of them never returned to the suburbs of Berwick, Narre Warren, Cranbourne and their surrounds, the places they once called home. But within our pages their stories came to life, reinforcing not only their rightful place in local history but also as significant chapters in Anzac lore. Readers were told of the baker’s boys – eight men employed by local Narre Warren baker Donald Hartley Rowe, who all enlisted to fight in World War I. A November 1915 edition of the Berwick News reported their names as Harry McGuire, Alf Rooney, Harold Johnstone, Jack Lyons, Fred Lewis, Vic Chitts, Reg Currie and Geo Forrester. Narre Warren and District Family History Group member Jane RivettCarnac spent weeks poring over old records to find out who these eight men were, and helped the News unearth their stories. Some proved easier to identify then others. Mr Rowe, the local baker, is recorded on an electoral roll as having left the Narre Warren district by 1925. We also learned about the Kent brothers, two Narre Warren siblings whose lives were both claimed in the Great War. The first of the Narre Warren siblings to perish in battle was Alfred Ernest Kent, killed in action on 5 May 1916, four weeks after the lance-corporal had sailed from Alexandria to Marseilles. He was 41.
This photo shows nurse Jessie Traill, holding her bicycle loaded with painting equipment, somewhere in the south of France.
BERWICK
PEOPLE OF THE
YEAR
2015 Right: A photo of Sergeant George Arthur Forrester, one of eight men employed by the Narre Warren baker Donald Hartley Rowe.
Far right: A picture of the Kent family. Norman and Alfred, who were killed during WWI, are pictured in the back of the carriage with their governess. Their brother, Charles, is in the front seat next to Mary and Ada. According to notes collated by the Narre Warren and District Family History Group, Alfred was buried in Y Farm Military Cemetery Bois-Grenier, 4000 yards south of Armentieres. Alfred’s younger brother, Norman Archibald Kent, died from a gunshot wound to the chest he sustained while serving on the Western Front in 1917. Norman was wounded on 12 April and died a day later from the injury. He was buried at the Vaulx Main Dressing Station, one and a quarter miles northeast of Bapaume, France. On his tombstone were inscribed the words “Son of A.B. and M.A. Kent Narre Warren, died for King and Country”.
With each story, with each act of bravery, we were continually reminded of the sobering tragedy of war. Rupert Bethune, a Cranbourne State School student, was one of the soldiers to be left behind on the battlefields, never forgotten by his mother Anne Meade when he was killed at only 27 years of age. A private in the 21st Battalion, 8th Reinforcements, when he first enlisted, Rupert died as a lance-corporal serving in the 59th battalion on 19 July 1916. He remains buried in France along with around 3000 other Australian soldiers who were killed on the Western Front during the battle of Fromelles.
Stories were also told of living relatives whose ancestors fought. Carole-Ann Kerford shared a special bond with her late grandfather – she was the first person he really opened up to following his experiences in World War II. It’s with this unique relationship in mind that Carole-Ann from Cranbourne North trekked the Kokoda Track last year. Meanwhile we learned that Harkaway always served as a constant in the life of nurse Jessie Traill, both before and after her service in WWI. When one reads the notes, it’s clear
that in her later life the talented artist Jessie spent much of her time at home in Harkaway, finding sanctuary in the five-acre bush block she had bought in 1912 with her sister, Elsie. Sanctuary, perhaps, from the three and a half years of service she’d given as a Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurse (VAD) at the military hospital in Rouyen, France, from 1915. In 2015 the News paid tribute to the fallen soldiers, the returned soldiers, the nurses, the war widows, the living relatives and so many more who embody the spirit of the Anzac. Lest we forget.
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