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The Moorabool News – 15 March, 2022 Page 5
Amid battle, love letters arrived at Lily Vale By Lachlan Ellis After many delays, the unique story of one of Ballan’s most decorated WWI veterans has finally been launched in book form, at the Ballan RSL Club. Mark Latchford is the grandson of Ernest Latchford, and every week, irrespective of location, intensity of battle or injury Ernest wrote to his fiancé, Linda Dehnert. She received hundreds of pages of correspondence. In between the conflicts and horrors of the battles, he wrote romantically of his courtship of Linda and the joy of life at home on the farm. Linda Latchford (née Dehnert), died in 1976. After her death, Mark and his father cleaned out Linda’s home, where Mark discovered trunks full of his grandfather’s letters, addressed to Linda in Lily Vale, Ballan. It wasn’t until five years ago that Mark sat down and read his grandfather’s letters from WWI and beyond – uncovering the remarkable story of his time on the Western Front in France, a secret mission in Persia, and after the war, as the only Australian deployed to Siberia during the Russian Civil War. Mark Latchford travelled all the way down from New South Wales to attend the Ballan book launch on February 19, and said Ballan had been an integral part of his family’s history. “I was only expecting a handful of people to come, because of COVID, and the fact we’d rescheduled the launch I think four times in the end. But I suspect we had about 40 people there…and the questions from the Ballan audience were terrific,” he told the Moorabool News. “It was really interesting to ‘come back’ to Ballan I suppose. I’ve never been to Ballan…I made the decision to call the book ‘Letters to Lily Vale’ because that’s the destination, but I thought, ‘what’s the mysterious place these letters go to?’ “It was sort of the culmination of a long journey, which started with opening the first envelope which was addressed to Lily Vale in Ballan.” Mark is passionate about history, and said the articulate and vivid way his grandfather wrote convinced him the letters needed to be transcribed. “The letters themselves are extremely well-written, given my grandfather didn’t really have a proper education. He went to school, but he dropped out. The letters really captured the
essence of some of the horrors of what people were living through, especially when he was on the Western Front,” Mr Latchford said. “I thought, people need to hear this. The other motivation was that my grandfather’s story is unique in Australian military history, in the sense that not only did he serve on the Western Front as did thousands of men, but he was also involved in a rather secret mission in northwest Persia with about only 20 other Australians, trying to save the Armenians and Assyrians being persecuted by the Ottomans. “Most interesting to me was that he also, instead of coming home at the end of the war, signed up for more. He was the only Australian who went to Siberia.” The book is over 300 pages and includes not just Ernest Latchford’s letters, but background on relevant theatres and events of the war. Today, descendants of Ernest Latchford still reside at the Lily Vale propery. If you’d like to purchase a copy of ‘Letters to Lily Vale’, you can get one for $30 at www.openbookhowden.com.au/ product/letters-to-lily-vale/. Alternatively, you can request a signed copy from Mark directly by emailing mark_latchford@hotmail.com
Author Mark Latchford with Marlene Burvill at the launch of Letters to Lily Vale. Photo – Ballan RSL