ID :
118648
Sun, 04/25/2010 - 17:34
Auther :

Missing diggers remembered in France



Writing home to Australia from the horror of World War I's front lines in France,
Lieutenant Alec Raws left nothing to the imagination.
The journalist-turned-soldier was in the midst of the bloody battle of Pozieres in
the Somme during August 1916 and was devastated by the destruction of two thirds of
his battalion during just eight days of fighting.
"And they are sticking at it still incomparable heroes all. We are lousy, stinking,
ragged, unshaven, sleepless," he wrote to a friend.
"Several of my friends are raving mad. Courage does not count here it is all nerve."
Two-and-a-half weeks later, Lt Raws was dead.
At the time he wrote he was unaware his younger brother Robert "Goldy" Raws, who had
survived Gallipoli before arriving in France, had died.
Neither of their bodies were ever found.
Their tragic stories served as a poignant reminder of the sacrifice 46,000
Australian troops made on the Western Front as 3,500 people gathered for an Anzac
Day dawn service on the outskirts of the French town of Villers-Bretonneux.
As dawn broke over the Australian National Memorial, the crowd heard the Raws
brothers' story and how their names were among the 10,770 etched on the monument's
stone walls honouring those diggers who died on the Western Front but whose remains
were never found.
Foreign Minister Stephen Smith, who delivered a speech during the ceremony, was
among many in the crowd with relatives' names appearing on those same walls.
His great uncles, Privates Walter Leslie and Thomas Clune, hailed from South
Australia and were killed in action not long after joining the 51st battalion in
France.
Pte Leslie was just 22 and died on the eve of Anzac Day 1918 when Australian forces
launched their successful battle to liberate Villers-Bretonneux and helped turn the
course of the war.
Twenty-four-year-old Pte Clune was believed to have died two years earlier during
the ferocious battle of Mouquet Farm, near Pozieres, where three Australian
divisions suffered 23,000 casualties in less than seven weeks.
Mr Smith said the efforts of the Australian diggers had helped shape an unbreakable
bond between Australia and France.
"A number of people I've spoken to have come because they've also got names of their
relatives on the memorial," he told reporters after the service.
"So, there is a lot of family interest, which was reflective of the Great War.
"There was hardly an Australian family that wasn't touched by the tragedy."
Many of those who made the pilgrimage to Villers-Bretonneux for the third annual
dawn service had overcome all sorts of disruption to their travel plans caused by
the recent Icelandic volcano eruption.
Others weren't so lucky, with organisers having to find last-minute replacements for
a bugler, singer and chaplain who were due to play roles in the ceremony but were
stranded in Australia after their planes were grounded.
Australians Mark Sandell and his wife Li-Anne Cheah only managed to arrive in
Villers-Bretonneux after spending three-and-a-half days travelling on four trains
from Moscow.
"I've marched every year for the last 10 or 15 years in Australia and been to
ceremonies at Commonwealth War Graves all over the world so it was very important
for me to get here," Mr Sandell, whose father fought in World War II, said.
"It was amazing so many people still managed to get here."

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