As you may or may not know, a few years ago I was completely against and/or disinterested in war. When I got dragged along to ANZAC services I’d think of other things, or maybe fictional soldiers I knew of and was vaguely interested in.
Then Captain America and Band of Brothers happened. Amazing how you start to care when you learn the stories of the individuals and the nitty gritty political and military details of various actions and campaigns.
This newfound interest came up around the same time as another family member (my mum’s cousin) was starting to dig up information about a man who was my… great-great uncle I think?? He was my Pop’s (grandfather on my mother’s side) uncle. His name was Richard William Jones (known as Will). He was in the 13th Ambulance and was killed during the Battle of Paschendaele on 21 October 1917 at the age of 24.
Early last year the family organised a plaque at Kings Park for him and I went along to the dedication, having read the scant information we had about him. By that time I knew I was going to be heading to Europe later in the year and Ypres in Belgium was on the schedule. From what info we had I managed to plot out a triangle on the map, somewhere in the triangle was probably where Will was hit. He was buried at Ypres Reservoir Cemetery and I planned to visit his grave at least.
I live very close to a place called Blackboy Hill, now the site of two schools and a war memorial, it was the main training camp for infantry and ambulance in Western Australia before the troops shipped off to the battlefields of WWI. Will trained there - a scant 3 months in the summer of 1915/1916. I took two Marri tree nuts from the site where the enlisted soldiers tents were pitched.
The area where the enlisted tents were pitched - now just trees and open space
A seedling of the Lone Pine growing beside the Blackboy Hill memorial. The Lone Pine was a solitary tree that grew where the Battle of Lone Pine in Gallipoli took place.
Bringing biological material into Australia is nigh on impossible due to our strict (and kind of awesome) quarantine laws, but taking it out is no problem. So I took the Marri nuts to Belgium, found Will’s grave in Ypres, and placed the nuts there. Thanks to technology I was able to video call my parents over Skype. Mum and I got rather teary over the whole thing. She took a photo of the headstone, which I was viewing with my phone, beamed to her laptop screen, and which she took with HER phone. Mum had posted photos and the story on Facebook and shared it with the family before I’d even left Ypres.
This year is 100 years since Will died, so for ANZAC Day we had a bunch of the family over and we all walked up the road for the sunset service. The memorial itself is designed to align with the setting sun on April 24. I also attended the dawn service this morning - something I’ve never done before. Seeing as there were so many people and I couldn’t get a view of the memorial, I spent a lot of it turned around, looking over the land where the tents were pitched. I was kind of grateful that it just a simple Last Post and a reading of the Ode of Remembrance - anything more just descends into cheap platitudes.
Scouts standing vigil at the memorial.
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them”
snowghoul
turnnoffyourmind
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yousharknotpass
tangentwithtanner
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