Broken promise: Australia’s buried then forgotten Anzacs

An untold number of Australian ex-soldiers from the First World War, including Gallipoli veterans, are buried forgotten across the country in unmarked graves. The veterans survived the Great War with mental and physical scars but died within a few years of returning to Australia.

A broken promise by Australian governments in the 1920s saw many men buried without any recognition at all.

On Monday another Anzac Day will be commemorated with the words ‘Lest We Forget’.

In one Queensland rural cemetery alone, in Longreach, there are thought to be at least a dozen forgotten ex-soldiers.

“The dead don’t die until they’re forgotten. Well these guys well and truly died and they’ve been well and truly forgotten so let’s start to remember them,” Longreach historian Kaye Kuhn said.

Their last resting place is sometimes just a pile of rocks with a simple grave plot peg, while others have stone or rail edging but no inscription, nothing to show they served their country.
Unmarked grave  'C 505' of private James Patrick Clancey. Died in 1923 for the effects of gassing.
Unmarked grave 'C 505' of private James Patrick Clancey. Died in 1923 for the effects of gassing. Source: Stefan Armbruster SBS
“We’ve got about 600 unmarked graves [in the Longreach cemetery] and of those there’d be a couple of dozen World War One veterans," Ms Kuhn said.

For four years Ms Kuhn has researched these men who survived the trenches but later died of war wounds or are thought to have committed suicide. 

Gallipoli veteran private Leo Daniel Dyball has a grave with no name or no headstone, just a sandstone edge. 

Mr Dyball was gassed on battlefields of France and died three months after returning home in 1918.

His obituary in the North Queensland Register reads “a returned soldier … died from 'the effects of gas poison’”.

Awarded three medals, he was also a former Queensland mounted police officer, who before the war survived being speared by an Aboriginal man while on duty. 

In another corner of the cemetery lies private James Patrick Clancey.  

The Longreach Leader in 1923 recorded he was “suffering from the after effects of having been gassed ‘whilst on active service’ … (and) succumbed to the affliction”. 

His grave is a pile of rocks with a simple cemetery peg with a ‘C’ for Catholic, plot number ‘505’.

Nearby private Martin Riley who was also gassed in France and died in 1928 aged 65. His grave is another pile of rocks marked ‘C 621’.

After the First World War, the Australian government said ex-soldiers’ graves would be marked.

The Brisbane Telegraph reported on April 20, 1922 that “arrangements now have been made for the Commonwealth Government to undertake this work on behalf of the Imperial War Graves Commission”.
Grave ‘C 621’ of private Martin Riley. Gassed in France and died in 1928 aged 65.
Grave ‘C 621’ of private Martin Riley. Gassed in France and died in 1928 aged 65. Source: Stefan Armbruster SBS
“Headstones will be erected on the graves of those who died from wounds received, accident occurring, or disease contracted while on active service, whether discharged or not on the date of death, and on whose graves no private memorials have already been erected other that kerbings or iron railings,” it reported.

Ms Kuhn’s research also includes a number of soldiers who drowned, died in inexplicable accidents or committed suicide.

It is suspected they were suffering from what is now recognised as post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but what was then called simply shell shock.

“They just had enough, hung themselves or just cut their wrists or shot - a lot tried and didn’t succeed and then faced court because suicide was illegal in those days,” she said.

“There’s just no recognition, they didn’t want the recognition, so I suppose that’s how it goes.”

It was not quite that simple. 

Under the headline “Lest We Forget, Neglected Graves, Promised Headstones” Brisbane’s Daily Mail reported the Queensland RSL’s frustrations in 1923.

"To us it seems a sordid thing that any government should tell widows and mothers of soldiers that headstones would be erected over the graves of ex-soldiers and then not do it,” the RSL said.

“Pardon us getting a little irritated at the governmental delay, but we think this grave question is being treated with callous indifference, and the dead are not being honoured.”

By 1926, the Longreach Leader recorded at least six burials without markers and quoted the local RSL sub-branch saying “the futility of approaching the government further in the matter was realised”.
“If we went back to the 1920s, and I was in the position I'm in now, I would be very frustrated,” Stewart Cameron, current president of the Queensland RSL said.

“After the First World War, there was a large campaign mounted regionally for the graves of those who had succumbed to their war injuries to be marked and I think it’s something that Australians in the main have become unaware of.

“We suffered some 62,000 battle deaths in the First World War. In a relatively short time after, a similar number of men had succumbed to their wounds, their gassings or had taken their own lives.

“The government of the day wasn’t doing a lot. That’s fine, let’s move forward to today and do something.”

It’s 100 years since the RSL was founded in June 1916 and Mr Cameron promises the RSL will put markers on the graves in Longreach and elsewhere.

“Where we become aware of unmarked graves, of those men and women who have served their country, we are obligated to mark them accordingly,” he said.

“So my clarion call to the community is not just across Queensland or Australia, if you know of an unmarked grave of a serviceman or women, come and tell the Returned Services League.”

Today official war graves are the responsibility of the Office of Australian War Graves (OAWG).

“If it is believed that the death was war related, an application can be made to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs … requesting that the death be investigated and a determination made by the Repatriation Commission,” OAWG said in a statement to SBS News.
“The Office of Australian War Graves does not make this determination. Requests can be made by any interested party, it does not have to be a family member.

“All veterans who served in the Australian Armed Forces are entitled to have the relevant service emblem displayed on a privately arranged memorial, the cost of which is borne by the family, estate or interested party. 

“A permission letter is required and can be obtained from the OAWG, accompanied by proof of service such as a discharge or service document.”


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6 min read
Published 24 April 2016 7:41pm
Updated 13 May 2016 2:03pm
By Stefan Armbruster


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