Together in life and in death

War records inevitably reveal many sad tales of death. This was especially so in the case of World War I.

As part of the Cambrian Hill Avenue of Honour restoration project, much research work was done on the war records of the forty men from the district who enlisted and fought in the First World War. Thirteen of the forty volunteers were killed.

Listed one after the other on the Cambrian Hill State School Honour Board were the names of Robert Atkinson and Stanley Bray and also brothers Carl and Ernek Janssen.

Gallipoli

The Janssen brothers enlisted in the same regiment, the 5th Battalion, and embarked on the same ship, the Orvieto, on 21 October 1914. Together they were sent to fight at Gallipoli.

Carl, 27, died of wounds on 26 April 1915. Ernek, 24, was killed in action on the same battlefield just two weeks later.

Sadly, neither has a “known” war grave on the lonely stretch of Turkish coastline.

Bray and Atkinson embarked from Melbourne on 28 January 1916 on the same troop ship, the HMAT Themistocles. They were both members of the 58th Infantry Battalion. They each saw action on the Western Front in northern France.

On the same day, 14 July 1916, they were killed on that bloody battlefield. Atkinson was aged 21 years, Bray just 18 years.

Now these soldiers are buried near where they fell, in the Military Cemetery at Rue Petillon at Fleurbaix, about five kilometres from the town of Armentieres*. Robert Atkinson is buried in Plot 1, Row K, Grave 107. Stanley Bray lies in the same plot, same row, in the adjacent Grave 106.

Not chance

In the chaos of the seemingly-unstoppable German advance, and warfare’s stew of trenches, bodies, mud, explosions and heroic stretcher bearers, it is difficult to believe that anyone would have associated the close link between those two dead soldiers retrieved from the battlefield before laying them to rest side by side.

That they now lie in two adjacent graves in a faraway corner of France suggests something higher than pure chance was at play.

Cambrian Hill Avenue Restoration Project