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Remembering Henry Cassidy & the centenary of the Last Charge of the Light Horse on Beersheba

31/10/2017

Kerrie and I met 50 years ago as young first years at high school in 1967 and have been friends ever since. One hundred years ago today, Kerrie’s grandfather Private Henry Cassidy was with the 1st Australian Light Horse in the middle east when the 4th Light Horse made their famous last great cavalry charge to win victory in the Battle of Beersheba.

To date Kerrie has not been able to find out more details of what her grandfather was doing on this day but his service record number 3171 lists him as being in Gaza around this time, and also in Egypt. Although born in Murwillumbah he was living in Leichhardt when he enlisted on 8 January 1917 in Sydney. His occupation was listed as ‘carter’ which most likely means he was experienced dealing with horses, and it may have been why he was assigned to the Light Horse.

Henry left Australia from Melbourne on 10 May 1917 and arrived in the Suez on 20 June bound for action in the Middle East, where he contracted malaria. After the war Henry was discharged on 13 July 1919 as medically unfit.

Although Kerrie has no physical mementoes of her grandfather she went with her parents to the Australian War Memorial in 1982 whilst living in Canberra. It was on that visit that her parents pointed out a photo on display of men with some horses and was told “that’s your grandfather”! Earlier this year while watching an ABC documentary on WWI Kerrie saw the same photo again. Henry is the man on the right in his singlet, with the horses being watered.

With the photo on her iPad we travelled to the Australian War Memorial in Canberra last Friday to see if we could formally identify Henry for the AWM records as to date he is always unnamed in the photograph. Alas, it takes two weeks for a requested photo to become available, so she will have to wait a bit longer.

After the war Henry worked at several dam sites, presumably as a delivery driver, including the Nepean Dam where Kerrie’s father was born in 1930. Kerrie says her grandparents divorced some time later and the children stayed with their mother. And when Kerrie was a young girl Henry came to live with her parents, where one night he suffered a stroke and Kerrie remembers Henry slumping over her. Afterwards he entered a nursing home and eventually died in 1963.

Note: After the famous last charge on Beersheba, although victorious, the members of the Light Horse had to leave their wonderful horses behind when departing for home. Rather than leave them to the doubtful care of locals, each man had one his mates shoot his horse. I wonder if Henry had enlisted with his horse, and had to also leave it behind? How sad!

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Denis Mootz remembers his grandfather Arthur

28/10/2017

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Denis Mootz’s grandfather Arthur Mootz was a Corporal in the British Army, in the Royal Field (Horse) Artillery. One hundred years ago on 28 October 1917 Arthur was wounded in the Second Battle of Passchendaele and he died of wounds overnight on 31 October 1917 at Hospital Farm Elverdinge (near Vlamertinge).

Having survived the First Battle of Passchendaele Arthur was among those providing artillery support for the attack and he was digging in with his gun crew (C Battery of the 223rd Brigade) on the west side of the Poperinge-Elverdinge road near St Julien, just near Ypres in Belgium in preparation for the last campaign of the Third Battle of Ypres scheduled to start on 22 October.

They had been delayed and forced to change position by heavy enemy shelling on the previous day 17 October. One officer was killed in action that day. There was some problem with very wet ground and a lack of cover against continued enemy shelling but they established their position nonetheless on 18 October and awaited their supply of ammunition for the planned operation.

Arthur was wounded when his gun battery was bombed by German aircraft on 28 October, and was buried in the cemetery on Hospital farm, which is now private land. Denis visited his grandfather’s grave while on Christmas vacation in 1987/88. According to the cemetery tabernacle they were the only visitors since his grandmother’s visit in 1919!

It would have been extraordinary for his grandmother to have seen the devastation of those battlefields and to have seen the simple grave, just a wooden cross, given her husband at that time. Most soldiers were buried where they died, and simple crosses erected by their battalion mates. It was only later that more formal cemeteries were organised out of respect for the enormous loss of life on both sides and memorials erected. Denis plans to visit Arthur’s grave again in 2018.

Prior to that last battle in late October Arthur along with all those involved had been asked (told) to write a 'letter' home. He would have understood the official reason for this and would have been well aware of the possible personal fate that he faced (his brother-in-law Frank Williams had died on the Somme in 1916).

Arthur chose to write home to his wife Emily (always known as 'Cissy') and children using the lovely silk embroidered post cards made and sold by the French women, rather than the ordinary field cards available. She had begun a collection of these cards, which Denis still treasures, along with his grandfather's Memorial Plaque known as a Dean Man's Penny and his medals.

Denis also has a photo-postcard of his grandfather Arthur taken at Ypres in 1917 and has always been impressed with the bearing of the horse. His grandfather trained horses at one of the bases on Salisbury Plain in England between 1914 and 1916. They were trained not to panic under fire.

Mootz is a German name, and Denis says his grandmother’s house was always watched for years while Arthur was fighting for Britain, even after Arthur was killed and the war was over. She would take cups of tea out to the person standing on surveillance at night under the lamppost during the winter months. His grandmother moved to Australia with her two young children in 1920, rather than staying at home in Manchester as the carer and housekeeper for her sisters and invalid father.
Lest we forget!

Denis has his grandfather's WWI medals and the Memorial Plaque, commonly known as a Dead Man's Penny, issued to his grandmother, after Arthur's death. A plaque bearing the soldier's name was issued to the families of all Commonwealth soldiers who died in WWI.

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Varlet Farm Belgium: a lone tree survives the WWI battlefield

22/10/2017

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Just one week ago Stelios and I were in Passendale Belgium visiting the area where my grandfather Harold was fighting and wounded one hundred years ago.

We stayed at Varlet Farm, with its bed and breakfast accommodation, recommended by Charles Page, my history of photography lecturer from Queensland College of Art, where I studied photography in 1989/1990. Charles had stayed at Varlet Farm in the winter of 2009/2010 while working on his WWI centenary photography project Memories in Place.

The farm and accommodation run by Dirk Cardoen with his daughter Barbara, is in the heart of the Poelkapelle and Passendale battlefields. In a chance meeting with Dirk last Sunday at the Drum hotel in Passendale, where we shared a couple of fine Belgian beers, we learned that there still exists today on his farm a tree that had survived the horrific battles of WWI. This is Dirk’s story.

The original moated farm circa 1747 was owned by a wealthy family in Bruxelles, but the tenants working the farm left for France in the face of the
German invasion and never returned. The farm was occupied by the German Army until the Royal Naval Division captured the ruined farm on 26 October 1917, but it was retaken by the Germans in April 1918. It was eventually liberated by the Karabiniers of the Belgian Army on 29 September 1918.

In 1920 Dirk’s great grandparents, the Van Deynse-Baute family, came to the farm with their five children, one of them Dirk’s grandmother Helene Van Deynse. Helene was born in 1906 and was about 14 or 15 when she arrived at Varlet Farm. The family bought the farm in 1928.

Dirk says his grandmother told him that the place was full of very large rats when she arrived, no doubt attracted to all the human remains from the battles. The original farm was about 80 metres from where Varlet Farm buildings now stand and Dirk has recently discovered three cellars under the old site, two belonging to the original stables and one to the house.

When a young man his grandmother showed Dirk the tree that she says was the only live thing on the farm when she arrived, a young oak sapling. It still stands about 300 metres behind the Varlet Farm buildings today. Before we departed for Lille on Monday morning Dirk took us to the tree which grows on the edge of a pond, and leans at a 45 degree angle. Unless something is done to save it, it may well topple over. That would be such a shame given that almost nothing was left alive after those awful battles that raged over the Belgian farmlands one hundred years ago. How the family must have nurtured this tree!

While we stood at the site of the cellars Dirk had discovered he pointed out the neighbouring farm where his father had lived. His parents were neighbours who met in 1940 but because of WWII couldn’t get married until 1947. Barbara tells me that Helene, Dirk’s grandmother never married. So a little mystery there, no doubt connected to WWI and its aftermath.

To this day Dirk and other local farmers are still uncovering live shells from WWI. When they do they call the local authorities who record and collect the shells. From where we stood at the tree Dirk showed us the tower in nearby Poelkapelle where twice a day at 11.30am and 4.30pm the live munitions found are detonated and destroyed, in a pit 10 metres deep, with a limit placed on the size of the ordnance destroyed at any one time.

Dirk also told us that it is estimated that sixty percent of the shells fired never detonated due to the soft and soggy quagmire that existed in 1917 – there was nothing hard for them to hit in order to explode. When you think of the devastation of Ypres and the surrounding farms and towns like Passendale and Poelkapelle with only forty percent of the ordnance fired, it is unconscionable what would have occurred had they all exploded on impact and the further loss of life that would have been incurred.

Dirk and his family have created a museum of sorts in the barn with WWI artefacts found on the farm since the war. Today Dirk grows potatoes, leeks, garlic and cabbages and because of the farm’s location in the centre of the long ago battles he meets people from all over the world like us who come to pay homage or research their ancestors war service.

By the way, Dirk makes a lovely apple cake with which he welcomes all visitors who stay at his farm. Bookings can be made at: info@varletfarm.com

Dirk with some of the WWI artefacts that have been found while farming at Varlet Farm on the Passendale Poelkapelle border in Belgium

Some of the dormant WWI munitions found at Varlet Farm

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Passchendaele: walking in Harold Lilja's footsteps...Week Thirty Eight

17/10/2017

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Names like Pozieres, Fromelle, Bullecourt, the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele were always odd and foreign to me growing up and attending Anzac Day marches with my grandmother. All of them battle names from the Great War for Civilisation! Until I started researching our family history, and embarking on this WWI centenary project about seven years ago, I had not known the significance of Ypres and Passchendaele for my grandfather Harold Lilja.

Today I went to the small village of Passendale in Belgium as it is spelt here in Flemish, the language of Flanders. This small farming community bore the brunt of about 100 days of terrible shelling and fighting in what has come to be referred to by many as one of the most futile of all the battles of WWI. Commencing on 31 July 1917 and ending on 10 November, the Third Battle of Ypres, or as it is now commonly referred to the Battle of Passchendaele, was a heartbreaking affair with 12 October 1917 being a particularly bad day for the men and officers of the 34th Battalion AIF and many others!

Lieutenant Lilja along with the other officers started their march at 6pm on the night of 11 October to the assembly jumping off point at the Zonnebeke-Roselare railway line and cemetery, just south of Augustus Wood. The first 7 kilometres to Zonnebeke station were without casualties but were extremely difficult due to the rain and state of the shell-holed track. From then on they suffered heavy shelling and many casualties, but nevertheless reached their rendezvous point at 2.45am. The shelling appeared to be coming from south to south west of Passchendaele.

The Brigade formed up at the jumping off point with 35th and 36th battalions behind the 34th. Heavy shelling passed over 34th and the two rear battalions were very badly shot up with many casualties according to Harold’s battalion history. At 5.25am the Allied barrage came down but was too weak and hard to determine whether allied or the enemy’s, making it difficult for the men to keep up with the barrage.

Quote from 34th Battalion history: “However, the greatest obstacle met in the advance was the condition of the ground….there were many men lost altogether in the mire. The pace of the advance was slowed up owing to the assistance it was necessary to give to men who had sunk into the shell holes and could not extricate themselves without assistance. In a number of cases the helpers became engulfed in the awful morass and many of the wounded had to left where they fell.”

Despite all this horror the 34th battalion pressed on towards the “Red Line” and overcame the enemies’ two pill-boxes with a bombing party, securing 35 prisoners and 4 enemy machine guns. Throughout the advance they suffered heavy machine gun fire. On reaching the Red Line the battalion began digging in but were continually harassed by machine gun fire on their right flank from about 200 yards away. Captain Jeffries organised a party to capture the enemy post but died in the attempt. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross. The NCOs carried on and captured the post after a gallant fight, securing two machine guns and 40 prisoners.

The men of the 34th battalion assisted the 35th and 36th battalions, who had suffered severely, to continue on to the Blue and Green Lines but were continually harassed by heavy machine gun fire. The instructions came in to hold the line at all costs. Under murderous fire and vilest conditions the new line was constructed from Deine Crossing to the Ypres-Roselare railway.

The poignant entry in Harold’s battalion history reads “In the advance to the Red Line all the officers of the Battalion had been either killed or wounded with the exception of three, who became casualties before reaching the Blue Line.” One of those was my grandfather, Lieutenant Harold Lilja. The bulk of the work fell on the NCOs who, although suffering heavy casualties, did remarkably fine work.

As I started writing this post I was sitting at Varlet Farm, our B& B in the heart of the Passchendaele battlefields, in fact the dining room was in Passendale (Flemish spelling) and the kitchen in Poelkapelle. At 8.30pm in Ypres on our last night in Belgium I wandered in to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission office, still open after the Last Post ceremony, and two young men found Augustus Wood on a trench map and overlaid it over the locality map. It turns out Harold was passing by what is now Tyne Cot cemetery on his march to the attack point on the early morning of 12 October. We had been there just that day, so I did literally walk in my grandfather’s footsteps after all.

I had collected some fallen autumn leaves at Passchendaele Street, Lithgow in May and brought them with me to Passendale. At the end of our tour on Sunday I found a memorial garden to the Australians in the grounds of the Passchendaele Museum and that is where I placed them along with some poppies from Australia. In memory of Harold Lilja, John Mitchell and Frank Uther (another relative wounded and killed at Passchendaele) – lest we forget!
While in the village of Passendale at the memorial we read the following:

“There was not a sign of life of any sort. Not a tree, save for a few dead stumps which looked strange in the moonlight. Not a bird, not even a rat or a blade of grass. Nature was as dead as those Canadians whose bodies remained where they had fallen the previous autumn. Death was written large everywhere.” (Private R A Colwell, Passchendaele, January 1918).

Frank Hurley, the Australian WWI War photographer said of Passchendaele “…for there was NO place in eternity that is more hellish.”

Stelios picked up a beautiful fallen autumn leave in the village of Passendale for me and I will bring it home to Australia in memory of my grandfather.

Above: 34th Battalion history entry for Third Battle of Ypres, 12 October together with the gold medallion Harold sent his young wife Beryl with his painted portrait in WWI uniform. Interestingly, the rectangular battalion colours of purple over green belong to 2nd Battalion where Harold was seconded as an Adjutant in 1918. 34th Battalion colours are also purple over green but in an oval shape.
Below: Autumn leaves from Passchendaele Street Lithgow placed with poppies at the Australian Memorial Garden in the grounds of the Passchendaele Museum in Zonnebeke, together with some rosemary picked from under the Acropolis in Athens. Lest we forget!

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WWI: Mementos of our Grandfathers

Remembering Henry Cassidy & the centenary of the Last Charge of the Light Horse on Beersheba

Denis Mootz remembers his grandfather Arthur

Varlet Farm Belgium: a lone tree survives the WWI battlefield

Passchendaele: walking in Harold Lilja's footsteps...Week Thirty Eight

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