The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #135040 Message #3076855
Posted By: Bob Bolton
17-Jan-11 - 09:49 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Farewell to Anzac (C. Fox Smith)
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Farewell to Anzac (C. Fox Smith)
G'day Charley,
That's a beaut song! (It's probably a national / accent thing ... but I tend to prefer Cicely's original words ...) Anyway, my English Grandfather, Albert Bolton, just missed out on the Anzac debacle ... His widowed mother wouldn't sign his admission papers until his apprenticeship was signed off, so he left Australia later in 1915 - and spent the rest of the war as a driver in the Australian artillery in the European theatre. He then stayed in the Militia between the wars ... lined up and enlisted in the Second World Stoush!
Our local papers, yesterday, covered the discovery of (presumably) an Australian soldier in France -killed near Poziers (Mouquet Farm ... ?). His remains were associated with a Lee-Enfield .303" rifle and bayonet; 150 rounds of .303" ammo,; a Webley revolver, in a West Australian-made holster, and 8 Mills bombs (grenades). It took a shrapnel shell to fell him!
I hope they find enough to identify his remains and lay him out, at last, with some vestige of the honour due to him!