Remembering the fallen of Fromelles 100 years on
The strong ties that bind Australians with the French village of Fromelles are evident in the window display of the Au Gallodrome café and pub beside the church in the centre of town. The rising sun logo of the Australian army, a kangaroo and an Australian flag send Australian travellers the clear that they are welcome here. Inside, photos and scrapbooks recording the village’s wartime history are on display. Many document Australia’s contribution to France’s war effort. A teddy bear dressed in the uniform of a World War I Digger stands to attention on the bar.
Au Gallodrome is typically a starting point for visits to the nearby battlefields and memorials. Australians are drawn to this village 16 kilometres from the northern French city of Lille, to pay respects to Australian soldiers who died during the terrible battle that was fought near here at the height of World War I. On a single night on July 19-20 1916, nearly 2000 Australians died and more than 3000 more were wounded in what remains the bloodiest day in Australia’s military history.
Many visitors are on a personal pilgrimage to make a connection with ancestors who fell here, most of whom have no known grave site. I have come in search of one of them; my great grandfather, Private Charles Wakeman Reynolds. I am hoping to make a connection with him by walking through the site of the battle following the 8.5 kilometre Circuit of the Battle of Fromelles walking trail and visiting the VC Corner cemetery where he is commemorated.
Born in St Martins, Canada around 1882 my great grandfather enlisted in the American merchant navy then somehow ended up in Australia. We don’t know how or why. No photos of him exist. He wrote no letters that we know of. What we do now know is where his short life ended aged 31. A simple search of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission database was all that was needed to point me in the direction of VC Corner at Fromelles.
The atmosphere along the quiet country roads and lanes that wind through the fields and residential areas near Fromelles today is peaceful yet eerie. Walking past the neat houses with their pretty gardens and the cows grazing quietly in the fields, it’s difficult to imagine that this ground once shook under artillery bombardment and the air was thick with bullets that cut men down in their hundreds. But look closely and reminders of what took place here during that terrible night can still be found. Remnants of concrete blockhouses (including one said to have housed a young Corporal Hitler) and shelters that German soldiers constructed to protect their front lines protrude from the fields; evidence of the superior German position during the battle.
Soon the unmistakable sight of an Australian flag flying in the near distance lets me know that I’m nearly there. The flag is flying over the Australian Memorial Park and just beyond it is VC Corner. At Australian Memorial Park stands the statue Cobbers by Peter Corlett that depicts the heroism of Diggers who tried to retrieve their dead and wounded mates from ‘no man’s land’ under heavy fire. The statue now has a twin that stands near the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne.
An information board tells the terrible story of what went on here. These fields were the site of a bloodbath. My great grandfather’s 60th Battalion, was all but wiped out in a doomed attempt to capture German positions on a mound of earth known as the Sugarloaf.
All of the Australian soldiers who died at Fromelles are commemorated at VC Corner, just 200 metres further along the road from Australian Memorial Park. I walk through the small gate and take in the scene before me. The cemetery is neatly laid out on a small block of land surrounded by farms. A manicured green lawn has two large white crucifixes set into it bordered by beds of immaculate red roses. A wall bearing the names of more than 1200 fallen Australian soldiers stands above the lawn.
It only takes a few moments to find my great grandfather’s name carved into the wall. My solemn mood is broken for a moment as I recall that this is not the first time I’ve sought out the name Charles Wakeman Reynolds on a roll of honour. I first found it at the War Memorial in Canberra a couple of years ago. Afterwards I stood trying not to cringe while a friendly research officer talked me through his less than glittering military records.
“Don’t worry love. There’s one in every family,” he reassured me kindly.
My great grandfather’s military record read like a petty criminal’s rap sheet. His list of offences included several charges of being AWOL, for which he was court martialled while training in Egypt, being drunk and disorderly, losing government property by neglect (his gun), using obscene language and a strange crime of committing ‘conduct to the prejudice of good order and military discipline.’ Oh dear.
VC Corner is the final resting place of just 410 Australian soldiers whose remains were recovered from ‘no man’s land’ after the armistice, all of them unknown. It’s the mass grave of the Unknown Soldier. I have no way of knowing if my great grandfather is one of them or not. Although I don’t believe in such things I hold out some hope he might send me some kind of sign to let me know he’s there. Nothing.
As I leave the cemetery to make my way back to Au Gallodrome, I spot a little door in the wall by the gate. I open it to find a visitor book where relatives of other fallen soldiers have written their thoughts. I pull a pen from my backpack and leave a simple note: “In memory of Charles Wakeman Reynolds. Wherever you are, rest in peace and know you’re remembered.”
I visited Fromelles for the first time in 2008 and wrote this article, just weeks after an archaeological project instigated by the work of Melbourne History teacher and amateur war historian Lambis Englezos, discovered another mass grave containing British and Australian soldiers in nearby Pheasant Wood. Since that time the bodies have been interred in a new cemetery. I visited that new cemetery on a return visit to Fromelles in 2011 and repeated the Circuit of the Battle of Fromelles. Thanks to DNA technology more than 100 of the soldiers uncovered from the burial ground since 2009 have been identified and now lie in marked graves. My great grandfather’s final resting place remains unknown.
A re-worked version of this article focusing on the walking circuit of the Battle Fromelles was published in Great Walks Magazine in 2009. A truncated version of that piece, along with a photo gallery, is available online at the Great Walks website