Australia. Australian Army. Australian Graves Detachment. - Missing in action: Australias World War I Grave Services, an astonishing true story of Misconduct, fraud and hoaxing

Marianne van Velzen was born in the Netherlands but grew up in Australia. In her late teens she emigrated back to Europe and later became a journalist. She has a life-long interest in Australia and is the author of Call of the Outback, published in 2016, and Bomber Boys, published in 2017.

Also by Marianne van Velzen

Call of the Outback: The remarkable story of Ernestine Hill, nomad, adventurer and trailblazer

Bomber Boys: The extraordinary adventures of a group of airmen who escaped the Japanese and became the RAAFs celebrated 18th Squadron

First published in 2018

Copyright Marianne van Velzen 2018

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin

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Crows Nest NSW 2065

Australia

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ISBN 978 1 76063 280 9

eISBN 978 1 76063 626 5

Map by MAPgraphics

Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

Cover design: Romina Panetta

Cover image: Australian War Memorial (E00847)

To Richard Walsh

who pointed the way

Englishman Fabian Ware was 45 when the war broke out in 1914. He had studied in London and Paris, obtaining a bachelors degree in science. As the war spread across the world with apocalyptic ferocity, he felt the need to be somehow involved.

At the start, he envisaged a role for himself in battle. He had no idea what this role might be and how it would develop so he started at the logical place: he attempted to join the troops. There was only one problem: the age limit was between 18 and 38.

As far as Ware was concerned, it was a minor detail. The age limit for Australians had gone from 38 to 45, and in some cases men even older had been known to enlist. Ware couldnt imagine why this could not also apply for the English service. He was sure that his experience of life and knowledge of the French language would make up for his excess of years.

To no ones surprise but his own, the British Army rejected him, categorising him as too old. After his services had been kindly but decisively refused, friends who knew him realised that he would never be content to sit back comfortably and watch the world burn. Taking it easy had never been Fabian Wares way.

One afternoon, while discussing the war with his friend Lord Milner, Ware learned that the British Red Cross was looking for volunteers to help with its work on the battlefields in France. Milner had ties to the Red Cross and, if Ware was interested in an appointment, his friend would put in a good word or two in his favour.

Ware had no idea how this would turn out, but he decided to apply. There appeared to be no age limit and so, with a little help from Lord Milner, Fabian Ware was appointed head of the Red Cross Mobile Ambulance Unit in France. Just a few months later, in September 1914, Ware found himself making his way across the Channel to Calais.

Nothing had prepared him for the horror he encountered on the front line of the battlefields in France. Driving his Red Cross car to the front he came across destroyed villages, dead livestock and shell-shocked soldiers returning from battle. The lack of any emotion in those young boys eyes struck Ware. They appeared to walk along like battalions of living dead. The sheer number of casualties and deaths was staggering and the strategy in place to collect the wounded was shoddy at best. The French Army did what it could, but the maimed and dying soldiers out in the fields outnumbered the available ambulances by a hundred to one.

High on Wares priority list was establishing a flying brigade of private local cars and drivers who could assist the French in driving injured soldiers to field hospitals. Once a student in France, he spoke the language and was a good organiser. Within days he had cars and drivers working in a number of districts. As the wounded were plucked from the battlefields, Wares attention began to shift to the bodies of the dead. It was impossible to bury them all so they often remained where they fell, their bodies unidentified except for their absence at the next roll call. The French picked up their own dead when they could but largely ignored the British and Commonwealth bodies. Considering them a health hazard, the corpses were occasionally set alight with whatever fuel was at hand, or dumped in mass pits. More often they were left to decay out in the open.

To reach a soldier crying out as he bled onto French soil, the cars travelling under the Red Cross flag sometimes were forced to drive over corpses lying scattered in the fields. Ware realised it was a case of priorities, however he also knew that every dead man or boy lying on those fields probably had parents or a wife and possibly children, waiting for their return; if they did not come back, their loved ones would want to know what had become of them. Having already sacrificed so much, they had a right to know and the only way to give them closure would be to identify the men who had given their lives and to bury them in a decent grave. It was an almost impossible task; to give a glimpse of the enormity of the problem, just one day of fighting in Mons had resulted in 35,000 deaths.

For the first time in history, the utter scale of the slaughter made the war casualties significantly visible. So many families were receiving messages that their men and boys had gone missing in action that it was becoming an issue of major concern throughout the Commonwealth.

No one appeared to have responsibility for recording the ever-increasing numbers of bodies and maintaining the hasty graves left on the fields. There was no plan to mark these final resting places. So Ware set to work creating a record, identifying the dead, marking and recording the sites where they lay. Amid the bullets and the shells flying overhead, his dedicated team worked to save wounded men but also identified and secured bodies as they went.

In early 1915, taking matters into his own hands, Ware returned to England to explain to those in charge at the Imperial War Office that something must be done about the dead. Not only out of respect, although that was a high priority, but in view of health hazards, ethics and the demoralising effect all those strewn bodies were having on the soldiers.

Ware had discussed the idea of establishing an official organisation to perform the task of identifying and burying the dead with Lieutenant Colonel Edward Stewart, a Red Cross medical assessor. Stewart told him he had heard that the British authorities might not warm to Wares idea of identifying the bodies on the front but instead might prefer to list the dead as missing, thus reducing the impact on public opinion.

If this was true then it was no more than a conspiracy of silencea denial of their effort and a neglect of those men who had fallen. Ware wasnt a soldier and he wasnt a politician, but he had a hot evangelical zeal that surprised even himself at times. If needed he could be cold and methodical, but he was also tireless and a man with a cause who could work continuously for days on end. He would preach and talk until they understood. Returning to France without some kind of agreement was simply not an option.