BURIAL records in the military collection of WWI veteran Lt Col Alexander Paterson DSO MC, recently handed to Korumburra RSL, may help locate soldiers of the 39th Battalion whose graves are unknown.
Korumburra RSL’s Tony Moon and other members of ‘Fallen Diggers’ are already working towards that goal.
Information from three books of burial records is being scanned so that Fallen Diggers will have a lasting record, while the books will remain part of the extensive Paterson collection.
It took only minutes to find the records of three soldiers who those at Fallen Diggers were aware of but whose initial burial places were unknown.
“What those books gave us was a starting point for the search, so they gave us a grid reference where they were buried, so it’s critical information,” Tony said.
“We’ll go through those records line by line, soldier by soldier and match them against information that we’ve got access to.”
Tony noted it is rare to find such burial records, making the trio of books covering the 1916-1918 period a stunning find.
A photograph of a lost cemetery was also discovered in the Paterson collection.
“We’ve been looking for a cemetery in Northern France that hasn’t been recorded anywhere in any great depth, but all of a sudden we now have a photograph of it,” Tony said, explaining the name of the cemetery can’t yet be revealed.
It is believed at least a dozen Diggers are still buried in that cemetery.
Tony explained that the remains of many fallen veterans were recovered by the Australian War Graves Registration Unit and other British Commonwealth units in France and Belgium.
“Where they could find known field burials, they dug them up and centralised into what became the Commonwealth War Graves, so it went from thousands of smaller cemeteries to hundreds of larger cemeteries,” he said.
However, not everyone was exhumed from their field graves, with the small cemetery of which a photo has now come to light, believed to have been among the sites missed.
Tony expects the burial coordinates to be accurate, with the burials generally conducted by the unit chaplain, whose role included recording the grid references of graves.
That was done with the use of a map and compass.
Most of those whose original place of burial is detailed in the Paterson burial records will have been reinterred in Commonwealth War Graves in the years immediately following WWI.
“But every now and then you’ll find a name that hasn’t got a known grave,” Tony said.
Sentinel-Times looks forward to sharing what comes to light for Fallen Diggers as a result of the recently revealed burial records.
It also remains to be determined where Lt Col Alexander Paterson’s extensive collection will be housed, following an article featured in the November 19 edition of this newspaper.