PASSCHENDAELE REFLECTIONS
Handover of remains
“It was very humbling to know that I was the first Australian soldier in 90 years who had touched them.”
That is how WO1 David Galloway, the Regimental Sergeant Major of the 51st Battalion, The Far North Queensland Regiment, described the feeling when he took custody of the remains of the five World War I Diggers who will be buried in a Commonwealth War Graves cemetery in Polygon Wood on 4 October.
WO1 Galloway, Army History Unit (AHU) Head Roger Lee and AHU consultant historian Rick Pelvin received the remains from Belgian authorities on 2 October.
Since being unearthed near the hamlet of Westhoek last year, the WWI casualties and artifacts found with then have been securely kept at a Belgian Army Barracks. They are now at an undertaker’s pending the re-internment.
“The five coffins contain everything – the bones, remnants of uniforms, the boots, the blankets the soldiers were wrapped in, and even the little marker that was left next to the bodies when they were first found. Even the DNA that was extracted for testing was married up with each individual and put into the coffins,” WO1 Galloway said.
While the task of placing the contents in the coffins was a sombre one, he was surprised at how well preserved were the soldiers’ boots. “If you gave them a hit with some Nugget you could do a few more laps in them,” he said.
After verifying their contents, WO1 Galloway screwed shut the coffins and stamped them with an Australian Army seal. Later he and WO2 Allen Shirt draped the coffins in the Australian flag and adorned them with a .303 bayonet, a slouch hat and WWI medals.
WO1 Galloway pored over photos from the era so he could shape the slouch hats in the fashion in which they were worn by Diggers who served on the Western Front.
“Each slouch hat has a Rising Sun badge and WWI pugaree provided by the Army History Unit. We want everything to be as right as possible,” he said.