VICTORIAN sheep farmer and businessman Chris Thomson, Strathbogie, fulfilled a lifelong ambition when he travelled to the other side of the world to pay his respects to his great uncle, a fallen digger of World War I.
Chris with wife Tracey, were delegates to last month’s 8th World Merino Conference at Rambouillet and participated in the pre-conference tours, which included the Western Front battlefields of France and Belgium leading up to ANZAC day.
After researching what was thought to be the final resting place of his great uncle, Lance Corporal Sydney Russell McCombe, the challenge soon multiplied when one personally witnessed the thousands of fallen allied soldiers spread throughout the front lines of World War I.
Soldiers can be remembered with a headstone and known grave, a nameless grave of an unknown soldier of the Great War, or one of endless names scribed into memorial walls that have no known grave.
Chris had traced his great uncle’s final resting place to Peronne in France, one of the many French towns liberated from the German armies by Australian diggers in September 1918.
On the first day of the tour, the group visited an Australian memorial on the outskirts of Peronne but to no avail.
Chris made contact with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and learnt his great uncle was initially buried at Mont St Quentin before being reburied at the Peronne Communal Cemetery Extension.
After the ANZAC Day dawn service at Villers-Bretonneux, the tour group planned to visit the Australian Memorials at Bullecourt in the afternoon.
Chris and Tracey were to leave the group and travel privately from La Boiselle to Peronne to continue their search.
Unfortunately the public transport facilities in this part of rural France were virtually non-existent.
After learning of their misfortunes, the group unanimously agreed to forego the Bullecourt part of the trip to support Chris and Tracey in their search for the fallen ancestor.
Due to the length of the coach and the narrow French streets of Peronne, a frustrating search for the town’s cemetary ensued.
Fittingly, on the afternoon of ANZAC Day, Chris and Tracy located the grave site situated under a beautiful oak tree in the immaculately maintained allied war grave extension of the town’s cemetery.
Clearly overwhelmed, an emotional Chris gave a brief eulogy of his great uncle before acknowledging the group for their efforts in the search.
Ex British serviceman and Bartletts Battlefield Journeys tour leader Michael Kelly said some moving words and together the group recited The Ode of Remembrance.
Sydney Russell McCombe was born on September 21, 1891 at the family home in Strathbogie, Victoria.
After school he worked as a shearer through Victoria and NSW travelling by horseback before joining the army in Euroa on January 1, 1915.
Sydney joined A Company, 23rd Battalion of the 6th Infantry Brigade and trained at Broadmeadows in Melbourne before his active service abroad.
He survived the famous Gallipoli landings in April, 1915, but contracted diphtheria and was sent to England to recover.
When Sydney rejoined his battalion they were serving in the trenches of the Western Front in France.
Here Sydney contracted trench feet and was sent back to England for treatment and rejoined the 23rd Battalion in August, 1918.
Despite the inevitable German defeat, sporadic battles with the enemy continued as the war headed towards armistice on November 11, 1918.
Unfortunately it was in one of these attacks by the enemy that Lance Corporal McCombe was fatally wounded in action on September 1, 1918, somewhere near Mont St Quentin.
To Sydney and his fallen Australian comrades, rest in peace.
Lest we forget.
Email a friend