[xtypo_dropcap]T[/xtypo_dropcap]here’s not much in the village of Krambach, there’s a pub, a convenience store, and whatever else needed for the local residents and any farmers in the surrounding area.
In the small park beside the pub is a war memorial dedicated to 46 local men who served in World War I, 1914-1918. Among the names etched into the black stone are 13 who bear the Irish surname Gallagher.
I wondered how the Gallagher clan made sense of their loss in the years of peace that followed.
At the time of World War I, Australia had a population of less than 5 million; from that number, 416,809 men enlisted to serve, and of that number some 60,000 were killed. Over 150,000 were wounded or taken prisoner.
As we left the village and its small park I asked my 70-year-old father what type of farming they would have done in the area around the time of the first world war, and he thought it would have been dairying.
All the towns we passed through on our way to the coast had similar war memorials; a bigger town usually meant more names. Most memorials remembered the major wars that Australia was involved in—which included the second world war, the Korean War, and Vietnam.
I later asked my father if we had relatives who served in World War I and he couldn’t recall any. I know well my family fought in the second world war, the one that began when Hitler invaded Poland.
My grandfather’s younger brother Jack was among the first in his town to enlist and he was the only one from the family who did not return. Jack fought in North Africa, Greece, and then Crete where he was one of 3,109 Australian soldiers taken prisoner by German paratroopers.
On occasion from various prisoner of war camps, Jack sent letters to his family back in rural Australia but as the war in Europe was coming to an end the postcards ceased. The last thing they heard of Jack was from an Australian newspaper that quoted him after he was liberated by U.S. forces. He told the reporter he was looking forward to coming home.
The family was overjoyed at the news but that is where it ended—no real reports followed, and Jack was not among the ranks of those returning. There was hearsay going about that so and so said Jack was now living in England. Letters and telephone calls to his former comrades about his whereabouts also proved fruitless.
My grandmother somehow managed to contact the newspaper journalist who wrote the article that quoted Jack. The journalist said it was doubtful that Jack would have been able to survive the dysentery that had sucked the life from him. The family eventually found out that Jack had died on April 18, 1945, in Germany, a few weeks before the war in Europe had finished.
In 1967, my father visited Jack’s grave in rural Bavaria, and my brother and I did the same in 1992. The Commonwealth War Cemetery is a well-tended plot of land where Jack and hundreds of others lay. Snow capped mountains are not far off and a fine line of tall pine trees surrounds it; beyond that are Bavarian farms. Most of the farming in the area seems to be dairying, just like it had once been in Krambach.
In the small park beside the pub is a war memorial dedicated to 46 local men who served in World War I, 1914-1918. Among the names etched into the black stone are 13 who bear the Irish surname Gallagher.
I wondered how the Gallagher clan made sense of their loss in the years of peace that followed.
At the time of World War I, Australia had a population of less than 5 million; from that number, 416,809 men enlisted to serve, and of that number some 60,000 were killed. Over 150,000 were wounded or taken prisoner.
As we left the village and its small park I asked my 70-year-old father what type of farming they would have done in the area around the time of the first world war, and he thought it would have been dairying.
All the towns we passed through on our way to the coast had similar war memorials; a bigger town usually meant more names. Most memorials remembered the major wars that Australia was involved in—which included the second world war, the Korean War, and Vietnam.
I later asked my father if we had relatives who served in World War I and he couldn’t recall any. I know well my family fought in the second world war, the one that began when Hitler invaded Poland.
My grandfather’s younger brother Jack was among the first in his town to enlist and he was the only one from the family who did not return. Jack fought in North Africa, Greece, and then Crete where he was one of 3,109 Australian soldiers taken prisoner by German paratroopers.
On occasion from various prisoner of war camps, Jack sent letters to his family back in rural Australia but as the war in Europe was coming to an end the postcards ceased. The last thing they heard of Jack was from an Australian newspaper that quoted him after he was liberated by U.S. forces. He told the reporter he was looking forward to coming home.
The family was overjoyed at the news but that is where it ended—no real reports followed, and Jack was not among the ranks of those returning. There was hearsay going about that so and so said Jack was now living in England. Letters and telephone calls to his former comrades about his whereabouts also proved fruitless.
My grandmother somehow managed to contact the newspaper journalist who wrote the article that quoted Jack. The journalist said it was doubtful that Jack would have been able to survive the dysentery that had sucked the life from him. The family eventually found out that Jack had died on April 18, 1945, in Germany, a few weeks before the war in Europe had finished.
In 1967, my father visited Jack’s grave in rural Bavaria, and my brother and I did the same in 1992. The Commonwealth War Cemetery is a well-tended plot of land where Jack and hundreds of others lay. Snow capped mountains are not far off and a fine line of tall pine trees surrounds it; beyond that are Bavarian farms. Most of the farming in the area seems to be dairying, just like it had once been in Krambach.
