A desire to make the observance of Anzac Day in Katoomba even more personal in its centenary edition prompted Katoomba RSL Sub-Branch president Brigitte Moseley to begin a special project.
She placed an advertisement in the Gazette in February, asking locals who have ancestors who’d served in Gallipoli or the Western Front to come forward.
“The result has been quite amazing . . . and moving too,” Ms Moseley said.
“I have 13 people and their stories for whom I will call an honour roll on Anzac Day, as a special initiative in addition to our usual proceedings.
“We have been able to obtain the military records of these WWI Diggers and for so many (of the project’s participants) it has been an emotional, revelatory and sometimes confronting experience.
“Each of the relatives will have the opportunity to come forward and lay a tribute for their ancestor at the wreath laying ceremony at the Katoomba RSL Cenotaph at about 11.30am, after the march down Katoomba Street.
“I also intend to focus my address at the commemoration service at Katoomba Public School’s hall (at 11.45am) on the people on this honour roll and say a few words about each one.”
Amongst the names on the project’s honour roll is Captain Eric Dark, the husband of novelist Eleanor Dark , whose stately mansion called ‘Varuna’ in Cascade Street, Katoomba is now The National Writers’ House.
Dark was a Katoomba general practitioner who sailed to England at his own expense to volunteer when the Great War began, before being appointed a temporary lieutenant (and later captain) in the Royal Army Medical Corps on March 15, 1915. He served at field hospitals and ambulances on the Western Front.
He was awarded the Military Cross for evacuating the wounded under fire at Boesinghe, Belgium on July 31, 1917.
Private Percy Clarence Tuck was the officer in charge of Katoomba Fire Station when he decided to enlist, aged 24, in the army on November 28, 1914.
He joined the 4th Battalion which completed its landing at Gallipoli by 1.05pm on April 25, 1915 and was called to the front line later that afternoon.
After five days of fierce fighting at Bolton’s Hill, his battalion was granted half a day’s rest after which they were called to relieve a group of British Marines trapped in an isolated trench in Wire Gully, with heavy fire coming from three sides.
On the second day of that operation, May 1, Private Tuck died but his body, if found, was never identified.
He is commemorated on the Lone Pine Memorial.
According to a report in the Blue Mountains Echo on June 25, 1915, Private Percy Tuck “was equally popular with his fellow soldiers as he was with his fellow firefighters”.
Ms Moseley said the honour roll will be particularly poignant for Katoomba resident John Griffith, who until now “had heard rumours but never really knew” about circumstances following the deaths of his great uncles at Gallipoli — brothers Private Victor Edmond John Hennell and Private Harold Benjamin Hennell.
The brothers joined the same platoon in the 4th Battalion on May 30, 1915 (aged 19 and 18) and military records show they were killed in action together at Lone Pine between August 6 and 9, 1915. But a letter to their father by the Records Office of the Department of Defence in May 1921 contained the sad news that no trace of the last resting place of Harold was ever found.
The Anzac Day march down Katoomba Street, starting at 11am, will be led by Ms Moseley’s 97-year-old father who will ride in a Land Rover.
Mr Edwin John Moseley (Lt-Col, retired) served in No. 1 Paratroop Battalion in WWII and in the Korean War.