Soldier’s unearthed diary provides insight into graves recovery work.

A Great War soldier’s 100-year-old diary was recently discovered amongst a jumble of records in a Brisbane store.

And thanks to the efforts of State Library of Queensland volunteers, it has been transcribed.

The transcription provides a remarkable insight into Claude Fraser’s work with the Australian Graves Detachment.

When 18-year-old Claude reached France in 1918, the war had ended.

Rather than return home, Claude volunteered to help recover and identify some of the 46,000 Australians who had died on the Western Front.

The graves recovery work began in April 1919, when Claude and 1,000 comrades started searching for bodies in the battlefields surrounding Villers-Bretonneux.

An early diary entry reads: ‘Commenced work at 8.30am. Seven bodies in one shell hole, bodies hardly decomposed.’

The exhumed remains were wrapped in hessian, stacked on a wagon, and transported to a cemetery for reburial.

Soldiers placed a cross over each grave, and then photographed it. The image was sent to the deceased man’s family - if the body had been identified.

Sadly, in most cases, the remains were unidentified.

The soldiers quickly protested about their appalling work conditions. ‘Refused to go on parade,’ Claude noted of one battalion. ‘Major listened to complaints then gave them hell.’

While Claude’s described the work’s repulsiveness: ‘When we raise the bodies most of us are on the verge of vomiting,’ he also marvelled at the countryside’s beauty, ‘I have never seen so many beautiful wildflowers as I have seen in France.’

Claude expressed heartfelt sympathy for the displaced civilians. ‘One of the saddest of sights that I have seen is the homecoming of the French people,’ he recorded ‘Picture to yourself a ruined house, a load of furniture in front, the family standing just beside it, evidently wondering how they are going to fix things up.’

Claude’s diary also described how the soldiers spiralled into boredom, heavy drinking, and loneliness.

Claude returned home in late 1919 and became a successful businessman, setting up a cash-and-carry store in 1923.

Claude’s work profoundly impacted him: In 1954, he returned to France to visit the cemeteries that he had laboured in 35 years earlier.

‘The Nameless Names: recovering the missing ANZACs’ describes the detachment’s grisly work and the circumstances resulting in scathing government investigations into its operations.

Paperback version released 3 April 2024.

Author signed pre-orders available via my website (AU$39.99 plus postage):

https://scottbennettwriter.com/shop/

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