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Note: I don't know who these Smallhorn men are:
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In Memory of
John James Smallhorn
Private
4786
26th Bn., Australian Infantry, A.I.F
who died on
Sunday, 5th November 1916.
Commemorative Information
Cemetery: WARLENCOURT BRITISH CEMETERY
Grave Reference/
Panel Number: II. G. 6.
Location: Warlencourt British Cemetery lies on the east side of the D929, to the south-east of Warlencourt village and 5 kilometres south-west of Bapaume.
CWGC signposts on the D929 give advance warning of arrival at the Cemetery.
Historical Information: The two villages of Warlencourt and Eaucourt-L'Abbaye as well as the Butte were the scene of very fierce fighting in 1916. Eaucourt was taken by the 47th (London) Division early in October. The Butte was attacked by that and other Divisions, to whom the graves in this cemetery bear witness, but it was not relinquished by the enemy until the following 26th February. The 51st (Highland) Division fought a delaying action here on the 25th March, 1918, and the 42nd (East Lancashire) Division recaptured the ground on the 25th August, 1918.
The cemetery was made late in 1919, by concentrations from the battlefields of Warlencourt and Le Sars.
There are now 3,500, 1914-18 war casualties commemorated in this site. Of these, nearly 2,000 were unidentified and special memorials are erected to 44 soldiers from the United Kingdom, nine from Australia, and two from South Africa, known or believed to be buried among them. Other special memorials record the names of eight soldiers from the United Kingdom and seven from Australia, buried in Hexham Road Cemetery, whose graves were destroyed by shell fire.
The cemetery covers an area of 10,300 square metres and is enclosed by a low brick wall on the road front, and on the other three sides by a concrete curb.
The only considerable burial ground moved into this cemetery was:-
HEXHAM ROAD CEMETERY, LE SARS, on the West side of the Abbey grounds. (Hexham Road was the name given to the road leading from Warlencourt to Eaucourt. Le Sars was captured by the 23rd Division on the 7th October, 1916, and again by the Third Army on the 25th August, 1918.) This cemetery was used from November, 1916, to October, 1917.
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In Memory of
Francis Edward Smallhorn
Warrant Officer
408882
Royal Australian Air Force
who died on
Wednesday, 8th November 1944. Age 23.
Additional Information: Son of Walter Leslie and Eily Foy Smallhorn, of East Malvern, Victoria.
Commemorative Information
Cemetery: NEWCASTLE (SANDGATE) WAR CEMETERY
Grave Reference/
Panel Number: Plot K. Row D. Grave 3.
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"Although most Australian soldiers were optimists, and many were opposed in principle to voicing - or even harboring - grievances, it is not surprising if the effect on some intelligent men was a bitter conviction that they were being usuelessly sacrificed. "For Christ's sake, write a book on the life of an infantryman (said one of them...), and by doing so you will quickly prevent these shocking tragedies." That an officer who had fought so nobly as Lieutenant J.A. Raws shoud, in the last letter before his death, speak of the "murder" of many of his friends "through the incompetence, callousness, and personal vanity of those high in authority," is evidence not indeed of the literal truth of his words, but of something much amiss in the higher leadership... "We have just come out of a place so terrible ) orte -, one of the most level-headed officers in the force) that ... a raving lunatic could never imagine the horror of the last thirteen days."
From: "The Real War 1914-1918, by Captain B. H. Liddell Hart, pg. 244, "The Somme Offensive." Pub. 1930, Little Brown & Co., NY
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