Montrose War Memorial – Victoria.
FFFAIF member Heather Ford has compiled this report on her local war memorial at Montrose, Victoria:
The Montrose War Memorial was commissioned in 1921, and was originally located in the middle of the town’s main intersection of Mt Dandenong and Canterbury roads.
Photo: Montrose War Memorial circa 1940 [State Library of Victoria]
In the 1970’s, due to the increased traffic through the town and the need to update the road-scaping the memorial was moved to the Montrose Recreation Reserve and set in a rose garden.
After the completion of the new Montrose Town centre in 1986, a local RSL member and Korean war veteran successfully campaigned for the memorial to be moved back to a more prominent position in the town. The memorial now stands very close to it’s original site. (37o48’37.07″S 145o20’37.30″E)
Photo: Montrose War Memorial March 2008 [Heather Ford]
In early 2008, the ‘Korean Vet’ was informed that the memorial would be relocated to make way for new garden beds, but after complaints were made to the local councillor, the plans were changed to incorporate the memorial in the refurbishment scheme.
The names of 20 Montrose residents are inscribed on the memorial, including 3 who died on active service. On the memorial below a bronze rising son insignia is a plaque with the following inscription:
ERECTED BY
THE PEOPLE OF
MONTROSE
AS A TRIBUTE TO
HER GALLANT SONS
WHO TOOK PART
IN THE
GREAT WAR
1914 – 1919
DIED ON SERVICE
FRED DAVIES
GORDON EWART
NORMAN HOOKE
Photo: Private Gordon Ewart
58th Battalion
KIA
1st October 1918
[AWM]
The other names of those who served in the Great War are: Sister Edith Yeaman, Louis Cazaly, Cyril Crameri, Robert Davies, George Davies, Alfred Fairbank, Walter Houghton, Allan Hooke, Ellis Jeeves, Henry Lalor, Roy Langley, Roy Marshall, Robert McComas, Albert Round, William Walker, Lindsay Yeaman.
It is reported that amongst the first survivors to return to the town was Sister Edith Yeaman. Edith had enlisted in the Australian Army Nursing Service in the May of 1915 and embarked with the 3rd Australian General Hospital on the 18th of that month – arriving back in Melbourne exactly 4 years later (give or take a few days) on the 15th May 1919. During these 4 years she had been stationed on Lemnos, and in Egypt, England and France.
Two of Edith’s brothers, Lindsay & Wilfred also served. Lindsay survived influenza and various wounds including being gassed, and returned home in the June of 1919. While Wilfred was demobbed in England in May 1919 in order to join the Russian Relief Force, before he too returned home.
*****
The Families and Friends of the First AIF thanks the Australian, UK and French governments for affording Australian and British soldiers – presently buried in mass graves at Pheasant Wood – dignified individual reburials in a new CWGC cemetery at Fromelles, and applauds Minister Snowdon and his British counterpart, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence and Minister for Veterans, Kevan Jones MP, for their joint decision to DNA test the remains at exhumation and use every reasonable method to attempt identification of each soldier.