Memorial Way No.2

In Memorial Way this week we look at The Tumblong Memorial and The Cudal Memorial Gates in country NSW.  The information and photos have been provided by FFFAIF Committee member and editor of DIGGER Graeme Hosken.

The Tumblong (NSW) Memorial

Tumblong (formerly Adelong Crossing) is a village south of Gundagai just off the Hume Highway. This small monument “In Honour Of The Boys Of Tumblong Who Fought In The Great War” is located in front of the Anglican Church and honours the names of forty local WWI enlistments, ten (25%) of whom lost their lives in the Great War.

Cudal War Memorial Gates, NSW

Cudal is a village west of Orange that in the Great War contributed 58 soldiers to the AIF, 10 of whom did not return (17%). The Memorial takes the form of park gates. At the top of the four columns are the words: Gallipoli, France, Belgium, Palestine.

The names of two brothers appear on the Memorial Gates they are Holden G. and Holden H.  Private Herbert Holden served with the 2^nd Battalion AIF and returned to Australia June 1919. Private George Holden died of Malaria in October 1918. The photo from the Australian War Memorial Collection shows the original grave marker in Egypt covered in flowers.

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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.