Anzac Day hits close to home for Dalby family who travelled to Yeronga Memorial Park

AFTER 18 months of research, one family found the final piece of the puzzle to their Western Front connection

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THE DECENDANTS of a young man from Yeronga killed in WW1 travelled from all around Queensland to celebrate his life.

Marcia Rae, her two daughters and five grandchildren made a pilgrimage from Bribie Island, Gatton and Dalby to the Stephens RSL subbranch last weekend to discover more about their great, great Uncle David Carter.

When they arrived, the family were greeted with medals, a death penny and letters the 21-year-old soldier wrote to his parents from the Western Front, lining the foyer of the subbranch in Annerley.

“My late husband, John, was David’s great nephew,” Ms Rae said.

“He would have just been very emotional and happy that we’d found where the memorial for Daniel is in Brisbane and that we’d found an RSL that had made such a prominent display.”

The family’s reunion was a journey that started 18-months-ago when Marcia’s daughters Natalie O’Brien and Suzanne Lavender began researching the history of their great, great uncle.

After some digging, they found David Carter’s parents had donated their late son’s wartime memorabilia to the Stevens RSL in the 1920s, but they did not see the light of day until the early 2000s until they were mounted in the branch’s entrance.

Once the family learnt the branch had so much history about their relative, they were determined to make the journey to Annerley.

“We as a family believe we should pay honour to the guys from First and Second World Wars,” Ms Rae said.

David Carter was a young man from Yeronga who enlisted in the army in 1916 at just 21.

After training in England, he served in Bernafay, France until early 1918.

He spent 21 days on the Western Front until he was killed in Gapaard near Warneton in Belgium, just nine months before the end of the war.

He is buried in the Bailleul Communal Cemetery Extension in France, but is immortalised at Yeronga Memorial Park.