Fluke discovery of World War I officer’s diary under the floorboards during a Manly house renovation

A 100-year-old manuscript found under floorboards during renovations has historians speechless as it brings to life one man’s war story.

RIPPING up floorboards in old houses usually yields nothing more historic than rot and rats.

But the State Library of NSW is the richer for what Glen Butler found while renovating his Manly home.

It was a WWI diary penned by Sydney-born military officer Geoffrey Gaden while fighting the Germans in the trenches of France in 1916.

The almost pristine diary was secreted under the floorboards of an upstairs bedroom and evidently forgotten before Mr Butler bought the house about three years ago.

Library curator Elise Edmonds — whose exhibition of Australian war diaries to commemorate the centenary of WWI recently opened — was ecstatic when she learned about the diary.

“It’s the kind of phone call you might dream about as a curator,” Ms Edmonds said. “I was speechless to hear it.”

Diary extract

Geoffrey Gaden

Geoffrey Gaden’s next of kin — retired farmer Michael Gaden, of Bordertown, SA — had long cherished the story of his father’s distinguished service but had no idea about the diary.

According to the inscription, Geoffrey sent the diary from France to his father Charles William Gaden in Sydney. Michael Gaden thinks that when Charles died in 1923, the diary went to Geoffrey’s brother Alex “Ronald” Gaden whose wife owned the Manly house. “We imagine Ronald put it there (under the floor),” Michael Gaden said.

He has agreed to give the diary to the State Library.

Ms Edmonds could not find any Australian war service records for Geoffrey Gaden and on a hunch searched the British records.

Map found inside the diary

Geoffrey Gaden, aged 15, had been sent to England for medical reasons and joined the British army when war broke out.

He served in both world wars, won a chestful of medals from England and Russia including the Military Cross and the Cross of St Anne, and rose to the rank of major. He was part of the Gaden legal dynasty and his great uncle was three times NSW premier Sir George Dibbs. Geoffrey’s nephew is the renowned Sydney actor John Gaden.

In a long military career, Geoffrey Gaden was stationed in Iraq, Iran, Iceland, Barbados, and India, where Michael was born.

In WWII Geoffrey was evacuated from Dunkirk.

“We have quite touching details of his writing to my mother an hour or two after being back in England,” Michael Gaden said. “He lost a hell of a lot of his men as prisoners of war in Dunkirk.”

Geoffrey was discharged in 1944, worked for the military in New York, returned to Sydney in 1949 and was living in Pymble when he died in 1967.