Rare war artefacts to be revealed at Shrine’s new Galleries of Remembrance

A WIDOW’S harrowing plea to spare her son the horrors of war - and her the heartbreak of a failing farm - is among rare artefacts to be unveiled in the Shrine’s new Galleries of Remembrance.

Image 1: Cornelius Carroll, who was summoned back to the family farm at Yambuk just before he left Melbourne for the Western Front.

JUST after lunch on Christmas Day, 1915, Michael Carroll suffered a fatal heart attack.

He was 61 and left behind his wife, Sarah, three daughters and five sons, plus a large farm at Yambuk in western Victoria that needed someone to run it.

Two sons were already overseas in the AIF - the youngest, Daniel, was 12, and another son, Cornelius, was in training at Broadmeadows camp. Even the farm hands had signed up.

It was Sarah’s cue to start a campaign to get Cornelius back to the farm.

She wrote letters to her local MP and the Army, spelling out how hard it was to cope with farm debt, let alone run the property that had its share of saltmarsh and unforgiving soil.

In one letter she said her circumstance was a “case in a thousand’’.

“I don’t think Brittania will see me down. I beg of you gentlemen to give me another six months help,’’ she wrote to Army officials.

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Sarah was a formidable character and her persistence paid off.

Just as Cornelius was about to leave Port Melbourne for the Western Front, the Military Police boarded his troopship and escorted him off.

He went back to the farm in what remains a rare tale of a compassionate reprieve.

Yet even so, Sarah was given a white feather by some locals who thought it wrong.

Kevin Carroll, 80, and still working on the same family farm, recalls his grandmother was not someone to give in easily.

Sarah Carroll's letter to authorities requesting that son Cornelius be spared from war so that the family could keep their Yambuk farm going.

The second half of the letter.

“She was a very strong person,’’ he recalled. “And Cornelius was a gentleman: he would have wanted to do his duty.’’

As it turned out, Cornelius’s duty was to the family and the farm.

One of Mrs Carroll’s plaintive letters is part of the 850 objects contained in the Shrine’s new Galleries of Remembrance that will be officially opened this week to mark the completion of the $45 million redevelopment of the site.

The letter is a harrowing plea for help from someone who realised her options had all but expired.

The galleries contain mementos, artefacts and stories from a century of conflict, and many wartime Victorian stories will be revealed for the first time.

The Carrolls’ story is one of the more unusual World War I tales, especially when recruiting was often a contentious issue in Australia.

By the time Cornelius’s enlistment papers were scrawled with red pen “Has final leave’’, it was February, 1917, 14 months after his father’s death.

But once back in Yambuck, he stayed for some years.

Kevin Carroll remembers his uncle moving to Geelong once the farm was back on its feet and Daniel, Kevin’s father, was experienced enough to take on a bigger role.

Shrine research officer Katrina Nicholson suspects there might be more stories out there, of last-minute reprieves, just like the Carrolls.

“Plenty of families lost sons and husbands and faced difficult circumstances. Was it because Sarah asked? Did others get back too?’’ she wondered.