Anzac Day 2021: Marlow brothers’ sacrifice remembered at Mologa
As Anzac Day is marked across regional Victoria this weekend, a family who lost three of its five soldier sons on the Western Front and a bush memorial that served not one, but two significant roles are among the stories and sacrifices being recalled.
AMONG all the names carved into the stone column of the Mologa war memorial, there is one in particular that stands out, due to its repetition.
Marlow.
That surname is carried by three of the 10 young men from Mologa, a small community along the train line between Bendigo and Swan Hill, who made the “supreme sacrifice” during World War I.
The woman who unveiled the memorial 101 years ago was their mother.
Sarah Marlow saw five sons head off to the Great War. Three of them never came home.
When the time came on March 24, 1920, to unveil the new memorial remembering the sacrifices of all the district’s families, it was done by Sarah “to whom the honour was justly due”, as the Pyramid Hill Advertiser put it.
At her side was Allan Marlow, who along with his twin brother, Percy, had survived the Western Front to make it home.
Next week Sarah’s great-granddaughter will stand in front of the same column and give the Anzac Day address.
Allison Marlow Paterson, a granddaughter of Allan, was to speak last year for the centenary year of the unveiling before coronavirus delayed the commemorations. She says in those days the memorials served an important role for those whose loved ones had died overseas.
“The little rural communities, they did all the fundraising for the memorials because they were the closest often family members got to standing next to their (relations’) graves,” Allison says. Her speech will touch on “remembering the ordinary lives taken from us, their willingness to volunteer and their sense of community”.
Sarah Marlow, who was born near the Castlemaine goldfields, and her husband, Charles, were parents to seven children, all boys — Jim, Charlie, George, Frederick (who died in infancy), twins Allan and Percy, and Albert. They bought a small farm at Mologa, between Mitiamo and Pyramid Hill in northwest Victoria, but the peace of their lives was shattered when war broke out in Europe.
Jim tried to enlist, but was rejected due to his poor eyesight, so he stayed home to work on the farm with his parents. But over the course of 1915 and 1916, the younger Marlows signed up, with four of them in the 38th Battalion.
The youngest, Albert, was the last to enlist (much to Allan’s displeasure, who wrote “you were foolish you know. There is enough of us here now”), but also tragically the first to be killed, in Belgium in July 1917.
He is buried at Kandahar Farm Cemetery, Ypres, Flanders, which Allison describes as a small cemetery “surrounded by lush fields and fat cows ... a nice resting place for a country boy”.
George, who had enlisted in June 1915, died from his wounds from the Battle of Menin Road, and was also buried in Belgium. Allison says his family at home received news of his death before his brothers in Europe did, and they were subsequently sending letters home saying George had been wounded, but expressing hope for his recovery.
Charlie was killed in France on April 26, 1918. He had married just a few days before he sailed out from Australia, and never met his daughter, Eva.
George, Charlie and Albert are listed at the Mologa war memorial, remembering the 28 men from the community who went to serve, and the 10 who did not make it home.
Jim Marlow, who did visit his brothers’ graves in the 1920s, inherited the farm, but never married nor had children, and neither did Percy.
Meanwhile Allan married a local Mologa girl, also named Eva, and built their mud-brick home himself, calling it Passchendaele, after the Belgium village and battle where the 38th Battalion suffered heavy casualties.
Allan’s son (and Allison’s dad) Noel share-farmed with Jim and eventually bought that farm. But Allison says her family did not live in the same house as Jim had. That was left “stuck in a moment in time”, she says. Sarah’s clothes even remained hanging in the closet.
One day, concerned that the original home was at risk of being ransacked and burnt down, the family cleared it out of all its antiques and treasures, which included old trunks full of more than 500 letters and postcards the Marlow brothers sent home to Mologa from the front.
Being only four years old when her grandfather Allan had died, Allison says she feels that “I got to know a sense of the personality of each of the boys through their letters”. It was the youngest, Albert, who “wrote the most detailed letters”.
Allison published a book, Anzac Sons: Five Brothers on the Western Front, based on those letters in 2014.
By that stage, her children were about the same age as her grandfather and great-uncles when they fought, a fact that hit her emotionally as she describes the “heartbreaking” final letters Allan wrote to Sarah explaining what had happened to his brothers.
“It really felt like I was there with them because that of sense of empathy I had for their Mum,” she says.
Allison, once a librarian teacher, is now a full-time writer based in Queensland. She has just released Australia Remembers: Customs and Traditions of the Australian Defence Force, a follow-up to Australia Remembers: Anzac Day, Remembrance Day and War Memorials, which both aim to address common questions kids have about these events, memorials, customs and ceremonies. She also released a children’s edition of Anzac Sons.
Allison and Noel visited the Western Front together in 2011 and saw the Marlow brothers’ graves. Noel sadly died last May, but (along with descendants of the other Mologa families) there will still be at least three generations of Allan’s family at the memorial this Anzac Day. Allison and her son are attending, along with Allison’s first grandchild, named Marlow June.
“When I was on the Western Front one of the things that shocked me the most was how small this area was, this small patch of the world, but so many lost their lives there, and the futility of it all,” she says.
“It made it very real to be able to go there and explore the terrain.”
While the Mologa memorial is a cause for sorrow for the Marlow family, it also helped spur a joyous reconnection on Anzac Day six years ago, when Allison last spoke at the ceremony. She had expressed a wish to reconnect with the descendants of her great-uncle Charlie through the daughter he had never met, Eva.
The bush telegraph worked quickly. That evening, only hours later, Allison received a message over Facebook. It was Eva’s great-granddaughter.
Country town Mysia’s “unique” plans for memorial school for soldiers
IT WAS a story that made newspapers across the state.
The little town of Mysia, near Boort in northern Victoria, in 1919 had proposed to build a new school in memory of the men from their district that had fought and died in World War I. The residents were going to stump up £500 of their own money towards the cost.
The residents were proclaimed “patriotic and practical” by The Herald that June, when the proposal was taken to the minister for education, who reportedly called “this offer a unique one”.
“The community was naturally looking around just now for means of securing the best, most lasting, and most useful memorial for their fallen heroes, and he could think of no better purpose that a memorial could be devoted to.”
Less than two years later, the £500 had been raised by a town already credited with raising £1200 for the war effort and sending 4000 parcels to the soldiers at the front.
The foundation stone was laid on May 24, 1921. It doubled as a tribute to those who fought, while listing five names of locals who were killed.
Among names on the foundation stone was a local man who was part of the Gallipoli landings in 1915 at just 18 years of age.
Clifford Boyle was repatriated back to Australia suffering injury and illness, and was presented a gold watch from the people of Mysia as a mark of esteem. He returned to the front after two months at home, this time to France, where he was killed in December, 1916, aged 20.
Another of the men listed on the foundation stone, Thomas Ritchie, was killed at Gallipoli.
The Mysia Memorial School was officially opened by the Governor of Victoria, the Earl of Stradbroke, in spring 1921 (he also opened the Boort Agricultural Show on the same trip).
Mysia in 1921 had a population of 198, according to that year’s census. By 2016, that number had fallen to less than 50.
But while the school has long since closed, locals are planning the centenary commemorations to celebrate what has been touted as Victoria’s first memorial school, now used as a community hall.
“What a great thing to do, in the sadness of war, to think about building a school which is just such an investment in the future and so positive,” says local farmer Susan Gould, who is part of the team organising the event later this year.
“To think ‘let’s do something for the kids’ rather than be dismal and morbid about it.”
Two sons of Elizabeth and Thomas Chalmers, Peter and Alec, are also remembered among the fallen on the foundation stone, which Elizabeth was chosen to lay due to the losses her family suffered.
“The farm we bought that we live on is actually a Chalmers property … she lived here,” says Susan, who has lived at Mysia with her husband for about 25 years.
“I just think as a mum, how horrible, how awful, two of your boys have gone from here and never come back.
“You feel those ghosts when you live on a place — I suppose I feel those ghosts.”
Mysia local Ray Chalmers started at the memorial school in 1965 and was there when it closed in about 1970. “It is just a special place in our lives,” he says.
“We appreciate the significance of it even more now we’re older.”
Deniliquin’s Brad Chalmers, who started at the Mysia school in 1963, has spent the past year researching and writing about the school and the local students who fought.
He hoped to have the soldiers’ biographies completed in the next month.
While the first school at Mysia was opened in 1872, the local school by the 1910s was being called “dilapidated” so building a memorial school allowed the community to address two issues. Brad says original documents showed 50 people donated money to the new school, which added up to £504.
He says the school has two honourboards, donated in about 1917 by brothers Thomas and David Chalmers — one with 33 photos of Mysia students who had enlisted, the other carrying 38 names.
Although only five fallen soldiers are named on the foundation stone, Brad says his research has found 10 of the men on the larger honourboard were killed.
“It was a very patriotic district — 38 ex-pupils of the school volunteered — and it became the first war memorial school in Victoria,” he said.
While the anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone is just more than a month away, the centenary celebrations will be held on October 10, the day after the Boort show.
And a special photograph, sent from Canada to Mysia in December, will be a highlight. Susan, who believes the photo was captured not long after the school opened, says the woman who found it believed she’d obtained it at an auction in Ontario. No one in Mysia had seen it before. “We couldn’t believe it, it was such a beautiful little photo of the school, and you can see the optimism so clearly in that photo because the kids made that beautiful garden,” she says.
Country Victorian towns pay tribute as veterans march again
RSL subbranches across country Victoria are preparing for their first Anzac Day services in two years after last year’s events were curtailed by coronavirus.
Among them is Kyabram RSL, which has two surviving veterans of World War II.
Don Anderson, who turned 97 at the weekend, was on the HMAS Napier which was present in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered.
Fellow WWII veteran Frank Lloyd recalled working as a flight mechanic. “It is a good way of remembering those who didn’t come home,” Frank says of the Anzac Day services.
“That’s why I participate.”
Frank plans to attend the service on Sunday with his children and grandchildren. “They ask what you do, and you tell them, and we hope that it never happens again.”
Also attending will be Korean War veteran James Studd, Vietnam veteran Don McColl, and Ian Waller, who served in Iraq and remains an active member of the navy.
Kyabram RSL secretary Bob Stone says this year’s service was modified from previous years’ to comply with restrictions, but added: “We will have a good Anzac Day from what we have seen so far.”
The march will be held entirely within the memorial gardens, which will be fenced off in order to monitor attendances for contact tracing purposes.
“This year there is a lot of interest in the town,” Mr Stone said.
“A lot of people really want it to be a success after last year.”
More information about local celebrations can be found at rslvic.com.au/anzac-day/commemorate-locally/
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