With two sons bound for the battlefields of World War I, Elizabeth Durbridge was one of thousands of Australian mothers enduring an anxious wait.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Little over a year later, both her boys had been wounded and, soon after returning to the front, were declared missing in action. What followed was a time of turmoil as Mrs Durbridge waited for news.
Corporal Thomas Durbridge was just 18 when he joined in 1916 and, after being captured by the enemy, did not return home until the war’s end. Older brother Levi never made it back. He rests in the Australian war cemetery at Villers-Bretonneux.
The family’s story was told as part of The Belgians Have Not Forgotten exhibition held in Warrnambool in December. To complement the event, Warrnambool RSL’s Doug Heazlewood researched the role of south-west soldiers.
Mr Heazlewood said Thomas Durbridge fought in a number of Belgian campaigns and was wounded in action when he was still a teenager, around the same time his brother was also hurt.
Thousands of kilometres away, Mrs Durbridge was supplied with little information about her sons’ fates.
“You need to spare a thought for Mrs Durbridge, in June 1917 Levi and Thomas have both been wounded at Messines Ridge, which was the early part of the campaign. Levi was wounded again in October of that same year in Polygon Wood. Shortly after that Thomas is taken prisoner and then in August 1918, at the start of the Allied final offensive, their son Levi is killed,” Mr Heazlewood said.
“(Thomas) was captured in the German spring offensive early in 1918 and as far as his family was concerned he was missing, they didn’t know what had happened to him for quite a while.”
In 1917 Mrs Durbridge wrote a heartfelt letter pleading for information.
“She only knows that they have both been wounded and hasn’t heard anything since. So she’s written ‘please can you tell me more? Are they still alive? Are they both dead?’ The answer she got back… doesn’t tell her very much. It really says ‘the only reports we have here in Melbourne on our records are that they were both wounded, we don’t know what their fate is yet’,” Mr Heazlewood said.
“At that stage Thomas was still a prisoner, his mother… didn’t know where he was or what might have happened to him or, more importantly, what would happen to him from then on. Nobody did.
“There’s a story of what must have been some anguish for a mother.
“(The letter back) doesn’t help her much so she’s left to live with it herself.”
Thomas Durbridge spent his 21st birthday in the prisoner of war camp in Germany, working on building roads and laying railway lines.
In a letter home to his family, he puts a brave face on difficult circumstances.
“Just a line hoping it finds you all well at home and not worrying over me, as I am okay and in the best of health thank God,” he writes to his mother in June 1918.
“Don’t forget to send me a bit of my 21st birthday cake. I hope you had a good one.”
Following the end of the war he was repatriated to England and then returned to Australia.
Settling in the south-west, he later married and had four daughters, whose families still call the region home.