Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Riverine Herald (Echuca, Vic) 17 December 1918. Hero Stretcher Bearer.

‘Mrs. C. M. Donoghue, of Fitzroy, and formerly of Hopwood Street Echuca, Ins received a letter of condolence from the chaplain of the 14th Battalion, A.I.F. to which her son, the late Private Charles J. Donoghue, was attached. In the course of the letter, dated August 20, Chaplain F. W. Rolland said---"I write to convey to you the sympathy of the commanding officer, officers and men of the 14th Battalion in your sad loss. Your gallant son was killed in Australia's greatest battle and passed without pain to a higher service. That day we drove the Germans back for miles and saved Amiens. The sacrifice was not in vain, though to you the price of victory will seem immeasurable. Owing to our capture of the whole battle area we were able to give all our heroic dead reverent burial in a definite cemetery, where crosses mark their resting places. You, must have much pride as well as sorrow when you remember how your boy (as stretcher-bearer) in the stern test of war proved, himself a man, brave, cheerful, willing, loyal unto death. May God in His mercy touch your disappointment with new hope and enable you to trust to His safe keeping him whom God gave, to be yours for ever. The company's hearts are sore for the mothers who wail at home, and though few will venture to write many would like to tell you how much they I miss their mate and how sorry they feel for his mother."