Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Valentine Montgomery Starkey

Born on 14 March 1894, Valentine Montgomery Starkey, known as Val, was the youngest son of nine children, of Joseph and Emma (née Green).  Along with his three elder brothers, George, Ernest (Ern) and Herbert (Herb) and five sisters, Eliza, Agnes (Netty), Rosannah (Rose), Milbah and Victoria, Val was brought up on his parent’s farm at Mangrove Creek, a small community of about forty families at the time of his birth, on a tributary of the Hawkesbury River in Central Coast New South Wales, Australia.

The Starkey name was well known in the area. It was remembered at Upper Mangrove where a section of the river was called Starkey’s Crossing by locals, once traversed by punt but eventually being granted its own bridge in 1903.   There was also a landmark called Starkey’s Corner, at the commencement of Sentry Box Reach, the reach of the river near Gunderman, named after the geological feature known as Sentry Box Rock.

Val’s forebears were pioneers of this region. His father Joseph and uncles George and Tom Junior were all farmers at Mangrove Creek, while his grandfather Tom Starkey Senior, who had been born in the area in 1818, farmed further down the river at Wiseman’s Ferry.  It had been Tom’s father James Starkey, a carpenter and ex-convict who was one of the earliest pioneers of the Lower Hawkesbury.  He had moved his young family down river from Windsor, where he had married Mary Manning, a fellow ex-convict on 5 December 1811. This was only a year after Windsor, the third-oldest place of British settlement on the Australian continent, had been officially proclaimed by then Governor Lachlan Macquarie.  James and Mary were Val’s connection with the Old Country.  His great grandparents arrived separately at His Majesty’s Pleasure in 1807 and 1810. Both had been convicted on different occasions by the Northampton Assizes in the East Midlands of England, Thomas for stealing drapery goods and Mary for stealing wheat.

Val was never to reach his 23rd birthday, and it seems he learnt very early on that life could indeed be short as his formative years were marred with numerous family members passing away, some in tragic circumstances. Life was fragile in these early days of Federation, especially for working class families in isolated regions. On 3 November 1901, when Val was seven years old, he was left motherless when Emma Starkey, aged just 44, died of blood poisoning. Heartbreakingly, she died on the same day that young Val had gathered with his family and around 200 other mourners at the funeral of his grandfather who had died of pneumonia two days before.

When Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, most Australians greeted the news with great patriotic enthusiasm. Volunteers rushed to enlist for what they thought would be an exciting adventure, a war that was expected to be over by Christmas. Twelve years his senior, Val’s big brother Ernest Reuben Starkey was among the first men to enlist with the AIF when he made his way to Sydney’s Randwick racecourse to sign up on 17 August 1914. At 32 he was older than most volunteers of the time, but would have been perfect army material, a hard grafter with plenty of bush experience. A Surveyor’s cook at the time of enlistment, he had been part of a surveyor’s team in the Singleton area in 1906 and prior to that, a timber-getter at Bullahdellah in the mid North coast region.    He was a short, stocky man, 5’ 6 ½” height and weighing 11st 7lbs according to his army records, while the small scar above his upper lip and the absence of eleven teeth perhaps indicates his tough working life.

Ern was allocated to the 4th Battalion and embarked at Sydney on HMAT Euripides on 20 October 1914, the A14 troopship amongst the first convoy that left Albany WA in November 1914. As a member of the First Contingent he was on his way to Egypt, arriving in December and training at Mena, near Cairo, in sight of the great pyramids. At some stage Ern spent time in hospital with what started as influenza and bronchitis and developed into a severe case pneumonia. Ern served at Gallipoli and in early 1916 he was transferred to the 1st Infantry Brigade Machine Gun Company and sent to the Western front in France.

Val decided to follow his brother Ern. By 1916 all their other siblings had passed away, or married and left home.  On 7 January 1916, aged 21 years and 9 months, at Sydney Town Hall Recruiting Depot Val’s enlistment papers with the AIF were stamped Fit for Active Service.  Like brother Ern he was dark haired, brown eyed with a dark complexion, and said he was Church of England.  But he was not as short, and was less stocky than his brother, being 5’ 8” and weighing 133 lbs (just over 60kg).  His job would have made him fit. Like Ern he worked with a survey team but was a Surveyor’s Chainman which meant walking long distances as a surveyor’s assistant, carrying a measuring device known as Gunter’s chain made up of 100 links in order to survey land.  He appears from his army records to have been illiterate.  He signed his attestation paper for services abroad with an X – described as HIS MARK. 

In Liverpool NSW, on 22 February 1916 Val was appointed to C Company, 19th reinforcements of 4th Battalion, the same Battalion to which Ern had been first sent.

On Tuesday 22 August 1916 Private VM Starkey no. 6086 embarked at Sydney on the A18 troopship HMAT Wiltshire, never to see Australia again.  He was at sea for almost 10 weeks, berthing at Plymouth on 12 October 1916.

Val remained in England for a month at Worgret Hill training camp near Wareham in Dorset, before proceeding to France on 13 December on the SS Arundel from Folkestone in Kent. Folkestone was an important port during the First World War with approximately 10 million troops and others including nurses passing through the harbour, either embarking to serve on the western front or returning on leave or to be taken to hospitals.

By the following day he had arrived at the 1st Australian Divisional Base Depot at Étaples, a very old fishing town and port in the region of Pas de Calais in Picardy in Northern France.  During the First World War Étaples was an Army Base Camp, the largest of its kind ever established overseas by the British.  It was served by a network of railways, canals and roads connecting the camp to the southern and eastern fields of battle in France and to ships carrying troops, supplies, guns, equipment and thousands of men and women across the English Channel. It was a base for British, Canadian, Scottish and Australian forces. At its peak the camp housed over 100,000 people. It had almost 20 general hospitals and could treat 22,000 patients.  Within two days of being in France, Val was admitted with scabies to the 20th General Hospital at Camiers, a small village north of Étaples arriving back at the Base Depot on 23 December. Val must’ve spent his last Christmas preparing for the Front at Étaples, for by 12 January 1917 he was ‘In the Field’.  

Battalion diaries allow us to trace the places Val went in France around Arras. Amongst the numerous diary entries about heavy barrage from the enemy and the appalling weather there are entries describing life away from the front which included: a lot of marching from place to place; training; digging trenches; having feet inspected; staying in Nissen Huts; church parades; on 21 January 1917 AIF Commander Birdwood visited the troops to present medals and the weather was particularly arduous with hard frosts, heavy morning fog, heavy rain, hail, and snowstorms; there was a boxing tournament and the issuing of footballs to the companies for light relief; plus organising their ‘Absent Vote’ for the Commonwealth elections. The food the men were given for special occasions was described, e.g. to commemorate the landing of the 4th Battalion in France the previous year the men were given beer, cakes, chocolate, tomatoes and biscuits for free; and then on 26 April the men were given a holiday to commemorate the 2nd anniversary of the ANZAC landing and issued 1 bottle beer, 1 packet biscuits, 1 bar chocolate, 2 packets cigarettes, 2 sausages, 1 box matches per man. 

Val’s final days were spent with his battalion bombing the Hindenburg Line, around Bullecourt and the railway embankment at Noreuil.  An Australian attack on German trenches east of the village of Bullecourt, part of the Arras offensive fought between the British and the Germans from 9 April to 17 May 1917. 

For several days in early May the battalion was undergoing heavy shelling, this continued throughout the night and early morning of the 7th. “Relieved at 12.30am on 8th and withdrew to sunken road behind Noreuil.” Val died on the second day of the second Battle of Bullecourt. According to his war records: on 8 May 1917 he was KILLED IN ACTION ‘In the Field’ and buried in the vicinity of Noreuil, 13 miles (21 km) southeast of Arras on the D5 road.  However he has no known grave. Total casualties throughout the operations of the second Battle of Bullecourt were 4 officers killed, 3 wounded and 47 killed and 203 wounded. Val was one of the 47 killed.

The battalion diary includes listings of men killed, wounded or going back to England. Only the officers are named, the others like Val – around 800 of them are just ‘men’. 

In June 1917 it was reported in the local Gosford newspaper that “Word came through last Saturday to Mr. Starkey that his youngest son, Val, had fallen at the front. Everyone is sorry to hear this news, for only the other day he was here with us an ordinary laddie.  Now he has paid the highest price of patriotism – his life for King and country. But his name will not be forgotten. As long as the Roll of Honour hangs in the Public School, Mangrove, so long will Roy Pemberton and he be remembered and spoken of by successive ranks of school boys and girls.”

Unveiled on Monday 25 June 1917 Val’s name was listed on the Mangrove Public school’s Roll of Honor along with other names of boys who had gone to war from the school including E and H Starkey, certainly his brother Ern and possibly brother Herbert.

At the anniversary of Val’s death this memoriam was printed in the Family Notices of the Gosford Times:  “In sad but loving memory of our dear brother, Val, who was killed whilst fighting for King and Country at Bullecourt, France, May 8th, 1917. We pictured his safe returning, We longed to clasp his hand; But God has postponed our meeting, Till we meet in a better land. In a hero grave he's sleeping. Inserted by his loving brother and sister-in-law, Herb and Gladys.”

In the meantime Ern, although he spent time in hospital on several occasions, avoided death and major injury in France, unlike his younger brother he survived the Great War. An published 2 January 1919 in The Gosford Times and Wyong District Advocate describes Ern’s homecoming at Mangrove Creek, saying he was the first local man to enlist, a “public welcome home was given to Driver Ern Starkey (our only Anzac) and Corporal M White. On the other side he took part in the landing at Gallipoli, was in the famous charge at Lone Pine, an fought in many of the battles on the western front.”

Returning to Australia Ern worked as a labourer and lived his final years in Gosford working as a gardener. He died in 1959 and is buried at Point Clare Cemetery.

  Correspondence between the Starkey family and the war office regarding Val’s death continued well after the war demonstrating the pain that many families experienced waiting for news about their loved one’s death and grave location.  Amy Elliott wrote this letter by hand to Base Records in Melbourne on 28 December 1920:

“To the Officer in Charge

Dear Sir My brother VM Starkey was killed in the Battle of BulyCort* [sic] on the 8 of May 2 years back & we never received anything belonging to him. I would like to know if there is anything come back or if his kit bag came back I would like to have something belonging to him I made enquiries at the Sydney barracks & they told me to write to you if there is anything would you please let me know & oblige.”     (*Bullecourt )

Amy received a reply from the officer in charge stating that there was nothing found in the deceased’s kit bag held in store.

On 3 August 1921 Val’s father Joseph received his Memorial Scroll and King’s Message from Base Records, Victoria Barracks, Melbourne. On 9 September 1922 he received his son’s Memorial plaque (known as the Dead Man’s Penny).

It was not until over twenty years after his death that a place was created for the Starkey family to remember their fallen loved one.  Valentine Montgomery Starkey is commemorated at the Australian National Memorial, Villers–Bretonneux, the main memorial to Australian military personnel killed on the Western Front during World War I. It was officially opened on 22 July 1938.

Lest We Forget

"...6086 Private Valentine Montgomery Starkey. Starkey was born on 14 March 1894 in the Mangrove Creek area, NSW, and lived in the Macdonald Valley until he enlisted in the 4th Battalion on 28 January 1916. He was killed in action in France during the Arras offensive, probably around the village of Lagnicourt, on 8 April 1917. Pte Starkey has no known grave and his name is commemorated on the Australian National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux." - SOURCE (www.awm.gov.au)

From Francois Somme

Pte 6086 Valentine (Val) Montgomery Starkey
4th Australian Infantry Battalion, C Company,
1st Brigade, 1st Australian Division, AIF
 
On the fields of the Somme, the light of a new day touches the poppies with rays of golden sunlight and, gently, in a breeze as light as a breath, ghostly voices are heard, they are those belonging to thousands of young men who, on these sacred grounds, more than a hundred years ago, during the Great War, fought and fell during battles that were among the deadliest and most brutal of the First World War, of a conflict that set the whole world ablaze in the flames of madness and despair and even today we can see the traces of these battles in trenches, deep scars running through the wheat fields, the valleys, the plains of the Somme as in Pozieres, Villers-Bretonneux, we can still see in Amiens, on the facades of old houses, churches, bullet holes, silent witnesses of the brutality that took place here between 1914 and 1918 then, along the roads, in our villages today peaceful, in white coats, stretch cemeteries, countless and solemn and, row upon row, the graves of thousands of heroes, of our sons who came from the other side of the world. Among them rest in peace brave Australians who, between July 1916 and November 1918, served here with extraordinary bravery and admirable brotherhood, an exceptional bond of friendship which unites them still today in eternal rest, in remembrance.

In the trenches, in the barbed wire, in the shell holes filled with blood and tears, thousands of them paid the supreme sacrifice and could never be found, never had known graves and still wait, patiently, silently to be found, to see the light of day again and to join their brothers in arms in a sacred epitaph engraved in the marble of an immaculate tomb. They were young, they were the cream, the strength, the beauty of the Australian nation and came to fight with faith, with determination, with conviction.

They were afraid too, perhaps of death, that's for sure, but I also think they were also afraid of dying alone, somewhere and of being forgotten forever, far from home. But, more than a hundred years have passed, the grass, the flowers grew again on the old battlefields, the cannons, the rifles, the bullets ended in rust, the weapons fell silent, the war disappeared but, behind the poppies soon rose the graves of these exceptional men and in the stone of the memorials, as in Villers-Bretonneux were inscribed for eternity the names of 11,000 Diggers who had no known graves but who, however, will never be forgotten and whose memory I will bring to life with care, passion, gratitude and respect, by telling their stories so that here and beyond the fields of northern France, their heritage can live forever.

On this day, it is with the deepest gratitude and the utmost respect that I would like to honor the memory of one of these young men, one of my Boys of the Somme who, for Australia and France, for each of us and our children, gave his life.I would like to pay a very respectful tribute to Private number 6086 Valentine Montgomery Starkey who fought bravely in the 4th Australian Infantry Battalion,C Company, 1st Brigade, 1st Australian Division of the Australian Imperial Force, and who was killed in action 109 years ago, on 8 May 1917 at the age of 22 near the Somme.

Born on 14 March 1894, Valentine Montgomery Starkey, known as "Val", was the youngest son of nine children, of Joseph and Emma (née Green). Along with his three elder brothers, George, Ernest (Ern) and Herbert (Herb) and five sisters, Eliza, Agnes (Netty), Rosannah (Rose), Milbah and Victoria, Val was brought up on his parent’s farm at Mangrove Creek, a small community of about forty families at the time of his birth, on a tributary of the Hawkesbury River in Central Coast New South Wales, Australia.

The Starkey name was well known in the area. It was remembered at Upper Mangrove where a section of the river was called Starkey’s Crossing by locals, once traversed by punt but eventually being granted its own bridge in 1903. There was also a landmark called Starkey’s Corner, at the commencement of Sentry Box Reach, the reach of the river near Gunderman, named after the geological feature known as Sentry Box Rock.

Val’s forebears were pioneers of this region. His father Joseph and uncles George and Tom Junior were all farmers at Mangrove Creek, while his grandfather Tom Starkey Senior, who had been born in the area in 1818, farmed further down the river at Wiseman’s Ferry. It had been Tom’s father James Starkey, a carpenter and ex-convict who was one of the earliest pioneers of the Lower Hawkesbury. He had moved his young family down river from Windsor, where he had married Mary Manning, a fellow ex-convict on 5 December 1811. This was only a year after Windsor, the third-oldest place of British settlement on the Australian continent, had been officially proclaimed by then Governor Lachlan Macquarie. James and Mary were Val’s connection with the Old Country. His great grandparents arrived separately at His Majesty’s Pleasure in 1807 and 1810. Both had been convicted on different occasions by the Northampton Assizes in the East Midlands of England, Thomas for stealing drapery goods and Mary for stealing wheat.

Val was never to reach his 23rd birthday, and it seems he learnt very early on that life could indeed be short as his formative years were marred with numerous family members passing away, some in tragic circumstances. Life was fragile in these early days of Federation, especially for working class families in isolated regions. On 3 November 1901, when Val was seven years old, he was left motherless when Emma Starkey, aged just 44, died of blood poisoning.

Heartbreakingly, she died on the same day that young Val had gathered with his family and around 200 other mourners at the funeral of his grandfather who had died of pneumonia two days before.

When Britain declared war on Germany on 4 August 1914, most Australians greeted the news with great patriotic enthusiasm. Volunteers rushed to enlist for what they thought would be an exciting adventure, a war that was expected to be over by Christmas.

Twelve years his senior, Val’s big brother Pte/Dvr 184 Ernest (Ern) Reuben Starkey was among the first men to enlist with the AIF when he made his way to Sydney’s Randwick racecourse to sign up on 17 August 1914. At 32 he was older than most volunteers of the time, but would have been perfect army material, a hard grafter with plenty of bush experience. A Surveyor’s cook at the time of enlistment, he had been part of a surveyor’s team in the Singleton area in 1906 and prior to that, a timber-getter at Bullahdellah in the mid North coast region.He was a short, stocky man, 5’ 6 ½” height and weighing 11st 7lbs according to his army records, while the small scar above his upper lip and the absence of eleven teeth perhaps indicates his tough working life.

Ern was allocated to the 4th Battalion and embarked at Sydney on HMAT Euripides on 20 October 1914, the A14 troopship amongst the first convoy that left Albany,Western Australia in November 1914. As a member of the First Contingent he was on his way to Egypt, arriving in December and training at Mena, near Cairo, in sight of the great pyramids. At some stage Ern spent time in hospital with what started as influenza and bronchitis and developed into a severe case pneumonia. Ern served at Gallipoli and in early 1916 he was transferred to the 1st Infantry Brigade Machine Gun Company and sent to the Western front in France.

Val decided to follow his brother Ern. By 1916 all their other siblings had passed away, or married and left home. On 7 January 1916, aged 21 years and 9 months, at Sydney Town Hall Recruiting Depot Val’s enlistment papers with the AIF were stamped Fit for Active Service. Like brother Ern he was dark haired, brown eyed with a dark complexion, and said he was Church of England.But he was not as short, and was less stocky than his brother, being 5’ 8” and weighing 133 lbs (just over 60kg).His job would have made him fit. Like Ern he worked with a survey team but was a Surveyor’s Chainman which meant walking long distances as a surveyor’s assistant, carrying a measuring device known as "Gunter’s chain" made up of 100 links in order to survey land. He appears from his army records to have been illiterate.He signed his attestation paper for services abroad with an X, described as His mark.

In Liverpool NSW, on 22 February 1916 Val was appointed to C Company, 19th reinforcements of 4th Battalion, the same Battalion to which Ern had been first sent.

On Tuesday 22 August 1916 Valentine embarked at Sydney on the A18 troopship HMAT Wiltshire, never to see Australia again.He was at sea for almost 10 weeks, berthing at Plymouth on 12 October 1916.
Val remained in England for a month at Worgret Hill training camp near Wareham in Dorset, before proceeding to France on 13 December on the SS Arundel from Folkestone in Kent. Folkestone was an important port during the First World War with approximately 10 million troops and others including nurses passing through the harbour, either embarking to serve on the western front or returning on leave or to be taken to hospitals.

By the following day he had arrived at the 1st Australian Divisional Base Depot at Étaples, a very old fishing town and port in the region of Pas de Calais in Picardy in Northern France. During the First World War Étaples was an Army Base Camp, the largest of its kind ever established overseas by the British. It was served by a network of railways, canals and roads connecting the camp to the southern and eastern fields of battle in France and to ships carrying troops, supplies, guns, equipment and thousands of men and women across the English Channel. It was a base for British, Canadian, Scottish and Australian forces. At its peak the camp housed over 100,000 people. It had almost 20 general hospitals and could treat 22,000 patients. Within two days of being in France, Val was admitted with scabies to the 20th General Hospital at Camiers, a small village north of Étaples arriving back at the Base Depot on 23 December. Val must’ve spent his last Christmas preparing for the Front at Étaples, for by 12 January 1917 he was "In the Field".

Battalion diaries allow us to trace the places Val went in France around Arras. Amongst the numerous diary entries about heavy barrage from the enemy and the appalling weather there are entries describing life away from the front which included: a lot of marching from place to place; training; digging trenches; having feet inspected; staying in Nissen Huts; church parades; on 21 January 1917 AIF Commander Birdwood visited the troops to present medals and the weather was particularly arduous with hard frosts, heavy morning fog, heavy rain, hail, and snowstorms; there was a boxing tournament and the issuing of footballs to the companies for light relief; plus organising their "Absent Vote" for the Commonwealth elections. The food the men were given for special occasions was described, e.g. to commemorate the landing of the 4th Battalion in France the previous year the men were given beer, cakes, chocolate, tomatoes and biscuits for free; and then on 26 April the men were given a holiday to commemorate the 2nd anniversary of the ANZAC landing and issued 1 bottle beer, 1 packet biscuits, 1 bar chocolate, 2 packets cigarettes, 2 sausages, 1 box matches per man.

Val’s final days were spent with his battalion bombing the Hindenburg Line, around Bullecourt and the railway embankment at Noreuil. An Australian attack on German trenches east of the village of Bullecourt, part of the Arras offensive fought between the British and the Germans from 9 April to 17 May 1917.

For several days in early May the battalion was undergoing heavy shelling, this continued throughout the night and early morning of the 7th. "Relieved at 12.30am on 8th and withdrew to sunken road behind Noreuil." Val died on the sixth day of the second Battle of Bullecourt. According to his war records: on 8 May 1917 he was Killed In Action "In the Field" and buried in the vicinity of Noreuil, 13 miles (21 km) southeast of Arras on the D5 road.However he has no known grave. Total casualties throughout the operations of the second Battle of Bullecourt for the 4th Battalion were 4 officers killed, 3 wounded and 47 killed and 203 wounded. Val was one of the 47 killed.

The battalion diary includes listings of men killed, wounded or going back to England. Only the officers are named, the others like Val, around 800 of them are just "men".

In June 1917 it was reported in the local Gosford newspaper that "Word came through last Saturday to Mr. Starkey that his youngest son, Val, had fallen at the front. Everyone is sorry to hear this news, for only the other day he was here with us an ordinary laddie. Now he has paid the highest price of patriotism,his life for King and country. But his name will not be forgotten. As long as the Roll of Honour hangs in the Public School, Mangrove, so long will Roy Pemberton and he be remembered and spoken of by successive ranks of school boys and girls."

Unveiled on Monday 25 June 1917 Val’s name was listed on the Mangrove Public school’s Roll of Honor along with other names of boys who had gone to war from the school including E and H Starkey, certainly his brother Ern and possibly brother Herbert.

At the anniversary of Val’s death this memoriam was printed in the Family Notices of the Gosford Times:
"In sad but loving memory of our dear brother, Val, who was killed whilst fighting for King and Country at Bullecourt, France, May 8th, 1917. We pictured his safe returning, We longed to clasp his hand; But God has postponed our meeting, Till we meet in a better land. In a hero grave he's sleeping. Inserted by his loving brother and sister-in-law, Herb and Gladys."

In the meantime Ern, although he spent time in hospital on several occasions, avoided death and major injury in France, unlike his younger brother he survived the Great War. An published 2 January 1919 in The Gosford Times and Wyong District Advocate describes Ern’s homecoming at Mangrove Creek, saying he was the first local man to enlist, a "public welcome home was given to Driver Ern Starkey (our only Anzac) and Corporal M White. On the other side he took part in the landing at Gallipoli, was in the famous charge at Lone Pine, an fought in many of the battles on the western front."

Returning to Australia Ern worked as a labourer and lived his final years in Gosford working as a gardener. He died in 1959 and is buried at Point Clare Cemetery.
Correspondence between the Starkey family and the war office regarding Val’s death continued well after the war demonstrating the pain that many families experienced waiting for news about their loved one’s death and grave location. Amy Elliott wrote this letter by hand to Base Records in Melbourne on 28 December 1920:
"To the Officer in Charge
Dear Sir My brother Valentine Montgomery Starkey was killed in the Battle of BulyCort (Bullecourt) on the 8 of May 2 years back and we never received anything belonging to him. I would like to know if there is anything come back or if his kit bag came back I would like to have something belonging to him I made enquiries at the Sydney barracks and they told me to write to you if there is anything would you please let me know and oblige."

Amy received a reply from the officer in charge stating that there was nothing found in the deceased’s kit bag held in store.

On 3 August 1921 Val’s father Joseph received his Memorial Scroll and King’s Message from Base Records, Victoria Barracks, Melbourne. On 9 September 1922 he received his son’s Memorial plaque (known as the Dead Man’s Penny).

It was not until over twenty years after his death that a place was created for the Starkey family to remember their fallen loved one. Valentine Montgomery Starkey is commemorated at the Australian National Memorial, Villers-Bretonneux, in the Somme,the main memorial to Australian military personnel killed on the Western Front during World War 1. It was officially opened on 22 July 1938.

Valentine, on this day of radiant sunshine on the Somme, it is with infinite respect, with admiration and gratitude that we remember you and the man you were and who, more than a hundred years ago, without fear, with conviction and courage, answered the call to do his duty, to fight in the name of what you believed to be right alongside your comrades on the battlefields of the Great War, on the sacred fields strewn with poppies in the north of France, an unknown country that so many young men like you defended with perseverance and bravery until their last breath, until the last drop of their blood which, in the mud and barbed wire, flowed for four years during which the world, little by little, in flames, sank into the madness and despair of a conflict that was the deadliest of the 20th century, a conflict that was triggered by two shots in Sarajevo and whose Murderous echoes reverberated in deadly battles in the Somme where a whole generation of young men, on both sides of the front line, killed each other in brutal attacks followed by devastating counterattacks that cost the lives of so many sons, friends and comrades who, before 1916, could not imagine the pain and horrors into which their steps would lead them. From all over Australia, thousands of young boys volunteered, listening only to their hearts to give their loved ones, their families, a hope of a better future. Driven on by the desire for a great adventure leading them to discover the world, by a strong spirit of patriotism, loyalty to their country but also by a spirit of camaraderie they took a step forward, leaving the warmth of their homes, the innocence of their childhood, the love of their families, the tenderness of their mothers, the gentleness of their fiancées, the hands of their brothers and sisters to carry a rifle, they volunteered without hesitation for the future of their country and, on the banks of quiet rivers, after a last embrace, a last handshake with their fathers, said their farewells and embarked on slow steamers, on large liners carrying a whole generation of men far from home towards an unknown horizon, towards dark and difficult days. Little by little, after a last sunset over Australia, through the steam, through the foam, on turquoise waters, friends and brothers, leaning on the rails, faced their destinies, the possibility of a future cut short by a bullet, by a shell, by a slow death far from home but, in this solemn moment full of gravity, these young boys found the comforting hands, the words filled with good humor of their friends who, with them, were ready to do what they trained hard for, not to kill but to fight in the name of peace and freedom. Finally, after a long journey, the propellers stopped and the Diggers landed in France, a country where they discovered the warmth, the beauty of the cities but also the fragrant scents of the orchards and fields in bloom but, little by little, their steps brought them closer to the front line and soon, they discovered the ruined cities of the Somme like Amiens which they crossed under the blessing of the spire of our sacred cathedral. They saw women all in black, crying, in mourning and whose husbands, sons were killed far away on the meat grinder that was Verdun, open-air cemetery of the French army which was bled white there then they saw young children whose faces were, at the sight of the Australian soldiers, sometimes lit up with smiles, sometimes tinged with tears of hope.

Soon, under skies broken by the thunder of steel from the artillery, they entered the trenches of Pozieres of which there remained only piles of bricks reddened with dust and blood and were launched into the battle, into the hell of the war which was to put an end to all wars. In this apocalypse, Valentine and his comrades lived days and nights alongside the death which awaited them in the mud, in the flames and under the poison gas. The Somme showed them the madness of war and hammered them under deluges of shells which, in baths of blood, in sprays of mud, in fury, mutilated and crushed the bodies but also the souls of these brave boys whose lives were stopped.

Unfortunately, in the north of France, Pozieres was only the beginning of their hell who, battle after battle, at Flers, Dernancourt, Bullecourt, Villers-Bretonneux and Amiens, raged without respite.

Behind the clatter of the first tanks, facing the buzz of bullets spat out at a crazy pace, as at Bullecourt, ready for a final assault, bayonets forward, their hearts torn by a shrill whistle, Valentine and his friends rushed into a burning cauldron, the rifles poured their magazines and when the ammunition was exhausted, the battles ended in the screams of fierce hand-to-hand combat in which friends and enemies were mowed down, collapsing next to each other, on top of each other, shedding their blood together until November 11th sounded the end of the nightmare but the price paid by the young Diggers was catastrophic and thousands of them who came in the hope of a great adventure, found only the silence of a white tomb behind which, silent and solemn, they still stand today united in the fraternity and eternal camaraderie of their brothers in arms who, with them, gave their lives for us.More than a hundred years have passed, the battlefields, the trenches are slowly disappearing under the blood-red poppies that remind us every day of the price of the peace and freedom in which we live.

The bullets, the barbed wire, the rifles turned to rust, the chaos gave way to silence and we can only imagine what their lives were like through their stories, their letters and by walking in their footsteps on the front line where so many of them fell. Today, more than ever, I feel proud to watch over them alongside my son who, still a little young, does not really understand but when he is old enough I will simply say to him "look at the graves of these young Australian soldiers, it is thanks to them that we live in peace, do not forget what we owe them, never forget who they were and why we watch over them, to keep their memory alive so always hold high in your heart their names, their faces because they are our sons, our heroes. Never forget Australia." At the going down of the sun and in the morning,we will remember him,we will remember them.

I would like to wholeheartedly and respectfully thank Mr Robert Kearney and Virtual War Memorial Australia for their invaluable help without which I would not have been able to write this tribute.