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)