Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

"Friday night I attended as the "guest of honour" the 75th Anniversary Dinner of the Coogee Surf Club" Quite a good show, but marred by a lot of rambling speeches. Mine, of course, would have been the best one, but the Taxi to Narrabeen called before it was time for me to utter my words of wisdom!! so I had to leave the function in a state of utter dismay. One special point of interest, however was that I was sitting next to a nice type of young woman who looked at my place card with my name McRorie on it (naturally) & said her grandmothers name was McRorie, spelt as mine was. That was indeed a surprise, but discussing as much as possible our family trees I could not discover any relationship to her grandmother. Nevertheless it was a coincidence because the McRories are few and far between."
Written in 1981 by my grandfather to his son, my father James Peter McRorie.
So the scene is set for the following extracts from letters sent to my father who was touring Europe in 1981. Grandfather was by then 89 years old. Some of the writing is hard to read and the spelling maybe wrong. As for the recollections . . . copied here as written, leaving out only personal irrelevant and out of context lines and paragraphs.
' Your letter arrived today from France. Your references awakened many memories in me especially the Somme. I spent a lot of time there in Poziers, Albert, Bullecourt, Hamel (the following word I transcribe as best i can make out is) Norcuil - all blood and thunder. Yes I guess it was vastly different there to when I was there all those years ago, when I lived in a mixture of fear, fun, blood and death of many mates. I was lucky to get out of it. But here I am.
Wondering if got to Amiens, at all, or Villers Bretonneaux. I am wondering if you got north to Ypres or Passhindal - other hell holes where good men died in there thousands. But its all over now.
Your second letter arrived from England today. You appear to be following the same route as myself when I left England for France in 1916. Folkestone-Boulogne in rather different circumstances. It was a thrilling time for me (& Uncle Reg) We were really on our way to war & we could hear from England the guns booming in France. It was a night trip with no lights. Getting to Boulogne we then camped for the night on top of some high ground & the next day we entrained for a station in the north of France. It was named Poperinghe(sic). From there we marched with the sounds of battle getting louder & louder, most exciting I can assure you. From Poperinghe we started a long march. That night we slept in a deserted French village. Reg & I had a tent to sleep in, & Reg getting up in the middle of he night walked into a duck pond. He came back to the tent very wet cold and miserable. From there we went by stages to a place named Dickebush. An occasional shell came over but none did any harm. I might say that we had previously crossed France from Marseilles to Havre. That was on our way from Egypt to England. It then took us four days. We went to England for further training. It was all very exciting of course. After leaving Dickebush we finally joined the First Field Ambulance at Poziers. I don't no what hell is like but if it anything like Poziers was I don't want to go there. But this is not meant to be a war story so I will not give away anymore details about it, except to say that we were enthralled by the beauties (scenery) of France after the deserts of Egypt. My second visit to England, I might say, was a fortnight leave granted, and then I did not contact any of those beautiful foods you mentioned; but i delighted in the English countryside. Whilst in London, Lyons Cornerhouse was a favourite rendezvous for Aussies. I don't suppose you met any of my old girlfriends there! It was about 64 years ago, so I don't suppose there would be too many of them about now!!
Had a service last night and I laid a wreath for Anzac Day.

END of Part ONE
Forgive me. I will stop now because I am tired from typing and I'm slow. I have named this Part One as there is more to type. But in case this program does not save what we have transcribed so far I will attempt to add more later either on the end here or begin a Part Two.