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His personal effects were returned to AIF Base Records Melbourne 1920, awaiting collection.

DUCHESNE  George Victor  #3724  15th/47th Battalion
 
The story of George Duchesne is poignantly brief. George presented himself for enlistment at Rockhampton on 21stAugust 1915. His attestation papers record that he was born in Kent, England. In 1915 he was 22 years old, a farmer from Gracemere. He did not record a next of kin.
 
George was allotted as part of the 12th reinforcements for the 15th Battalion and embarked in Sydney on the “Suffolk” on 30th November. He had allocated 4/- of his daily pay to be kept in a Commonwealth Bank Account. His file shows his arrival at the Australian 4th Division camp at Tel el Kabir in Egypt on the 6th March 1916. The following day he was transferred to the 47th Battalion; sister battalion to the 15th.
 
The 15th Battalion would provide a core of Gallipoli veterans to create the 47th Battalion. There is much comment by modern day military historians that “Bull” Cannan took the opportunity to divest himself of officers and NCOs who could be described as “bits of duds” during this process. The new Commander of the 47th, Snowden, had a less than outstanding record from Gallipoli as far as leadership and discipline was concerned. Additionally, the 47th was one of the last battalions to be formed and numbers were made up from 1st and 2nd Division men discharged from the VD hospitals or released from military detention, as well as reinforcements. One former 47th soldier described the battalion as a “bunch of toffs, wasters and street loafers.”
 
When the rest of the AIF departed for the Western Front in March and April of 1916, the 47th remained in Egypt on garrison duty along the Suez Canal. While camped on the canal, the battalion managed to insult the Prince of Wales (Future King Edward VIII) by surrounding him and counting him out like a boxing referee.
 
The battalion finally left Egypt on the 3rd June. The officers discovered they could consume alcohol on credit whilst at sea and as one battalion member noted, for some of them it was a six day binge. Several officers had to be carried from the ship when it docked in Marseilles. The battalion faced a sixty hour train journey to Outersteene near the Belgian Border. Once in their billets, pay was issued and large quantities of champagne at 5 francs a time were consumed by the ORs.
 
The 47th relieved other Australian battalions in the line for a few weeks. A sergeant from the 1st Battalion when being relieved noted of his relief “Captain McLaughlin ……. hopeless as ever; Their Colonel seemed a particularly useless sort of beggar.” It would be fair to say that the 47th was ill prepared for the test that would soon come; the Somme.
 
The entire 4th Division, which included the 47th, arrived on the outskirts of Albert in early August. The objective for the 4th Division was to relieve the brigades of the 1st and 2nd divisions which had successfully taken the village of Pozieres and the trench lines on the ridge above. The 47th moved into the front line on the 5th August. The battalion history, “Battle Scarred” describes the situation: “There was no enemy to shoot at. No identifiable trench to give sanctuary, and no attack to mount. The 47th’s role would be to simply endure a German artillery bombardment that would become proverbial for its ferocity.”
 
George’s file notes that he was killed in action on 7th August 1916. He was one of three Gracemere men killed at Pozieres in a period of three days (See Bunnage and De Chastel above). All three have no known grave and are commemorated on the National Memorial at Villers Bretonneux and on the Gracemere War Memorial.
 
A number of items were retrieved from George’s kit; including a paint box, a bible and unit badges, but with no registered next of kin recorded the items remained with Base Records in Melbourne.
 
In 1926, the Commonwealth Bank was trying to locate a legatee for the savings account George had set up before going overseas. The last entry in George’s file is from 1933 stating that his medals; 14/15 Star and Victory and Empire medals remained unclaimed.
 
On the site of the Pozieres battlefield today is a commemorative stone which reads:
 
“The ruin of the Pozieres windmill which lies here was the centre of the struggle on this part of the Somme Battlefield in July and August 1916. It was captured by Australian troops who fell more thickly on this ridge than on any other battlefields of the war.”