Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

Father  W S Uren   and  Mother          (nee _______)
lived at 60 St Georges Terrace, Battery Point, Hobart, Tasmania.

Harold lived with his parents and younger brother Leonard Sydney.

Described on enlisting as 24 years old; single;
Methodist

15/2/1915         Enlisted with his brother Leonard Sydney Uren #2069.

1/4/1915           Embarked from Outer Harbour, Port Adelaide, on board HMAT Port Lincoln A17
12th Infantry, 5th reinforcements

TWO sons go off to fight and just one returns. A remarkable collection of war artefacts has come to light revealing the heartache of a Hobart family torn apart by World War I.

Harold was taller and moreoutgoing than his younge sibling — a “hail fellow, well met” — but he always had an eye out for his little brother.

The Battery Point boys had a similar circle of friends, both attended The Hutchins School, sailed together on the River Derwent and dreamt one day of buying a property in the Huon Valley to set up a fruit farm.

When war broke out in 1914, those plans were put on hold as they watched, in horror, events unfolding in Europe and the Middle East.

It would have come as no isurprise to anyone when Harold, a 25-year-old builder and Len, 22 and training to become a dentist, enlisted together on February 15, 1915 at Claremont and joined the AIF’s 12th Battalion.

Their regimental numbers followed one after the other — Len 2069, Harold 2070.

Soldiers together: Len Uren, right, on leave

The sons of English migrants saw it as their duty to go and fight for their king and country.

They were young, fit and fresh-faced. They were among thousands of eager young men to sign up.

Of course the brothers had no idea of the horrors that lay ahead. In just a little over two years their lives and dreams had been shattered.

Harold would be dead and Len so traumatised by what he’d seen and done, he swore never to have kids.

It was this vow that has ironically led to a remarkable record of his war experience coming to light.

Len Uren, of Hobart

Len married twice. His first wife, Lillian, died in 1970. They never had children.

Len remarried in the mid-1970s and his second wife Marion is 92 and still alive.

She recently donated a remarkable collection of Len’s war artefacts to the National Museum of Australia in Canberra and The Hutchins School.

Among them is a series of letters written to Len from his parents and sister Beatrice back in Hobart as well as old photographs, a Hutchins Old Boys badge, a brooch made from a British Queen Victoria coin, Harold’s hand-stitched leather wallet — still engraved with his name — and Len’s bloodstained army-issue kit bag.

The items will be catalogued and displayed in the Hutchins Archives and Heritage Collection.

Dental Crew: Len Uren working as a dentist on the Western Front, France. He is pictured on the far right.

Marion feared that, without blood relatives, Len’s legacy would be lost.

“I often thought it would be sad if his story wasn’t recorded. He didn’t have children, and his only niece died. I am so glad the museum and The Hutchins School, have those few things,” she said

“They would be of no interest to anyone after I am gone.”

 Gallipoli landing

The brothers first saw ­action as part of the second landing at Gallipoli.

The 12th Battalion was sent to support those being hammered by the Turkish forces after the doomed and most famous assault on April 25.

Later in life, Len spoke of Gallipoli. He said he knew legendary stretcher bearer John Simpson (they called him Murph) and spoke of a tough life in the trenches.

But it was one experience there that would have the most profound effect on Len.

In one assault, his best friend was shot in the back. Len was left holding his mate as he bled to an agonising death.

He later told Marion that it was in that moment he decided never to have children because he didn’t want to bring children into a world where they might be sent to fight in a war.

But for Len, the hardest blow was yet to come.

The 12th Battalion withdrew from Gallipoli and was sent to France after three months in Egypt. The Uren brothers were soon part of the massive force fighting on the Western Front.

More than 295,000 Australians were involved in the bitter trench warfare, which lasted until the end of the war. Of those, 46,000 lost their lives and 132,000 were wounded.

More than 750km of trenches (the equivalent of a line zigzagging between Melbourne and Canberra) stretched from the North Sea in Belgium to the Swiss border with France.

Freezing and muddy in winter, the heat of summer often meant it was stifling for troops.

Marion said such heat nearly led to Len’s death.

One summer night, they were sleeping in the trenches. It was pitch black and very stuffy, so he decided to hop up on the side of the trench and spread out to get some fresh air. He was sound asleep when he awoke suddenly at the sound of a bullet whizzing past his head. He realised that the moon had come up and he had become a great target for the enemy.

He said he dropped down into the trench at the speed of light.

Later, Len was shot in his left arm and transferred to the Dental Corps, and the Uren brothers became separated.

“He always said that it was the wound that saved his life,” Marion recalls.

But Harold wouldn’t be so lucky. On April 9, 1917, in Belgium at Flanders, Harold was killed after an order to advance with his troops. In the chaos of war, the rider with the message was delayed after becoming lost and the regiment didn’t get the order until after daybreak.

Bound by orders, they had to go. Of course they had no chance in broad daylight.

Harold was 26.

Still in hospital, Len later said Harold had appeared to him in a dream and pointed to a little white cross, and he knew then he was dead. His big brother, best mate, was gone.

Three weeks later he got a letter from the army telling him what had happened.

“That might seem hard to believe, but I feel sure it did happen.,” Marion said.

“He wasn’t the kind of person to say anything fanciful, and he wasn’t religious.”

 News back home

Back in Hobart, the Uren boys’ parents, Mary and William, received the cable they dreaded.

The letters to their surviving son, which form part of the Hutchins collection, must have been among the most difficult they had ever had to write.

His father, William, talks about how the family heard the news and expresses the hope that Len might return home safely.

“Now my son, be sure to take the greatest care of yourself and we pray that you may be spared to return home to these your loved ones,” he said.

Harold’s death had come as shock to the parents, who two days before had received letters from the front in which Harold had spoken of been made a member of the permanent staff in England,

You can hear the grief in his mother Mary’s words who still referred to her then 23-year-old, as “My Darling Little Len”.

“I thought last week dear, that I could not possibly write to my lonely son away out there alone.,” she wrote.

“We are all so sorry for you Len dear. We have each other, one to comfort the other. It is so hard to write about that now. I don’t know what to say.”

In the letters, both parents mention how proud they were to have sons who bravely went to war for to do their duty for “King and country”.

But after the war, there was no such patriotism from Len.

Asked later in life why he had signed up, his answer was short and frank: “Well I can tell you why I enlisted- a man does a lot of bloody silly things when he is young.”

“When we were in Paris we hired a car and driver and drove up to visit Harold’s grave,” Marion recalls.

“He (Len) sat on the side of the grave and shed a tear. He was deeply moved. It was very sad for him he had always wanted to visit the grave and that was the first time it was possible in 60 years.”

Sourced and submitted by Julianne T Ryan.  2/12/2014.  Lest we forget.