Virtual
War Memorial
Australia

"...2964 (later 2964B) Private Thomas Harold Prosser, 56th Battalion, of Frogmore, NSW. A labourer prior to enlisting in August 1916, Pte Prosser embarked from Sydney with the 7th Reinforcements on board HMAT Ascanius (A11) on 25 October 1916. He arrived in France for service on the Western Front on 1 March 1917 and was transferred to the 19th Battalion later that month. Pte Prosser was killed in action at Bullecourt, France, on 3 May 1917. He was 23 years of age." - SOURCE (www.awm.gov.au)

"An Australian digger will be celebrated with art in a encampment of Bullecourt, France  — a century after he was killed there in one of a vital battles of a Somme debate of World War I. Harold Prosser died on May 3, 1917, on a initial day of a second conflict of Bullecourt in that 7,500 Australians were killed or wounded.

Queensland artist Garry Dolan has constructed a collection that will be hung in a Bullecourt city gymnasium as partial of a centenary decoration of a battle. Earlier this year he invited associate artists Barry Back and Brett “Mon” Garling to paint a landscape during Frogmore in a executive west of New South Wales, where Private Prosser grew adult and share farmed before his enlistment in 1916.

The contingent embellished a widen of a Boorowa River famous as Prosser’s Crossing where they believed Private Prosser swam and fished before his genocide during a age of 24.

“If we wish to tell his story we unequivocally need to come and see it and knowledge it for ourselves, it gives us a possibility to know accurately what he was traffic with, what he left to go and quarrel in a war,” Dolan said.

According to NSW War Memorial historian Brad Manera, Private Prosser would have famous what to design when he volunteered in 1916.

“They weren’t those hold adult in a initial flush of unrestrained for enlistment, they had seen a misadventure figures,” Mr Manera said. “They knew how bloody this fight was going to be, it wasn’t going to be over by Christmas and so he’s a realist, he believes in what he’s doing and so he enlists to go to fight and step into a bloodiest murdering fields on earth, a Western Front.”

Private Prosser enlisted with 3 friends from his internal cricket club; Ted Grimson, Abe Roberts and Walter Malone. Mr Manera pronounced this was standard of a group who done adult a 19th Battalion, Fifth Brigade.

“These are all New South Welshmen, they enroll together, many of them had grown adult together, so they were groups of mates, they’d famous any other in polite life, they lerned together and they fought and died together during Bullecourt.”

On a initial day of a 14-day battle, Fifth Brigade had to cranky a nearby 700-metre widen of “no man’s land” between a Australian and German lines. Private Prosser was carrying steel filigree to lay over German spiny wire.

“I meant he’s not usually got all his possess conflict equipment, he’s got this additional bucket and he and 3,000 of his friends are channel hundreds of metres of open belligerent underneath glow from in front and both flanks …. and they’re usually being ripped to pieces,” Mr Manera said.

Over 14 days a Australians hold off 7 German opposite attacks, though they prisoner Bullecourt, breaching a so called Hindenberg Line for a initial time and delivering a initial vital feat of 1917. Private Prosser’s physique was never recovered and it took months before his family was strictly told of his death." - SOURCE (myexpress.com.au)