From ‘The (Newcastle) Herald’
Saturday 26 September 2007
Quote [Service honours the courage of ‘Hunter’s own’
by Polly Simons
The 2000 Hunter Valley men who fought at the Battle of Passchendaele during World War I will be remembered during a special service commemorating the battle’s 90th anniversary.
“Friday 12th October, 1917, was the blackest day for the Hunter Valley in the First World War, the service’s co-convenor, military historian David Dial, said.
“One hundred and twelve Hunter Valley men were killed on [that] first day of battle, the greatest number of men [from the region] ever killed on one day during war,” he said.
The service will commemorate the Hunter Valley men of the 33rd to 36th Infantry Battalions who fought at Passchendaele, including the 34th “Maitland’s Own” and 35th “Newcastle’s Own” Battalions.
Among those remembered will be Captain Clarence Jeffries of the 34th Battalion, who received a Victoria Cross posthumously for his courage on the battlefield.
Born in Wallsend, Captain Jeffries captured six machine guns and 65 prisoners before he was killed in action at Passchendaele just two weeks before his 23rd birthday.
Notorious as one of the most difficult battles of World War I, Passchendaele was the first time all five Australian Divisions had fought together alongside their New Zealand, British and Canadian counterparts.
The service will be held at St Luke’s Anglican Church, Wallsend, from 7.30pm on October 12.
The setting is particularly appropriate as Captain Jeffries’ mother, the late Barbara Jeffries, bequeathed money for the leadlight panel on the east wall of the church as a memorial to those Wallsend men killed in the two world wars.”] Unquote
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