This enquiry came to us in the Australiana Room from a
gentleman doing some research on his wife’s family:
In my research for my
Family Tree, I have been given photos of the four Buckingham boys –
George, William, Bob and Frank – under the heading “Four Sons of Mrs
Buckingham”. I believe the photos come from the Ballarat Courier but they have
no date, except for a caption under Frank’s photo “Now in France”. All four
were soldiers in the first World War. Two of them were killed in France –
George and young Sam both on April 11 1917, and Bob wounded three times. Frank
enlisted for two tours of duty. I am
told the photos were in the Ballarat Courier some time in 1917, because Mrs
Buckingham and two of the sons came from Ballarat. But two came from WA, so it
could be a WA paper.
I responded to this enquirer that he should get onto Trove as the National Library has digitised
newspapers all over Australia from the Great War period. By looking in Trove using the title of the
article as a search term he should be able to find what he was looking for – it
wouldn’t matter which newspaper – he didn’t need to search papers individually.
The next day my colleague Simon was turning the pages of the
100 year old Ballarat Courier, and I noticed the page he had selected for
display included about 8 photographs in the “Roll of Honour”. I remarked what a good page it was to have
open, and stepped closer for a better look.
Imagine my surprise to see two of the Buckingham sons included in those
images!
The Ballarat Courier,
May 12 1917 p. 5
Before I could email my enquirer about this coincidence,
there was a phone message from him, to say he had located the article required,
in the Kalgoorlie Sun. You can try the search yourself in Trove
if you wish to see it.
The two Buckingham men killed on the same day were with the
16th Battalion at Bullecourt.
They had enlisted together in Perth (Service Record Numbers 6237 and
6238), they both sailed to England on the Suffolk, and then to France together,
and died together in the same battle on the same day.
Poor May Buckingham, William’s wife, could not accept
William’s death and in 1930 wrote a
tragic letter to the Base Records, questioning whether he really was killed in
action – or was he a Prisoner of War? – as she had such strong dreams of him
coming home. She received a brisk letter
from the Army records department, advising “all prisoners of war have long
since been repatriated” and that his name would be inscribed on the Villers
Bretonneux memorial.
Only two of the Buckingham sons are memorialised in the
Avenue of Honour in Ballarat, the two sons who enlisted from Ballarat - Tree 787, R.T. Buckingham 5th
Battalion: Tree 1111, Frank Buckingham
16th Battalion (planted 13.7.15 by Mrs Buckingham herself in the “Sunnyside
Woollen Mills Employees section”). The
two sons who enlisted from Perth are memorialised at Villers Bretonneux, and in
this death notice in the Ballarat Courier on May 12th, 1917, which reflects the numbers of casualties from the Bullecourt battles:
